REVIEW: My Neighbor Totoro, The Novel · 7:56am Oct 10th, 2017
What do you think of, when you see a movie novelization? Probably all the ways it differs from the original, right?
To be honest I bought this book because, if nothing else, it includes nice watercolor illustrations by Miyazaki, made just for this.
Huge spoilers ahead for the Totoro movie. and the novel. not that "spoiler" applies well to its type of story...
Remember at the very end of the movie, how Mei gets mad and impatient and runs away from home, and her older sister Satsuki gets help from Totoro and the Catbus to find her? It plays out slightly differently in this version.
Satsuki boards the Catbus, and they soar upon the wind toward Mei. Instead of physically reuniting, it's spiritual, or something. Satsuki sees Mei, next to some Jizo statues, and when the bus doesn't stop, she yells out to her to stay right there so she can come back and find her. Satsuki wakes up back in the tunnel in the thicket next her house, as if she'd been spirited away.
When she convinces the villagers she knows where to find Mei, Kanta rushes ahead on his bicycle. When Satsuki catches up, Kanta tells her that when he found Mei, she was calmly playing with the statues, feeding them flowers. Satsuki almost can't believe Mei was idly playing while everyone in the village was scared to death searching for this lost girl.
"I wasn't lost!" Mei almost shouted. "I was going home. But the cat bus came and you told me not to move. I did what you said." She puffed out her chest proudly. "I was playing 'cause I had to wait. That's why!"
I've been in Mei's shoes. and I remember my own little sisters being in that situation too, playing while waiting for me. A child's conviction that everything will be fine, so pass the time having fun.
I never before realized just how much of this story is about waiting. Waiting for a father to get home from work, waiting for a mother to recover from her sickness and come home, waiting for some planted seeds to sprout. This happens in all of Miyazaki's stories; the most magical moments happen in between the major plot events, where characters merely do interesting things while waiting.
[Miyazaki] clapped his hands three or four times. "The time in between my clapping is ma. If you just have non-stop action with no breathing space at all, it's just busyness, But if you take a moment, then the tension building in the film can grow into a wider dimension. If you just have constant tension at 80 degrees all the time you just get numb."
(from interview by Roger Ebert)
But more importantly, I was struck by how author Tsugiko Kubo chose to rewrite this scene. In the animated film, the strengths of this part are visual and audible sensations: watching the catbus move as the scenery flies by. Satsuki realizes the strong gusts of wind--present throughout the whole movie, sometimes in scary moments--were caused by this same spirit. And then the catbus can take both of them to the hospital for that final scene, where the ending credits can cut in.
Would this have worked in prose? Maybe it's not impossible.... but the altered version in the book feels more suitable to the act of reading a book. It doesn't need to match the beautiful sensations of animation, but can focus on Satsuki's emotions and discovering Mei's reaction. Neither one's better. I like the film's version in the film, and the book's version in the book.
There's other certain scenes changed like this for the novelization. Instead of feeling dissonant when compared to the film, Kubo's version seems perfectly harmonious with Miyazaki's vision... and he trusted her to make these changes where she needed to.
For example, the book skips over the entire section of Mei playing around the house alone. We don't see her chasing the little Totoros, and meeting the giant Totoro sleeping in the tree. Quite memorable in the film, right? Instead, we get Satsuki's perspective, as she returns from school and tells father that Mei is missing. When they find her in the thicket, we get to hear her experience indirectly. The book doesn't describe the Totoros, Mei does. She tries to explain to her sister and father what these spirits looked like, while they skeptically assume this is some imaginative tale.
This approach saves some redundancy (describing Totoro and then giving Mei's interpretation right after), and puts us deeper in Satsuki's head at the time. And it pays off later, when she meets Totoro for the first time at the bus stop. She's scared at first, but wonders if it's the same spirit that Mei was trying to describe to her.
Remember that cover artwork I posted at the beginning? That scene from the movie doesn't even happen in the book. When the Totoros grow the trees with the girls, it's more dreamlike than the magical spectacle in the original.
The most interesting change is an added chapter. Satsuki and Mei take a summer vacation back to their old home in Tokyo, staying with their grandmother and aunt while daddy is busy with work for a week. Taking a diversion from the rural to the urban wouldn't have fit the visual theme of the movie, and it doesn't appear to advance the plot, but this chapter seems to fit naturally within the novel.
In the first chapter, since we're in Satsuki's head, she can reflect on the reasons they were moving. The house was too crowded, and they wanted to move closer to mommy's hopsital (btw, she's sick with TB. you can put away your grimdark theories that she's dying of radiation) so they can visit more often while she recovers. There was some friction between Aunt Kyoko and their father. None of this is important in the movie, and would've required some pointless exposition or flashbacks to get across, when animation prefers to speak for itself visually.
In the novel, all of that isn't just curious backstory, but doubles as foreshadowing for this added vacation chapter. After living months in a simple rural community, they're treated to the comforts and luxuries of city life all over again. Restaurants, clothing stores, toys, and music. Satsuki's cousin tells her the countryside must be boring without the convenience and entertainment of the city, but Satsuki realizes she never once thought of her new life as boring.
Aunt Kyoko is generous enough while they stay, treating them like family, but at the same time being harshly critical of how they've changed, acting like rude country bumpkins. She admonishes Satsuki for being "foolish" when she lights a match, despite that the child has had to learn to light fires every day to cook meals and heat water for baths.
I think in a lesser story, the cliche would be that the girls feel alienated from the city life, because the country life has changed them. Instead, I think the city feels alienated from them; they haven't changed, but gained something new. They're still having a fun time with their family in the city, but find it difficult to make them understand their new life. Likewise, their friends back in Matsugo village still seem to think of the girls as fancy city kids, moving in from another world with their scholarly archaeologist father.
Like I said, all of this chapter is irrelevant to the Totoros and forest spirits, the village, the haunted house, the sick mother. It doesn't advance the plot, but there wasn't really a traditional plot to begin with. It wouldn't have worked within the film, but I don't think it's merely a self-indulgent addition for the book. There's something contradictory, maybe even paradoxical, about the emotions captured in this chapter. Satsuki and Mei have become both country kids and city kids, not just one or the other. They love both homes they've had. Their friends and family from both locations accept and love them, and at the same time can't fully understand this dual nature of theirs.
Everyone has a different definition of Art (with a capital A), but I would point to this as an example of what I look for. Or if you don't like the word, then it's transcendental, or poetic? There's something contradictory in life, paradoxical people. I suppose in contrast to the single-mindedness that's so tempting an instinct to embrace. I find dualism very uncomfortable.
I dunno, it's probably too lofty for me to articulate. So instead I point to the things that I find poignant. And examining a novel that alters Miyazaki's original story helps me better understand why he wrote it in the first place.
It's been out for a while, but hopefully this isn't spoiling "The Perfect Pear" if you haven't watched it.
Though it's not like it has a conflict or friendship problem. Everything's already happened by Grand Pear showing up.
A lot of MLP episodes are charming, and entertaining, sometimes even heartwarming. I think this is the only episode that really succeeded at feeling like Art. There's just that one moment, after spending the whole episode with the Apple sibling's POV, hearing the stories.... then it subtly shifts to Grand Pear's perspective for the siblings meeting him. And without any emphasis, it's still immediately obvious that he sees traces of his daughter within all three of them.
Every time, all of his emotions hit me hard in that scene. Anger and love, regret and hope. Decades of time have been lost and wasted, but that also means his grandchildren are too distant from that fight to hold a grudge over it.
At least I assume that's what he's feeling, because the episode doesn't tell or show any of it directly.
When I showed the episode to Sharpspark, I commented that I think the episode told the story of the Apple parents better than any fanfic I'd ever seen. It seems there's a lot of major episodes where you could point out a fan writer already did it better with fewer constraints (e.g. the CMC getting their marks, or Tirek destroying the world). Sharpspark agreed, but said that this episode probably only feels that way because of the medium.
If this story were written down as fanfic, exactly as it is, it would be underwhelming. It's just a standard Romeo & Juliet type of love story, with some emotional fluff at the end of the non-conflict.
Why is this episode widely considered one of the best of the entire show's run?
I think fans (or the writers at least) often underestimate how much the show's artwork and animation contributes to these episodes. It's able to be very expressive for how simple and limited the flash vectors are, especially compared to the animation in the recent movie. Yet sometimes the show tries to show off with its epic milestone episodes, and the flashy animation and multiple songs stick out from the simple & sweet origins of MLP. And then the writers try to go more complex to compensate, but that reveals even more blatant plot holes in the show's fundamental setting..... it's like the two sides are too busy competing to work together.
This is not a very flashy episode. There's a song, but it's not an epic musical number. There's celebrity voice actors, but you can hardly recognize either of them without reading the credits (compare to John de Lancie or Weird Al)... which is weird, because that's the exact opposite you'd expect from hiring William Shatner for a cameo. There's no particularly impressive movements in this episode that stand out. As animation, it's just enough to get the job done, without calling attention to itself.
And that's why it works so well. It's simple enough to match the simple and straightforward story. Maybe it's a combination of all the subdued details, like the sound of tired defeat in Grand Pear's voice, or the way the instrumental version of the love song plays in the background. The big magical moment at the end with the trees is just a few still shots (with the tree vector reversed instead of redrawn) yet it works better than if the show had attempted some sweeping 3D effect.
When the show's animation and writing manage to harmonize instead of compete, it's quite magical.
So what's your favorite episode? Can you think of why it might not have its full effect if it were a fanfic instead? There's obvious reasons like the songs, but maybe there's some subtle moments that just don't work as well without animation.
But if you really had to, what would you add and subtract from that episode's story to MAKE it work in prose?
I'd give all the ponies anatomically correct genitalia.
But more seriously, I have an answer for this, but it's not in fiction—it's in a song.
I love this song so much, but if I could change one thing about it, it would be in this verse:
Within the context of the song, I think this entire verse would work so much better if there was an instrumental section after, "Here's to everyone that's dead". That's such a powerful and relevant line, and juxtaposes so nicely with the line right before it. I wish the song would pause at that moment to let the line sink in before moving onto the rest of the verse.