: Re: How to write a story without conflict, like "My Neighbour Totoro"? We are used to stories being about conflict. There can be an antagonist, or a hostile environment, or even an internal problem

@Hamaas631

Vote Up Vote Down

The answer to your base question is subtext...
Give the audience or reader something to chew on and make it enjoyable or terrifying or whatever... but in some way interesting... and some people will come along for the ride. Once they love it enough, they'll pay attention to the details and real or imagined patterns will begin to emerge. You can play David Lynch or James Joyce and just embrace that in silence; you can play George Lucas and go around ruining it for everyone; but you'll have your story and your peoples.
...and there's plenty in My Neighbor Totoro...
Aside from the mother's illness and the girls' new home and the older sibling's worry for the younger, the easy peacefulness of the film is also made interesting by the absolutely gorgeous visuals and the view of a rural slice-of-life as seen by urban transplants and the Japanese nature spirits, reimagined as oversized slightly dim children, and the transplant girls' success with befriending these new children, a worry of any kid in a new town.
Any one of those can speak to children or adults, who fill in the vast blanks with their own experiences and imagination.
...even before getting to Totoro being a psychopomp...
I mean, yeah, you obviously forgot the entire sequence about the older sister's anxiety over the younger but there's plenty in the movie—besides its original double billing with Grave of the Fireflies—to suggest that things didn't end happily and one, or both, or both of the girls and their mom actually died.

...What that means for the story is that when Mei goes missing and a sandal is found in the pond, Mei actually drowned. When Satsuki is asked about the sandal she cannot face the truth and lies about it not being Mei’s sandal. So Satsuki goes on a desperate search for Totoro, calling for him and actually opens up the door the realm of the dead herself. With Totoro’s help she finds her dead sister and they together go to their mother’s hospital. There, the only one who actually noticed that the sisters were there, was the mother, who also soon is going to die.
And in the ending scene, Satsuki and Mei don’t have any shadows...

I'll save you the time: Of course, most people don't pick up on this and it would hurt sales so, of course, there's been an official denial from Ghibli that says the shadows were nixed—in that scene but not others—because of budget concerns. And I've got a bridge I'd like to sell you. Watch the ending again. Remember what this movie was double-billed with; remember that Spirited Away was actually about adolescent slavery and forced prostitution.

There’s a famous murder case called [t]he Sayama Incident (My Neighbor Totoro takes place in Sayama Hills) in which two sisters turned up dead.
...the Sayama Incident did happen in May, and both of the sisters in Totoro are actually named “May”: “Satsuki” means “May” in Japanese, and “Mei” is the Japanese pronunciation for “May”.
In Japanese, there are also the “May blues” (五月病 or gogatsubyou) and [it] typically affects new students and new employees, because the school and the work year both begin in April. This sort of depression is found in people having trouble adjusting to new surroundings. In My Neighbor Totoro, the family has moved to a new area. This can be spun out further as a more general reference to depression.

The film and credits both point out that 'totoro' was Mei's misunderstanding of the 'troll' from The Three Billy Goats Gruff, which tried—albeit and failed—to eat children that passed its way. Further, one of the catbus stops is the 'way to the tomb' (墓道).
...so,
y'know, not necessarily the best example of what you were talking about...
...or a clue that there can be plenty of conflict more subtly done than 'Bob done shot that dragon what stole his girl'.

(0)

Login to post a comment!