![]() As the world expanded and the production grew, Miyazaki decided it would be a better narrative decision to split the character of "Mai” into two separate characters. One reasoning for having one protagonist was that Totoro was originally only supposed to be a 40-minute long short film. ![]() It was during this time that he first started creating initial conceptual watercolor paintings for our furry friend Totoro and his human companion and 7 year old girl named Mai/Satsuki (both early draft names for the protaganist). Hayao Miyazaki first had the idea for “My Neighbor Totoro” during his work on the production of Isao Takahata's 1976 TV series, “3000 Leagues in Search of Mother”. So did the artist just get lazy and hope no one would notice?Perhaps a more interesting reasoning behind this. She is sporting Mei’s pigtails and Satsuki’s preferred yellow and orange attire. Upon closer inspection the girl in question appears to be a mish-mash of the two protagonists we know and love. Where are Mei and Satsuki? And who is this mysterious girl who doesn’t even appear in the movie. All is well and good until you look at the original Japanese movie poster and DVD box art and you notice something odd. It has since been updated.Who is the mysterious girl in the official My Neighbor Totoro movie poster?Īnyone who has seen Studio Ghibli’s 1988 classic “My Neighbor Totoro” knows that it follows the lives of Satsuki and Mei, two young girls who make a move to the quiet Japanese countryside. This article was originally published on August 14, 2020. The “rainy day encounter” in its original form must have resonated with Miyazaki so strongly that he felt it was the best way to promote the movie. Thus, the art just stuck, even to this day when the movie is now a classic. ![]() The reason why the mysterious art remained, according to former Studio Ghibli animator Hirokatsu Kihara, was that the movie wasn’t a hit when originally released, and no one really asked about the discrepancy, so there was no reason to change. However, when it was time to create the movie’s official poster, Miyazaki couldn’t come up with anything that satisfactory, so he reverted to the original picture book art. Her first encounter at the bus stop seemed so perfect.” “If she was a little girl who plays around in the yard, she wouldn’t be meeting her father at a bus stop, so we had to come up with two girls instead,” Miyzaki said in The Art of My Neighbour Totoro. The decision, however, sounds like it ultimately improved the story. The result was two girls: four-year-old Mei and 11-year-old Satsuki. So, the friendly rivals that they were, Miyazaki decided to make the mysterious girl into two sisters. However, when it went into development as an animated movie as a double-feature to be shown with Isao Takahata’s Grave of the Fireflies, Miyazaki apparently learned that his Ghibli cohort was making a longer film than him. The early art featured Totoro and a seven-year-old girl. During the mid-1970s, Hayao Miyazaki began coming up with concept art for what would become My Neighbour Totoro. In an interview (via Spoon & Tamago), Studio Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki explained that My Neighbour Totoro was originally going to be a children’s picture book.
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