My Neighbour Totoro theory

My Neighbour Totoro is simply a film about 2 young girls who meet magical beings such as the friendly forest troll, Totoro.

There was a big fan theory circling about the origin of the Totoro story and who Totoro was. Totoro was supposedly a forest spirit troll. In this theory Totoro is actually a God of Death - like the Grim Reaper. It states that Totoro is only seen by people who are dead or going to die soon. When a character goes missing and first meets Totoro she leaves a sandal behind. She leaves it next to a pond, suggesting that she drowned and now can see Totoro. The sister goes looking for her and in her desperate search opens the door to the realm of death. With Totoro helping her she finds her dead sister they both visit their mother in hospital. Nobody in the hospital notices them apart from the mother - who can see them because she's going to die soon. In the final scene the sisters do not have shadows, this suggests that they are ghosts/dead.

Studio Ghibli released a statement after hearing of the theory and denied everything. The children just go missing normally and enter the magical areas of the forest and meet a forest spirit. They said that in the final scene, the reason that they did not have shadows is because the artists didn't think it was necessary to add shadows in this particular location and scene. They also denied another theory that stated from the first theory about the story being based on a murder case. The case was called the Sayama incident and the film is based on Sayama Hill. The case is about 2 girls who turned up dead and it is said that one saw a cat apparition before committing suicide. This story is only an Urban Legend. This incident did happen in May and both the sisters names relate to that. 'Mei' is the Japanese pronunciation of May and 'Satsuki' is the Japanese for the month of May.

Even though these theories have been denied as being true, they do put an interesting twist and perspective on the film and gives in a totally new meaning which can be both good and bad. I personally love the film, but it has not been ruined by this theory, it's just another way of perceiving the story and characters, it's like watching a new film for the first time.

Source:
http://kotaku.com/5926248/totoro-isnt-all-cute-for-some-hes-the-god-of-death