My Neighbor Totoro/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Broken Base: There's no real unanimous agreement over which is the best way to see the film: with the Japanese version, the FOX/Streamline dub, or the Disney English dub? As with most hotly debated dubs, you'll have to decide for yourself.
  • Ear Worm: The ending theme may not immediately be ear-wormy, but it can take time to grow roots.
    • Whether you like it or not, it can easily get stuck in your head.
  • Epileptic Trees: There is a certain theory about this movie floating around on the Internet that will change your perception of the movie forever. (It has since been Jossed by Studio Ghibli, although some think Miyazaki may be lying because family video sales are huge and the twist renders this film slightly family-unfriendly.) If you don't mind potentially tarnishing your happy memories of the film, go here. You've been warned.
    • Reading the comments that debunk said theory make everything ten times better. Really.
    • And some of the theory's points are easily proven rubbish by just watching the movie carefully.
  • Memetic Mutation: The visual of Satsuki with Mei on her back waiting at the bus stop with Totoro is often redone with characters from other series by fanartists.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks: Many fans' reaction to the Disney dub.
  • Values Dissonance: You will not believe how some people jump to the conclusion in the scene where the father and his daughters are bathing together that it must be pedophilia when that situation is considered perfectly normal and wholesome family time in Japan and many other countries.
    • Cosign. It's hard to explain to Americans, but sexualized body modesty and nudity taboos aren't universal concepts at all, especially in the case -as here - of young kids and their parents.