Theory? it's up to you to believe or not to.

Rating: 8/10 (29 January 2017)

It has been said that My Neighbor Totoro is actually based on a famous murder case called "The Sayama Incident." This case occurred on May 1, 1963 in Sayama City, Saitama Prefecture, Japan, when a man kidnapped, raped, and killed a 16-year-old high school girl.
This conspiracy theory has been around for a long time, actually. It got really heated on the internet, and then finally Ghibli had to make an official statement. In 2007, they did just that, denying that the urban legend was true.
Read about the similarities with the incident and then re-watch the movie, you'll see it in a very different perspective.