(Film recommendation) Would you show your child this film?

(Click on the blue names to be redirected to another website for the trailer and the plot, on the website itself you can also find other information about the production studio and all films)

It's about the film https://www.ghibliworld.de/index.php/die-filme/filme/mein-nachbar-totoro/ from 1998. This film comes from the

https://de.wikipedia.org/...dio_Ghibli and is one of the well-known masterpieces among the Japanese animations (short: "https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anime") by https://de.wikipedia.org/...o_Miyazaki. Most of his films are for adults and young people and some of them also concern very serious topics such as the environment or as in the film https://www.ghibliworld.de/index.php/die-filme/filme/die-letzten-gluhwurmchen/ in which there are two siblings in the times of the Second World War in 1945. All of them are available in German from streaming providers (Like some Netflix) or you can buy them for DVD or Blu-Ray. Sometimes they appear on television too.

The film My Neighbor Totoro is about a family that moves into a village which is particularly covered with a lot of green landscape and a forest with a very conspicuous very large tree, these consist of the two young siblings Saki and Mei, the father and the mother. The mother is rarely seen in the film because she is in hospital in the hospital. The father and the children move into an old, crumbling "haunted house" where the two siblings make their first discoveries, namely so-called https://ghibli.fandom.com/de/wiki/Ru%C3%9Fm%C3%A4nnchen or Rusbolde. Ghosts that appear in Japanese folklore, they look like dust with two funny eyes in the film and like to be in old dirty houses where it is dark.

Picture of the Russmänchen holding puff rice (The picture is from Chihiro's Reise ins Zauberland, also a film from the studio, but looks the same as in My Neighbor Totoro):

Russian men at work in Spirited Away:

These children then make a few other discoveries of little ghosts and creatures, especially the younger sister Mei (with the hat). Until it finally applies to the spirit of the forest and the giant tree of the forest that I mentioned earlier, Totoro. From then on, all the adventures begin. I don't want to reveal the rest of this.

Overall, the film is very child- and family-friendly and does not contain any violence or revealing scenes.

Picture for the film:

German trailer of the film:

Would you show this film to your child?

Studio Ghibli is my absolute favorite studio. I still like to watch the films today and don't know anything that compares to the atmosphere.

So I don't see anything that speaks against it.

(apart from the fact that I don't want any children 🙈)

I mean, I saw the films as a kid too, I don't see why I shouldn't show them to my kids as well. I think the first one I saw was even princess mononoke and the film is something else than Totoro 🙈… Tbh, my parents never took age ratings very seriously anyway

I would rate all Studio Ghibli films as kid-friendly without exception. Sometimes they can be a bit brutal - for example Princess Mononoke. But when I think back to my childhood, every single one of these films was an enrichment for me. If I watch one of these films today, wonderful feelings of nostalgia arise. Apart from the already existing film enjoyment.

Yes, this film. I think it's one of the most child-friendly. I love all of these films, but my favorite, Spirited Away, I wouldn't show them, for example, until they are older. Back then I got nightmares about the black thing that everyone ate alive.

Yes, that's why I wouldn't necessarily show them to young children. I've heard a few times that some people were really scared of the movie as a small child, because of the lack of face and because some parts look very weird, the main character is panicked and afraid, especially at the beginning of the film, the parents are cursed for pigs, for some children a real nightmare. That's why I always warn and ask the parents, they know their child best how well they can cope with things

Whereby you often have to look carefully what certain characters mean. Not everyone knows, for example from Chihiro's trip to the magical land, that the lack of face reflects the mood of the people.

There's also an interesting theory about "my neighbor totoro": When I run away and you find the sandal in the river, it is really hers because it drowned. The cat bus then serves as a means of transportation between the realm of the dead and the realm of the living. Totoro is nothing but a ghost of the dead.

Oh yes, even with "how the wind rises" nahoko dies of tuberculosis.

Yes exactly. As a parent, you don't know that even if you don't know the film. Like everyone else on Super RTL earlier on Friday sometime. I still remember how I looked forward to such films as a child. But even if I loved him, it was an exception and a bit scary

Yes, but the theory has never been proven. In addition to that, it is still quite free from violence, it has never happened to a child or adult that this thought occurred to me. It's just unhappy in the How the Zwind lifts itself