Let’s get right to it, then. Would you believe I didn’t see My Neighbor Totoro until this year? Spirited Away, too, but that one hasn’t been around almost as long as I have, so my neglect of the former is more egregious.

Totoro (you know, the big one) reminds me of Cait Sidhe from Aria, only he’s not as genuinely creepy. And while we’re making that comparison, what’s up with those nature spirits being so selective in whom they reveal their many wonders to? I mean yeah, I guess they don’t want the publicity, but come on. I won’t tell anyone. Throw me a bone here.

But Totoro did do something for me for which I’m eternally grateful. He (it?) made me feel like a kid again, and that’s not so easy these days, what with all the concerns of adulthood piling up. He gave me an opportunity to sit back for an hour and a half and worry about nothing. He scraped around for a while and found the rose-colored glasses I had nearly forgotten about, the ones I thought I’d lost a long time ago. And while I had to take them off again at the end to go about the business of being a grown-up, at least I know where to find them now, should I need them.

You may know how difficult it is to choose one moment from this film upon which to heap highest praise. Actually I’ve had that problem with nearly everything I’ll be writing about this year, and so my posts will cheat a little with their willingness to designate runners-up to whichever Moments Supreme I decide upon in the end. For example, I’m tempted to name as my Totoro moment “everything involving a Catbus.” But I suppose I’ll have to go with the scene during which I “got” what Totoro is “about” (for me at least) — the tree-growing scene.

But here’s the best part: the dad (voiced by Shigesato Itoi — holy shit, right!?) just sort of glances outside…

…and then goes about his business. Does he see what’s going on out there?

Again, prompted by a sudden breeze and some strange music, Itoi-otousan glances outside. And again he returns to his work, this time with an expression I’m not sure I’ve quite figured out.

Does he indeed notice something? We can’t know for sure. That expression might be a knowing glance, but he never feels the need to investigate, to know with absolute certainty what he perhaps suspects. Maybe he’s being a responsible adult and not indulging in childish fantasies — he is working at the time, after all — or maybe that’s a part of it, but I don’t see it that way. I tend to think he figures it doesn’t much matter whether the Totoros are real, that a dream — a fiction, a story — can be as meaningful and as emotional as a “real” event (if not more so). Nor do Satsuki and Mei seem to care, when they wake up the next day, whether the events of the previous night “happened.” It’s almost beside the point.

We, the viewers, are in on the secret; the Totoros and the Catbus are “real” to us. Of course they aren’t, really; they’re fictional characters — but does it matter? Not especially. In their undoubtedly tangible ability to move us, they’re as real as they need to be.

[Read the next moment here]