Characters who appear in My Neighbor Totoro.
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Satsuki Kusakabe
Voiced By: Noriko Hidaka (Japanese), Lisa Michelson (Streamline dub), Dakota Fanning (Disney dub)Other Languages
Played By: Ami Okumura Jones (stage play)
A playful ten-year-old girl who moves to rural Japan with her family. She and her sister soon discover that their new village is inhabited by magical forest creatures.
- Big Sister Instinct: Satsuki's instincts kick in big time when Mei goes missing. She runs herself ragged trying to find her, and finally seeks out Totoro's help when she is starting to lose hope.
- Boyish Short Hair: She has particularly short hair, contrasting her little sister's Girlish Pigtails.
- Cathartic Crying: After receiving the call that their mother's visit will be delayed, Satsuki tries her hardest to be mature about it (though she does snap at Mei when the latter doesn't take it well), but later breaks down in tears when she tells Granny Ogaki about it.
- Nice Girl: While she does get irritable with Mei's irresponsible tendencies, she is otherwise a caring and friendly girl.
Mei Kusakabe
Voiced By: Chika Sakamoto (Japanese), Cheryl Chase (Streamline dub), Elle Fanning (Disney dub)Other Languages
Played By: Mei Mac (stage play)
Satsuki's rambunctious little sister, who discovers Totoro after stumbling into his tree home.
- Adaptational Dye-Job: Her hair is brown in the film, while the stage adaptation makes it black.
- Break the Cutie: Mei is a Cheerful Child who enjoys the simple pleasures in life, but learning that her mother's illness got worse and she can't come back from the hospital breaks her and makes her run off from home.
- Girlish Pigtails: She wears her hair in two little pigtails.
- Missing Child: She runs away from home and gets lost in the climax while trying to find a way to the hospital to deliver some corn to her sick mother, it all goes off the rails when the villagers find a little girl's sandal in the pond and fear that Mei has drowned.
- Nice Girl: Although somewhat naive and stubborn, Mei is a sweetheart.
Tatsuo Kusakabe
Voiced By: Shigesato Itoi (Japanese), Gregory Snegoff (Steamline dub), Tim Daly (Disney dub)Other Languages
Played By: Dai Tabuchi (stage play)
The girls' father, a university professor who brings his family to an old countryside house near his ailing wife's hospital.
- Good Parents: Professor Kusakabe is probably one of the nicest fathers in all of anime—and he's effective as a parent, to boot. He never talks down to his daughters even when they're talking about having seen Totoro; not even the audience can really tell whether he honestly believes them or is simply humoring them. If anything, he seems to value their imaginations.
- Nice Guy: He is a pleasant man who hardly, if ever, gets angry.
- Smart People Wear Glasses: He's a university professor who wears glasses.
Yasuko Kusakabe
Voiced By: Sumi Shimamoto (Japanese), Alexandra Kenworthy (Streamline dub), Lea Salonga (Disney dub)
Played By: Haruka Abe (stage play, 2022), Emily Piggford (2023)
The girls' mother, who spends time in sanitarium due to a long-term illness.
- Soap Opera Disease: We're never told what disease she is diagnosed with, though it's implied to be a form of tuberculosis (the same illness that Hayao Miyazaki's mother had in real life).
Totoro
Voiced by: Hitoshi Takagi (Japanese), Frank Welker (Disney dub)
A friendly forest spirit who resides in a camphor tree. He has the appearance of a big bipedal cat.
- Acrofatic: Totoro's a husky fellow, yet he's perfectly capable of bounding at remarkable heights and running up the side of his tree with ease.
- Cheshire Cat Grin: Befitting of a magical cat, his face stretches into a wide, beaming smile whenever he's in a good mood.
- Gentle Giant:
- He's a big, cheerful cat who dwarves both of the girls, with a belly that's large enough for Mei to sleep on.
- He's even bigger in the stage play, which portrays him as an enormous, full-body puppet (manned by several puppeteers) that towers over the cast. Since Mei and Satsuki are portrayed by adults in this adaptation, it makes sense for Totoro to be scaled up to make them look smaller in comparison.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: He mostly resembles a grey cat, but has a distinctively owl-shaped body and a tanuki tail.
- Nice Guy: Totoro is a cuddly Gentle Giant who is nothing but helpful to the two girls.
- Youkai: The Totoros are nature spirits centered around the great tree near the Kusakabes' home, which bears Shinto ropes. The film also features Susuwatari
(wandering soot), a fictitious Youkai created by Miyazaki. (The Susuwatari would later appear in Spirited Away.)
Kanta Ogaki
Voiced by: Toshiyuki Amagasa (Japanese), Kenneth Hartman (Streamline dub), Paul Butcher (Disney dub)Other Languages
- The Quiet One: Doesn't speak much and is quite terse when he does talk.
- Nice Guy: Despite his initial teasing towards Satsuki, he later proves to be a nice and friendly kid.
Granny
Voice by: Tanie Kitabayashi (Japanese), Natalie Core (Streamline dub), Pat Carroll (Disney dub)Other Languages
- Cool Old Lady: She isn't above admitting to seeing the soot sprites when she was younger, for example.
- Nice Girl: She is a nice and kind old lady who treats The Kusakabe siblings as if they were her own granddaughters.
Catbus
Voice by: Naoki Tatsuta (Japanese), Carl Macek (Streamline dub), Frank Welker (Disney dub)
- Animal-Vehicle Hybrid: He's part cat, part bus.
- Electric Slide: Catbus runs on an electric line in going to find Mei.
- Impossibly Graceful Giant: He's much lighter on his feet than one would expect from a creature his size, leaving only small ripples on the water he skims across.
- Walk on Water: Catbus is briefly seen skimming the surface of a pond in one scene when approaching Totoro.
