What i really like about My Neighbour Totoro as a movie is that it focuses on capturing the daily life of its main characters and how much of that is naturally interwoven with the moral of the story.
The main moral is to have respect for nature, spirits and each other. To coexist with nature and to not be afraid to rely on eachother.
I like how this movie depicts a life where these things are at the core of each character's being already and it helps them solve an issue that's to come. It's a stark contrast to how a lot of western media depicts its morals, which usually goes along the lines of "there's a big asshole with different morals, there's a huge conflict and now everyone realises I'm right and has the same morals as me."
I think it's really worth talking about that aspect of western (US) media when westerners say they think Studio Ghibli movies are "cosy", despite depicting a lot of serious and scary events. These morals are more about living, rather than winning.
The same approach is applied to anti war movies like Porco Rosso, The Wind Rises and Howl's Moving Castle. "War is bad" is at the core of them, but this isn't a moral that gets challenged with a big conflict from a big evil. The war doesn't get won in these movies by the main characters. The conflicts arise from trying to live through it. Even as active participants in the war, there never is a doubt that war itself brings nothing but grief and despair.
It's a clever way of writing and I wish more movies wrote their stories this way
izzy806
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