Beware the VHS

Rating: 10/10 (7 June 2002)

After rewatching this recently on DVD, part of the box set from director Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli, I wanted to buy it for my elderly mother. She'd been enthralled by Princess Mononoke at my place not long before. Since neither she nor my father can handle subtitles, I ordered the best I could find, a dubbed pan-and-scan VHS. What a disaster! But, a disaster with a fine message.
Totoro, like every Miyazaki film, is a glorious soundscape. No less than the script and visuals, sounds--her own, verbal and not, and those around her reflected in her every squeak and movement, every sigh, every audible breath--establish the younger child, Mei, as protagonist. Without her unique pass, we have no entrance into the film. This old VHS, besides lopping off so much of the frame that ambient sounds too often make little sense anyway, mutes that part of the soundtrack in favor of vocals, killing nature and Mei along with it as surely as the 'villains' in so many other Ghibli films kill Nature. Mei's words are dubbed, but she's hardly alive here. Untampered with though, this may be Miyazaki's finest and Mei his truest characterization.