While practically impossible, I wouldn’t mind finding myself the unwitting host of such a little family, giving new purpose to various small items that I probably wouldn’t have noticed had gone missing. There’s a lot of details and small quirky-but-world-building things that we see which helps sell the realism of such an idea, and gives character to these… characters. These tiny, resourceful people that reside in some makeshift home underneath the floorboards of your house, occasionally emerging from hiding spots to pick up discarded and misplaced items and sneaking into your kitchen for a single tissue or sugar cube. The concept and world of “Borrowers” is fascinating to me. The Secret World of Arrietty is definitely a journey too, but one that entirely takes place within a cozy rural home. My Neighbor Totoro, while more akin to the slice of life anime of today, is still a journey, following Mei and Satsuki as they encounter Totoro and how they handle things just not going their way. While some films like Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke are more clearly framed as an actual journey, their other films also have a journey of their own, even if you aren’t venturing into some other world. One of the best things about a Studio Ghibli production is the film’s ability to whisk you away on a journey. (Editors note: added an extra paragraph since the initial publish.) We’ll discuss more of the regional differences later.) The Plot and Characters The differences are: Sho (the young boy) is now Shawn, Haru (the caretaker) is now Hara (a strange minute difference, maybe Haru “didn’t sound feminine enough”?), but then there’s great-aunt Sadako, which they just changed to… Jessica. As these names are the ones I’m most familiar with though, they’ll be the ones I’ll stick with. (And yes, I realize that Disney renamed some of the characters when the brought the film over to the United States in an attempt to “American-ize” the film. And they’re peacefully living their lives, until one day the human boy Shawn thinks he’s caught a glimpse of a tiny young girl climbing among some leaves in a garden… While there used to be more Borrowers living in Aunt Jessica’s house, now it’s just one small family of 3: Pod, the father Homily, the mother and their young daughter Arrietty. They do everything they can to stay out of the way of the humans and not get noticed or caught, but at night, they’ll climb out and grab a few things that they need to survive, which their human hosts probably won’t notice missing: a single tissue from a tissue box, or a single leaf of a plant.
These little people, who call themselves “Borrowers” and can fit into a human’s hand, have found a nice spot to build themselves a little home underneath the floorboards of a closet in the house. It’s a quaint little house with a nice backyard and garden, filled with decorations and knick-knacks collected over the years, and also a small family of tiny people who come out at night to “borrow” some things.
Just his great-aunt Jessica lives out here, alongside her caretaker and housemaid Hara (who also becomes Shawn’s caretaker while he’s visiting). Needing somewhere quiet and relaxing to rest before an upcoming heart surgery, Shawn spends a week with his great aunt Jessica who lives in a more rural area. But hey, gotta start somewhere, right? An Introduction Since then, I’ve now watched a handful of other films, but I still have a long way to go before I’d consider myself up to speed on all things Studio Ghibli. It had a few known Disney Channel stars (namely David Henrie (whom I keep calling Justin in my head for some reason) and Bridgit Mendler) and some other actors too… Anyway, long story short, this is how I ended up watching my first ever Studio Ghibli film: they aired it one time on Disney Channel! Then one day, while watching Disney Channel (I was a big fan of Wizards of Waverly Place growing up, don’t judge me!), they had a short special on a new movie that Disney was publishing: The Secret World of Arrietty. I think at some point in high school I began to hear mentions of movies like “Laputa” and “Kiki’s Delivery Service”, but I’ve never seen any myself and knew pretty much nothing about any of them. Unlike a number of anime fans, growing up I didn’t really know anything about Studio Ghibli.
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