In 1992 I acquired a VHS tape of Hayao Miyazaki’s MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO (1988), copied from an unsubtitled Japanese laserdisc. It was only the second example of Japanese animation I’d managed to find on tape. Watching it in untranslated Japanese was the first encounter with the film for both my daughter and me. It began a love affair, which continues unabated to this day, with a film I would describe in print 15 years later as “the gold standard for Japanese animated children’s films, on a par with the greatest Disney classics and arguably the best loved anime film of all time.” Needless to say, the lack of subtitles at the time didn’t diminish the film’s appeal for either of us or any of the nieces and nephews to whom I soon showed it. Miyazaki was, at this point, still the little secret of a small coterie of American anime fans, whom I had only recently joined. That would soon change.
The following year, 1993, TOTORO was released in a limited theatrical release in the U.S. in an English-dubbed version. It was distributed by Troma Films, under its label 50th St. Films, a release supervised by Carl Morano. Troma Films was normally associated with low-budget exploitation parodies for the midnight show circuit with titles like THE TOXIC AVENGER, THE CLASS OF NUKE ‘EM HIGH and SURF NAZIS MUST DIE. Here’s a two-sided flyer for the TOTORO release, picked up somewhere in 1993, probably at the theater where I saw it:
Notice the ads for three books based on Miyazaki’s films, TOTORO, KIKI’S DELIVERY SERVICE and LAPUTA: CASTLE IN THE SKY. The latter two films had not yet been released in the U.S. other than a few repertory showings of LAPUTA.
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