A01=Andrew Osmond
animated film
animation studies
anime
Author_Andrew Osmond
BFI Film Classics
Category=ATF
Category=ATFA
Category=ATFV
childhood and imagination
children's cinema
cultural context
environmental themes
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
family film
fantasy film
film studies
forthcoming
Hayao Miyazaki
Japanese animation
Japanese cinema
My Neighbour Totoro
nature in film
rural Japan
Studio Ghibli
world cinema
Product details
- ISBN 9781805750000
- Dimensions: 135 x 190mm
- Publication Date: 01 Oct 2026
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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My Neighbour Totoro (1988) is one of the best-loved films created by Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli. Nearly forty years after its first release, Totoro remains beloved in Japan and abroad, a child’s-eye vision of the sublime and a celebration of the magical richness of the Japanese countryside. Everything feels placed at a child’s level, from the implicit spiritual environmentalism to the characters’ fears of death. Totoro has no fighting, no villains. The film’s artistry is as unassuming as it is extraordinary.
Andrew Osmond’s study places Totoro in the context of Miyazaki’s and Studio Ghibli’s films, and considers what makes it so exceptional and seemingly inimitable.
Andrew Osmond is a writer and critic based in Ascot, UK. He is the author of Spirited Away in the BFI Film Classics series (2008) and 100 Animated Feature Films in the BFI Screen Guides series (2022). He has written about Japanese and other animation for more than twenty years in outlets including Sight and Sound, SFX, Neo, Anime News Network and Animation World Network.
