last night, henri and i watched “my neighbor totoro,” an animated Japanese film directed by hayao miyazaki, who also created “spirited away” (which is probably my favorite animated movie of all time).
if you’ve never seen totoro before, check out the trailer:
while it’s not nearly as complex as “spirited away” (or “princess monoke”), it’s a charming, whimsical little film that is FULL OF SQUEE. seriously, i haven’t squeed this much since i got to hold little emma lewis.
i mean, just LOOK at this picture.
first, that big gray animal is totoro. and he has an umbrella. and whiskers that move, esp. when he is perplexed.
second, notice the little girl (mei) IN A RAINCOAT AND RAINBOOTS!!!!!!!! SHE IS THE CUTEST!!! here is she again, sitting on totoro’s tummy.
honestly, i need nothing more in a film to make me happy. THIS IS ALL THAT IS REQUIRED. however, it *would* be nice if i could have my own totoro to snuggle.
i swear, with this kind of squee sensitivity, i should’ve been born in japan. cos you know, they have a culture of cute! that is like, my favorite culture! esp. cos you can combine FOOD with cuteness.
exhibit a: a totoro bento box. tasty AND squee.
seriously though, every time i saw totoro or one of the little soot sprites– oh, you don’t know what a soot sprite is? here you go…
anyway, any time i saw them or little mei, i almost had a SEIZURE OF SQUEE. it helps that the facial expressions in the film are actually well drawn, even though they’re still a little extreme in that anime way sometimes. plus, dakota fanning and her little sister, elle, did the voices of the two sisters (for the american version), and they were marvelous! i highly recommend watching this clip about the voice overs in this movie, just so you can hear and see them working together:
i know, maybe you’re over dakota, but her AND her tiny little sister?!!! they are ADORABLE. GAH.
the funny thing is that, even though all of the voice-over actors are american, they still manage to sound strangely japanese in their delivery. and i don’t mean they have japanese accents, i mean they sound like japanese actors trying to sound american. i can’t really explain it, so henri and i made this short, complete ridiculous video for illustration purposes:
henri’s roar, by the way, is his imitation of totoro. if only he had whiskers…
anyway, not only did the movie make me squee, but it also made me think about the imaginary things i believed in when i was a child. not just, like, the tooth fairy (i was a huge fan), but also the more private, unique ideas in my head.
for example, when i was six or seven, i remember drawing a pirate treasure map of my backyard and marking an “X” in one corner to signify the buried treasure. and then, probably to my parent’s chagrin, i started digging in the general area of the X. because, even though i had *created* the treasure map, i believed that my chances of finding the buried treasure were still pretty good. esp. since this was my yard and no one else could dig in it. that makes sense, right? right.
i also had the sneaking suspicion that certain people could actually fly. they just didn’t want me to know.
i never had an imaginary friend, though. you’d think i would have been surrounded by them, since i was an only child. but i think i just named inanimate objects instead and made them my friends. ha ha ha, HOW SILLY.
what feats of the imagination did you guys enjoy as kids?
i guess, for me, that’s the main allure of the culture of cute. it’s esthetically appealing, of course, but more importantly, it reminds me of being a kid. and when you’re a kid, you see the magic in everything. all possibilities are possible, truly possible, and you are free to run wild with them, hand in hand with a giant, furry, impossibly puffy friend.
not to mention that fact that dust sprites make a dirty apartment seem a heck of a lot cuter.
LINKS
so the new kids are actually gonna have a reunion tour. i don’t know how i feel about this, but you can watch a video of their dance practice here. i have to say, it kinda puts me and erica to shame… so, i guess they still got the right stuff! (har HAAAR)
i still don’t get why SATC premiered in london rather than NYC, but you can see all of the fashion and glam care of jezebel.
audrey tatou is the new, gorgeous, perfect face of coco chanel.
did you know there’s a train station underneath the waldorf astoria?!
continuing the food history trend from yesterday, get a donut education (NOM NOM) from cakespy.
fraggle rock returns!! holla!
I’m so glad I found your blog, Sarah. It makes me happy every day.
Do you know my new favorite cartoon, Avatar? You might find it similarly appealing.
I love the video explanation.
When I was a kid, I was convinced that my stuffed animals came to life when I was asleep. Most kids probably thought this, and most kids probably thought it was cool, but I was obsessed with the idea - I just KNEW those animals were getting together when I was asleep, having parties but not inviting me, and probably talking shit behind my back. How sad is that? Even my stuffed animals hated me.
I used to think people could fly but just wouldn’t tell me, too, Sarah. I also used to think I was telekinetic - I watched some B movie when I was six and was taken with the idea - but that no one would tell me. That . . . I was telekinetic. Well, what I mean is, I thought that my family KNEW I had the ability to move things with my mind but refused to teach me how to do it because they didn’t want me to be kidnapped by the government and used as a lab rat (this was the plot of the movie, as I recall). So I kept trying to do it myself so that I could show them and be like, “It’s okay, guys! I figured it out on my own! Let’s have a tea party. I’ll get out the cups. *zoom*” But, alas, my special superhero power never made itself known. Probably I’m just waiting on a dose of some radioactive element to awaken my dormant skills, yes?
I want those cat mittens from the MOMA Japanese shop.
I was sooo hoping that the new NKOTB single would be good, but it’s not.
Um…hello..we could totally win a dance off with NKOTB. I mean..if KD was dancing with us of course. I can’t believe there is a reunion tour. If I could be guaranteed they would only play all the songs that I loved when I was a teen..maybe..but they have surely gone down hill since Hangin Tough…:) Too hilarious!
Hullo.
I had a very, very active imagination as a child (I was an only child until I was 6) but I never had imaginary friends. I performed all roles to be played whenever i played barbies, “house” or what-have-you. Whatever story I read, which was a lot, I believed in it. Don’t even get me started on how much the Polar Express book let me down when I asked Santa that year for a bell from the reindeers.
I believed in fairies, toilet monsters (yup), and I too thought my stuffed animals came to life, but their main job was to protect me from any other inanimate object that came to life in the night. I would pile every single “good” stuffed animal on top of me when I would go to sleep at night, and I would put the suspicious ones away. I always thought something was out to get me in the night while I slept.
That’s all I can think of right now, but I loved being a kid. But I also love being an adult, I like being more aware of my surroundings and the world than I was back then.
Have you seen Howl’s Moving Castle? It’s my favorite Miyazaki.
When I was a kid I imagined CRAZY stuff. Like I thought that eating graham crackers made your muscles bigger. I thought that if I covered my entire body in mud, my skin would actually turn darker, which I wanted, because I had this dream of becoming Mr. T someday. There was a hole in our backyard for access to some electrical and water pipes, but my dad kept it covered with a board. We couldn’t see the bottom of the hole because it was dark, so of course me and my brothers thought it was bottomless. We all thought monsters lived in it and we used to dare each other to jump in, but of course none of us ever did.
I used to run and hide from car headlights at night because I thought if they saw me, there would be a chance that they were actually spies who were trying to kill me. I also used to think that if I prayed to God with enough sincerity, he would give me mutant powers (I was really hoping for claws like Wolverine’s). I totally believed in magic potions, and I used to make them out of bugs and puddle water and stuff, but I never drank any of them.
I’ll probably think of ten more things after I post this comment.
Have you seen these yet?
http://www.mybeatingheart.com/
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=11520366
First, I started calling members of my family “straggle rock” when they were taking too long, but they said it was dumb. I just think it’s impressive “fraggle rock” plays such a big role in my life at this age, since I wasn’t allowed to watch it as a kid. And possibly a bigger role in the future now that it’s back.
Second, I never had imaginary friends, but I had what I consider a good imagination, but based on concrete things. Like, I would sit and draw countless house plans for my imaginary house. All of these had a window seat for my room, obviously, and everyone had their own room (the kids shared rooms–me with my sister, and my brothers together), and big kitchens and porches all the way around the house. I’m from the South.
I also, and this is weird/nerdy, thought the letters/words on signs had personalities, and would look at the fonts on signs (I didn’t know the word font yet) and figure out if they were happy or sad words because of how they looked.
I’d also like to note I contributed to my sister’s imaginary life by telling her very scary stories. Like, if she kept getting up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, an alligator that lived under the floor would bite her feet off. (The alligator wouldn’t do it to me, obviously.) And that her dolls were actually children who had died.
Okay, I was mean. I’m making up by being nice to her now. I shouldn’t admit this stuff, eh?
Children who had died?? Eeep.
I used to draw my dream housese too. My dad would bring my home drafting tablets from work and I’d spend hours constructing my dream home, only to inevitably leave off something important that I didn’t realize I needed at the time. Like a laundry room.
When I was a kid I used to play with Kristina on the swing set and we totally went Swiss Family Robinson. We used to pretend the swing set was our boat, we crashed, and then the swing set turned into our woodland house. We would take the magnolia tree leaves and make shoes and other clothes and put them on over our play clothes. There was a swamp area in our back yard and that’s where the monster lived, but we always created a reason to have to walk through the swamp, like to get food, or more precious magnolia leaves to make more shoes. Seriously, our back yard became a hide out!
I heard NKOTB were reuniting…I remember telling my dad when I was in LOVE with them, that they were the next Beatles…MUHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
olivia, you were positively diabolical. dead children turning into dolls? wow.
last night, i remembered my bathroom cabinet in lafayette, which i *knew* was actually my own personal narnia wardrobe. i would sit on the toilet (is that TMI?) and stare at the cabinet and imagine all of the worlds it could take me to… and in order to get to the worlds, i had to crawl through a tunnel, which would sometimes be a giant slide and other times be more like a rainbow.
wow, my bathroom was totally exciting.
Hey, those are MY potential cat mittens! Also, I totally have a rad bento box I got at the 100 Yen store in Chiba. Score!
My imaginary friend situation was nuts. I thought of the inside of my body as this miniscule village, sort of like the Smurf village, and each part of my body was run by a different imaginary friend. Like, Footy was the shoe store and Leggy was the transportation (of the people inside of me, as well as of me), and Tummy was the restaurant, and Army was the army, b/c what else could I do with that? But Brainy was my favorite, and whatever movies he watched at night dictated my dreams, and I’d get mad at him for watching scary movies (irony?) when I’d have nightmares. And he was the only one who could come out of me and talk to me, and he’d climb down that ridge on the roof of my mouth and jump into my hand….
I sound like a sociopath, don’t I?
Arden wore a raincoat and rainboots to school today. If you ever want to go rain puddle stomping with her, just come on over.
Totoro is an absolute favorite in our house. Arden had us calling her Mei for a while there… One of my favorite things about Totoro is that the adults all acknowledge and honor Totoro and the soot sprites just as much as the kids–they aren’t considered just imaginary friends, but rather a part of the greater makeup of their universe. The film just so honors that wonder-joy-awe part of a child’s imagination…plus, Totoro is just awesome. And he makes the trees grow.
Your video explanation= Genius. I think I’ve watched it 10 times already. Pure genius.
you guys, we need to have like, a child fantasy day, where we do all of the stuff we loved as kids. jennifer, i will SO meet you on the swingset/boat/treehouse.
jonathan, i haven’t seen avatar. but i will totally check it out.
and arden in rainboots?!! cutest puddle jumper pants ever!
Thanks for recognizing that Emma is an endless source of Squee! moments. The power of her cuteness alone could solve the looming energy crisis.
And no, I’m not biased. I’m completely objective.