My Neighbor Totoro In 1958, the Kusakabe family reunites when a university professor and his two daughters, Satsuki and Mei (approximately ten and four years old, respectively) move into an old house in rural Japan to be closer to the hospital where their mother is recovering from an unnamed, long-term illness. The daughters find that the house is inhabited by tiny animated dust creatures called susuwatari— small house spirits seen when moving from light to dark places. When the girls become comfortable in their new house and laugh with their father, the soot spirits (identified as "black soots" in early subtitles and "soot sprites" in the later English dubbed version) leave the house to drift away on the wind...

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