One talented Studio Ghibli fan has created a stop-motion animation that casts My Neighbor Totoro's adorable four-year-old Mei as Akira's biker gang leader Shōtarō Kaneda.
The video, which the stop-motion animator Kenta Shinohara posted on their Twitter, shows Mei on a blue tricycle, recreating the iconic scene where Kaneda skids to a stop on his red motorcycle. Mei almost crashes into the titular forest spirits in the process, and other characters from beloved Studio Ghibli movies also feature in the animation, including Spirited Away's No-Face and Castle in the Sky's giant robot.
An Unlikely Combo of Classics
Directed and written by award-winning filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, My Neighbor Totoro made its debut in April 1988 and went on to earn over $41 million at the global box office. The story follows two young girls, Mei and her older sister Satsuki, as they move to the countryside with their university professor father in order to be closer to their hospitalized mother. In their new home, the sisters meet a friendly forest spirit, known as Totoro, who takes them on whimsical adventures. The movie won several prestigious awards, like the Mainchi Film Award and the Animage Anime Grand Prix prize, and is considered to be a classic by many.
Also premiering in 1988, Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira is a cornerstone of both the science fiction genre and pop culture as a whole; set in an advanced but dystopian world, the movie tells the story of Kaneda and his childhood friend, Tetsuo Shima, who acquires telekinetic powers after a motorcycle accident. Akira has been referenced and homaged in other anime like Yu-Gi-Oh!, Pokémon: Diamond and Pearl and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann and western media like Nope and Gargoyles.
Both My Neighbor Totoro and Akira remain popular inspirations for fan-made content despite over thirty years passing since their initial release. Recently, for example, a Reddit user uploaded a cute piece of fan art that sees Totoro helping the Fire-Pokémon Charmander keep its tail safe from the rain, and artists at Pixar created a hilarious mash-up illustration the merges the worlds of the Studio Ghibli classic and Monsters Inc.
In terms of Akira, one dedicated fan started constructing a fully functional replica of Kaneda's signature red motorcycle earlier this year. In a series of videos posted on YouTube, motorcycle enthusiast Ayato details how they stripped an old junk bike down and then began rebuilding it from the ground up.
My Neighbor Totoro is available on HBO Max and Akira is available on Hulu.
Source: Twitter