Studio Ghibli’s 10/10 Fantasy Masterpiece Officially Returns for New Release

Feel free to connect with him or check out his work. He’s everywhere — Upwork, YouTube, Spotify, SoundCloud, Collider, LinkedIn, Instagram. 

More than 38 years after My Neighbor Totoro was released in Japan on April 16, 1988, written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, its titular character is still just as relevant. The movie follows sisters Satsuki and Mei after they move to the countryside and encounter mysterious spirits living around an enormous camphor tree.

Studio Ghibli’s official merchandise network, Donguri Kyowakoku, has released a four-piece collection featuring the most beloved forest spirit character from that film. Not just that, the newly released collection plugs directly into Japanese New Year customs (although 2027 is still 2.5 months away) and each of the four stamps released have a deliberate seasonal symbolism.

The collection includes two all-purpose New Year’s stamps spotlighting Totoro and the Catbus, the third one circles the Chinese Zodiac calendar, and spotlights 2027 as the “Year of the Sheep.” Then the fourth one includes cute Totoro motifs along with images of “gourds, spinning tops and fans.” The best part? The collectibles aren’t very expensive either and all four of them are below $10.

Four worlds and four completely different ideas of what a good life
looks like. This is where you belong, what it would ask of you, and what you would get back in
return.

You belong somewhere old enough that the mountains have names and
somebody can still tell you who gave them. Middle-earth is for people who think the right
thing is worth doing even when it will not be finished in their lifetime.

• This is the only world on the list where doing good is understood as a very long defeat,
  fought anyway, by people who will never see how it ends.
• You are drawn to grandeur, to white cities and deep forges and the sense that almost
  everything you touch is older than your entire family line.
• The Rings of Power is set in the last good age before it all goes wrong, which gives
  every quiet scene in it a slightly unbearable weight.
• You would take the hard road, and you would take it on foot.

You want the sea, a crew, and absolutely nobody telling you where
you are allowed to go. The Grand Line is the world for people whose main ambition in life is
finding out what is over there.

• One Piece has run for decades on one very simple engine, which is a group of people who
  each want something impossible and have decided to go and get it together.
• You collect people. Your ideal crew is a set of misfits who were each written off
  somewhere else before you turned up and offered them a better idea.
• The world is enormous and deliberately ridiculous, and the emotional gut punches land
  harder because of that rather than in spite of it.
• You would set sail knowing the map runs out, which is more or less the entire point of
  it.

You would rather be feared and useful than liked and useless. The
Continent is a world where the monsters are the straightforward part of the job and the
people are where it all gets complicated.

• Witchers get paid to do what nobody else will and resented for existing at all, which is
  a trade most people would refuse and you would probably accept.
• You have no real illusions about which side is the good one, largely because on the
  Continent that question tends to have a disappointing answer.
• The best of these stories are not about the fighting. They are about somebody with a
  rigid code being repeatedly cornered into caring about people.
• You would take the coin, finish the job properly, and be out of town before the story
  got told wrong.

You want the myths to be real and loose in the actual world, and
you want to find out at about thirteen that you were never anywhere near as ordinary as
everybody kept telling you.

• Percy Jackson takes the oldest stories we have and drops them into car parks and diners,
  which makes the gods considerably funnier and a great deal worse.
• You would be the kid every school gave up on, who turns out to have been built for
  something nobody thought to test for.
• The series is genuinely about friendship rather than destiny, and it says so out loud
  every time a prophecy tries to get in the way.
• Camp Half-Blood is the real fantasy here: a place where the thing that made you
  difficult everywhere else is the thing that makes you belong.

The 2027 Stamp Collectibles Can Be Purchased from Donguri Sora Online Store

• Image via Donguri Sora

• Image via Donguri Sora

• Image via Donguri Sora

• Image via Donguri Sora

• Image via Donguri Sora

• Image via Donguri Sora

• Image via Donguri Sora

• Image via Donguri Sora

Image via Donguri Sora

Image via Donguri Sora

Image via Donguri Sora

Image via Donguri Sora

Image via Donguri Sora

Image via Donguri Sora

Image via Donguri Sora

Image via Donguri Sora

• Image via Donguri Sora

• Image via Donguri Sora

• Image via Donguri Sora

• Image via Donguri Sora

• Image via Donguri Sora

• Image via Donguri Sora

• Image via Donguri Sora

• Image via Donguri Sora

Image via Donguri Sora

Image via Donguri Sora

Image via Donguri Sora

Image via Donguri Sora

Image via Donguri Sora

Image via Donguri Sora

Image via Donguri Sora

Image via Donguri Sora

In Japan, people traditionally send New Year postcards called nengajo, somewhat analogous to holiday cards in other countries. That’s why these stamps are so crucial. Instead of simply being collectibles, they double as new year cards for Studio Ghibli fans. The biggest design features Totoro playing his ocarina, with Small Totoro accompanying him. It uses the Japanese New Year expression geishun, literally evoking the “welcoming of spring.” Similarly, the Catbus one is shown racing alongside “Omedetou gozaimasu” — which is a standard congratulatory phrase used for New Year greetings.

Both the Small Totoro/ram and Soot Sprite/Catbus stamps are priced at $5 each, then there’s a Catbus solo stamp which is priced at roughly $8 and the Big Totoro/Small Totoro design which is roughly $10 (1,540 yen).

The 2027 four-stamp collection can be purchased from Donguri Sora online store. For collectors who might’ve missed it last year, even the 2026 stamps are still available on the same store. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.

My Neighbor Totoro