Four-year-old Mei, adjusting to life in a new home and learning to get along without her mother, who has been hospitalized, follows a funny-looking creature to the trunk of an ancient camphor tree one afternoon while her sister is at school, and enters the whimsical world of Totoro.

Four-year-old Mei, adjusting to life in a new home and learning to get along without her mother, who has been hospitalized, follows a funny-looking creature to the trunk of an ancient camphor tree one afternoon while her sister is at school, and enters the whimsical world of Totoro.