Daihatsu Midget DK (My Neighbour Totoro)

My Neighbor Totoro (Japanese: となりのトトロ Hepburn: Tonari no Totoro) is a 1988 Japanese animated fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki and animated by Studio Ghibli for Tokuma Shoten. The film—which stars the voice actors Noriko Hidaka, Chika Sakamoto, and Hitoshi Takagi—tells the story of the two young daughters (Satsuki and Mei) of a professor and their interactions with friendly wood spirits in postwar rural Japan.

– courtesy of Wikipedia

The finished model:

The story:

Who doesn’t love My Neighbour Totoro (1988)?

It’s arguably Hayao Miyazaki’s most popular animated work… and for good reason.  Loved by fans the world over, It’s warm, funny, mysterious, exciting and just the right amount of sad.  In a word, it’s quite literally wonderful.

It’s not, however, all that great as a source of modelling projects.  After having so much fun on my Nausicaä Mehve glider and Laputa Pirate Flapter projects, I decided to expand the project to try and include at least one representative entry from each of Miyazaki’s animated movies and television series.  So, of course, Totoro would HAVE to be in it…. but what?

Well, much like my Tombo’s Propeller Bicycle project from Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989), there was really only one choice – the  Daihatsu Midget DK, the “three-wheeled truck” used by the Kusakabe family to move all their belongings to their new house at the beginning of the movie.

Ok, that’s not quite true… technically there’s also the Cat Bus. I actually did consider trying to craft a 1/72 scale Cat Bus out of an Opel bus kit… and I still might… later.  However, in the meantime we’ll have to be satisfied with the Daihatsu.

So, what the heck is a Daihatsu Midget DK anyway? Well, in a nutshell, it was one of the first commercially available cars in Japan after post-war restrictions were lifted.  Reasonably priced, easy to handle, and requiring only a light vehicle license license to operate, it was the car of the people at the middle-end of the 1950s in Japan – the period in which Totoro is set.

The build:

All in all, it was actually pretty easy to do.  Thanks to Academy’s 1/72 “Light Vehicles of Allied and Axis during WWII” kit, I had all the parts I needed.  I used parts of a Willys Jeep, a Kübelwagen and a Kettenkrad to create the basic chassis and boxed it up using styrene plates.  The whole thing fell into place rather quickly, but I wasn’t quite satisfied with the end result.  It was certainly blue enough… and accurate enough (at least for me)… but it wasn’t quite right.  Then I realized the problem – it was empty!  It just doesn’t look right unless it’s packed on the rafters with the family’s belongings.

Of course I was a bit hesitant.  After all, that’s a lot of tiny stuff.  But I couldn’t see any way around it.  If I wanted a model from Totoro, I had to build it.  So the first thing to do was take inventory… what all did they have packed in there?  After I studied the car from every angle shown in the film, I made a list:

• large dresser
• small night table
• washing tub
• bucket
• chair
• desk
• 3 boxes
• folding table
• large crate
• radio
• box of blankets
• umbrella
• two poles
• large canvas bag
• some books

The only thing I skipped was the bicycle – because I already built one of those! Then I got down to scratchbuilding each one from whatever bits of polystyrene I had handy.  Once it was all packed up, the model really looked the part.  It was so convincing that even a small little Totoro showed up and started hanging around it. 😉

Anyway, feel free to tell me what you think!