Event Details

You are warmly invited to attend Professor Rayna Denison's lecture on 'A World of Totoro: Merchandising and the Success of Studio Ghibli'. 15th November, 17:15-18:30 at Cavendish Colloquium.

Studio Ghibli is now one of Japan's most beloved and well-known animation studios. However, in its earliest moments, it was a struggling enterprise, laden with debt and trying to make expensive animated feature films. In this talk, I explore how the central magical character from Hayao Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro (Tonari no Totoro, 1988) emerged as a merchandising hit that supported the solidification and stabilisation of his home studio. More than this, I trace the disperson of Totoro goods, as they went on to form a central hub in Ghibli's expanding worlds of marketing and merchandising. In doing so, I aim to demonstrate how Studio Ghibli's work beyond filmmaking has been central to its rise to global prominence.

Rayna Denison, Professor of Film and Digital Arts, University of Bristol.

This is a FREE event and refreshments will be provided.