A tale of two Kusukabe's

by zman123

When Satsuki and Mei's mum finally returned home, the two girls thought that their troubles and worries in life would finally be over and that it would all be sunshine and rainbows from then on. Little do they know of the difficulties that await them yet. And without their new friend Totoro to help them, will even this story have a happy ending. Set after the end of Totoro.

1. Foreword from the author

Foreword from the author:
My Neighbour Totoro was a great film. And for me it really took the cake as being one of the best things I ever had the pleasure of seeing for a long time.
I first saw it in class at primary school and when I found it again eventually, it made me very happy for a long time.

Now what I found special about this amazing film wasn't the beautifully drawn art.
It also wasn't the fantasy elements or the magic or any of that fluff.
Totoro, while an interesting character in his own right also wasn't what made this film the cure to my depression (for a while at least).

No what I liked most about this film as well as many other films by this studio was the human characters.
Yes I'm talking about the two girls that are often ignored in favour of the Totoro, which as cute as it was wasn't what brought my undivided attention to the film.
Sure they make mistakes, but that doesn't mean that when they rush to correct their mistakes they don't give mother Theresa and Martin Luther King a run for their money.

You see a lot of the time I tend to judge a show for its characters (especially its main characters) more than its art style (which while important, only has to be passably decent to sell the film to me)
or its story (Since a character that reacts well to situations is fun to watch regardless of the situation).
There are a lot of anime which use bad main characters like Light Yagami, a mass murderer who grew up in a nice family, got nice grades at school and all those other nice things but decided to go on a killing spree anyway.
Those characters kill the experience for me since it is impossible to root for someone who decides to be a complete and sociopathic jerk even though there was no reason for them to be.

Which I guess is why while I like Anime, there are only a few Anime I can properly enjoy.
Characters like Naruto who do make mistakes, but never out of spite or cold blood and are genuinely out to do good.

So the first thing I thought after I saw Totoro anyway was, why can't more characters be the likeable, innocent and well-meaning sweethearts that this movie uses.
Satsuki in particular who only has a few lines in this one movie (and nothing else) has become more likeable to me than Light Yagami has over an entire several hundred book series.
And she wasn't even supposed to be the main focus despite being so well written and acted.

There are bad characters that I never want to see again after seeing them once.
There are alright characters that I feel neither one way or the other for.
Then there are good characters which do make me feel for them but fail to make me come back for another round. Ones who I feel did their job but no more. Those are very common and it's the reason I only watch most things I watch once.

But this movie proves that with enough dedication to what you write and produce, even characters who appear once in your work and no more can become these amazing angels on earth that you just want to see smash open the tv screen and come into the real world.
Ones who you feel deserve a five hundred book series and then another, and another until there are so many books dedicated to them that there are not enough shelves in the library to fill them all.

Ones who need a toy line with toys designed after them put into every meal at every restaurant you can name, so not just Mcdonalds.
And then these characters need a memorial museum with their statue carved in solid gold.
And possibly a theme park too with the actor who originally played them hired to play them again.

Why Totoro and Ponyo (another film by the same creators) pull this amazing stunt of when so many other much longer running series do not even come close to it, I've no idea.
I attribute it to the director being a very friendly and happy man who genuinely cares about more than just people paying money to buy his DVD's.

TLDR, here I am feeling wishing that fictional characters appeared more often than they did to do them justice.
They needed another movie with more of a conflict to truly show off their greatness and more.

And clearly there won't be another sequel to many of Studio Ghibli's films but that doesn't stop me wishing there was.
And so here we are.

Thank you for so far reading and have a good read.

Sincerely, Zman123