I picked up the new deluxe edition of Totoro, to replace our mysteriously-vanished copy. I haven’t actually watched it yet (maybe tonight) but I already know I am going to miss the english voices of my old Fox version, especially Satsuki.
My 8yr-old, who I think deserves to inherit the Fledgling Otaku label, noticed something both highly hilarious and deeply troubling on the cover of the disc box. It’s readily apparent on the cover scans on Amazon. See if you can find it.
What is wrong with this picture?
I can’t stop staring at it, now. Yikes. Please, let there be better attention to detail inside the box than outside! we’ll find out tonight. Somehow I am not really confident about Dakota Fanning here.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Is the girl just wearing socks while in a rainstorm?
I’m not sure if this is what you are referring to, but the cover art shows an early drawing made before Miyazaki decided that Satsuki and Mai should be two separate characters.
Huh. I had no idea that was the case. Yes, that was what I was referring to.
I learn something new everyday
Actually the younger girl’s name is Mei, which hints at what happened. “Satsuki” is the Japanese name for the fifth month of the old lunar calendar. “Mei” (May) is the English name for the fifth month of the solar calendar.
The original concept had a 6-year-old girl named Satsuki. When Miyazaki (wisely) decided that the story would work better with the perspective of an older girl, he added a younger sister with a variant of the same name. (See http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/totoro/faq.html#girl )