Totoro Is Not a Death God – Official!

CBR's banner image on Renee Senzatimore's news story dated 29 August 2026 about My Neighbour Totoro. The image shows the famous scene at the bus stop, where the girls are waiting for their father's bus at night in the rain and Satsuki realises that Totoro is standing beside them.

I’ve been debunking the Totoro-as-shinigami theory for years, most recently in my #SeedTalks all over the UK. It’s nice to have official Studio Ghibli confirmation, and see them emphasise the importance of the end credits to the continuing story (long before MCU did tagscenes.) Also, it’s good to have this cleared up officially before the […]

Studio Ghibli Question Time: are anime feature films considered superior to anime TV series in Japan?

An image from Satoshi Kon's unfinished 5th feature film 'Dreaming Machine'. A young Japanese woman in a beige formal jacket and black open-necked shirt walks under an archway made of gold tubular metal and flanked by two brightly coloured 50s-style characters. A retro-style white house with red roofs is in the background, under a blue sky with fluffy white clouds. The image is slightly unsettling despite the blue sky and bright colours.

Although asked in the context of Miyazaki’s and Ghibli’s views on the primacy of the feature film, this question covers an issue that’s been debated in the anime business  and anime scholarship for decades. It’s a really interesting question, because some people undeniably consider feature films superior to other forms of moving picture, but when […]