My Neighbor Totoro (となりのトトロ), is a 1988 Japanese animated fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and produced by Studio Ghibli. The film won the Animage Anime Grand Prix prize and the Mainichi Film Award for Best Film in 1988.
The film was critically acclaimed and has amassed a worldwide cult following in the years after its release. The film and its titular character, Totoro, have become cultural icons.
Dubbing History[]
In 1989, Streamline Pictures produced an exclusive dub for use on transpacific flights by Japan Airlines. Troma Films, under their 50th St. Films banner, distributed the dub of the film co-produced by Jerry Beck to theaters in 1993. This dub was released on VHS and LaserDisc in the United States by Fox Video in 1994 and on DVD in 2002. Because of his disappointment with the result of the heavily edited English version of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Miyazaki would not permit any part of the movie to be edited out, all the names had to remain the same (with the exception being Catbus), the translation had to be as close to the original Japanese as possible, and no part of the movie could be changed for any reason, cultural or linguistic (which was very common at the time) despite creating problems with some English viewers, particularly in explaining the origin of the name "Totoro".
The rights to the original dub expired in 2004 and so, was re-released by Walt Disney Home Entertainment on 7 March 2006 with a new dub cast. This DVD release is the first version of the film in the United States to include both Japanese and English language tracks, as Fox did not have the rights to the Japanese audio track for their version.
A third English dub was also produced in Hong Kong sometime in either the 1990's or 2000's. This dub known to have aired on TVB Pearl in Hong Kong. Footage of this dub has yet to surface, its existence only being confirmed by Hong Kong-based voice actor Simon Broad who voices Tatsuo in the dub.[1]
Cast[]
| Image | Character | Seiyū 
|
Dub Actor 
| |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Streamline Dub | Buena Vista Dub | |||
|
Satsuki Kusakabe | Noriko Hidaka | Lisa Michelson | Dakota Fanning |
|
Mei Kusakabe | Chika Sakamoto | Cheryl Chase | Elle Fanning |
|
Tatsuo Kusakabe | Shigesato Itoi | Gregory Snegoff | Tim Daly |
|
Yasuko Kusakabe | Sumi Shimamoto | Alexandra Kenworthy | Lea Salonga |
|
Totoro | Hitoshi Takagi | ¿? | Frank Welker |
|
Kanta Ogaki | Toshiyuki Amagasa | Kenneth Hartman | Paul Butcher |
|
Granny | Tanie Kitabayashi | Natalie Core | Pat Carroll |
|
Catbus | Naoki Tatsuta | Carl Macek | Frank Welker |
|
Michiko | Chie Kōjiro | Brianne Siddall | Ashley Rose Orr |
|
Mrs. Ogaki | Hiroko Maruyama | Melanie MacQueen | Kath Soucie |
|
Mr. Ogaki | Masashi Hirose | Steve Kramer | David Midthunder |
|
Old Farmer | Shigeru Chiba | Peter Renaday | |
|
Miss Hara | Machiko Washio | Edie Mirman | Tress MacNeille |
|
Kanta's Aunt | Reiko Suzuki | Russi Taylor | |
|
Otoko | Daiki Nakamura | Kerrigan Mahan | Matt Adler |
|
Ryouko | Yūko Mizutani | Lara Cody | Bridget Hoffman |
Additional Voices[]
Streamline Dub
|
Buena Vista Dub
|
TVB Pearl Dub[]
| Image | Character | Seiyū
|
Dub Actor 
|
|---|---|---|---|
|
|
Tatsuo Kusakabe | Shigesato Itoi | Simon Broad |
Notes[]
- This is the only Ghibli film where Streamline Pictures would use a child actor for their dubs.
- The Streamline Pictures dub is sometimes incorrectly referred to as the "Fox dub" due to how fairly prevalent 20th Century Fox's home video releases of the film were, likely not helped by the fact they directly licensed the home video rights from Studio Ghibli.
Video Releases[]
| Distributor | Year | Format | Dub | Region | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20th Century Fox | 1994 | 
|
Streamline | NTSC | United States |
|
| ||||||
| 1995 |
| |||||
| 2002 | ||||||
|
1 NTSC | |||||
| Buena Vista Home Entertainment |
2006 | Disney | ||||
| Optimum Releasing | 2 PAL |
United Kingdom | 
| |||
| Buena Vista Home Entertainment |
2010 | 1 NTSC |
United States |
| ||
| Optimum Releasing | 2012 | 
|
B DVB-T |
United Kingdom |
| |
| Buena Vista Home Entertainment |
2013 | A DVB-T |
United States |
| ||
| GKIDS | 2017 |
|
1 NTSC | |||
|
|
A DVB-T | |||||
Videos[]
Simon Broad explaining his involvement with the TVB Pearl dub on The CFK Show podcast.
References[]
External Links[]
- My Neighbor Totoro (anime) at Anime News Network's encyclopedia
- My Neighbor Totoro at the Internet Movie Database
