Soundtrack Review: My Neighbor Totoro (1988)

Posted by Jon Blough

October 1, 2009

Welcome back! Have you subscribed to my RSS feed yet? Make sure you don't miss anything by getting all Soundtrack Geek posts by Email. Also check out Soundtrack Fans, a new social network for soundtrack fans. Thanks for visiting!

Totoro This is a review of the motion picture score My Neighbor Totoro by Joe Hisashi.

“Of Hisaishi’s early lighthearted works for Miyizaki Totoro has the most memorable personality”

I’m only three scores into my Hisaishi review series and already I’m running out of introductions that resist redundancy. I’ve already referenced his gorgeous themes and how every orchestra he uses seems more energetic as a result of his conducting. I’ve stated that each score manages to stand on its own individual merits despite all his works featuring the same thematic and stylistic base. Well, check that, all but one: My Neighbor Totoro. The film was a much more playful venture than Miyazaki’s prior films Nausicaa: The Valley of the Wind and Laputa: Castle in the Sky, and with the shift in attitude and locale (from the air to the modern human world) Hisaishi’s score had to shift to a musical world build entirely on innocence and lighthearted statements. The score is thus absent the graceful, often epic statements of its predecessors, but it mostly makes up for that with a significant boost of personality.

Easy-Going

Totoro is a generally easy-going work, whether suiting music for a lazy stroll in “The Village in May” or chirping around with a modern vibe in “A Haunted House”. Even straight comedy cues like “A Little Monster” focus more on generating a playful atmosphere than a sense of ruckus that defines all too many of today’s animation scores. Perhaps “Totoro” is too laid back and minimal on album, with keyboard and synthetic voices meandering along for its first two minutes, but the rest is an addictive joy to behold, unless you’re not a fan of upbeat material (why the heck are you reading a Hisaishi review then?). The two versions of “Stroll” are likely to sent some listeners scrambling, for its peppy Japanese march tendencies can get tiresome after a while, but the rest of the vocal performances (the whimsical “Mother”, the soothing “A Lost Child”) are surprisingly tolerable.

Typical Constructs

Even with such praise, some of the score’s constructs are a bit typical. While the prevalent electronics and modern percussion are more appropriate for their story and better integrated into the body of the score than those used in Nausicaa and the Japanese album for Laputa, their usage is fairly typical, often feeling similar to underscore for many US comedies of the 80s. Two standard Hisaishi elements save the score from feeling familiar. The first is the sense of unadulterated joy in every performance, aided both by the overall quality of the writing and the numerous bursts of orchestra throughout. The second is the score’s superbly evocative themes. The playful Totoro theme is hinted at in the close of “A Haunted House” before being played in full on a beautiful oboe solo in “Evening Wind”. Reflective and wondrous, it charms the heck out of you, and you will probably be whistling it long after your first listen. Some of its more electronic performances fall into repetitive patterns, but to its credit the theme never feels tired.

Conclusion

More emotionally engaging are the two friendship themes that are more in tune with the warm, enchanting melodies that have defined much of the composer’s works. Both exuberantly turn the second half of “Moonlight Flight” into an album highlight. The relaxing theme from “A Lost Child” and “Mei Is Missing” also merits return listens for its ability to take all your worries away. Both Totoro and Miyazaki’s two successive works, Kiki’s Delivery Service and Porco Rosso, would produce lighthearted works for the composer, but Totoro has the most memorable and uniformly strong collection of themes. With numerous cute scores for cute films for kids falling into anonymity these days, Hisaishi’s absence from Hollywood continues to puzzle.

Album (45:07)
1.   Stroll (The Opening Title Theme Song) (2:43)
2.   The Village in May (1:39)
3.   A Haunted House (1:24)
4.   Mei and the Traveling Soot (1:34)
5.   Evening Wind (1:01)
6.   Not Scared (0:44)
7.   Let’s Go To The Hospital (1:22)
8.   Mother (1:07)
9.   A Little Monster (3:55)
10.   Totoro (2:49)
11.   The Huge Tree in the Tsukamori Forest (2:15)
12.   A Lost Child (3:48)
13.   The Path of Wind (Instrumental) (3:17)
14.   A Drench Monster (2:34)
15.   Moonlight Flight (2:05)
16.   Mei Is Missing (2:32)
17.   Catbus (2:11)
18.   I’m So Glad (1:15)
19.   My Neighbor Totoro (The Ending Song) (4:18)
20.   Stroll (2:44)