A narrative can take surprising shapes and forms. Tree of Totoro, by contri via wikimedia commons.

It’s week three of summer vacation here in northern Japan, and my daughter decided to remedy a terrible gap in her education by renting 10 Ghibli DVDs last week. Ghibli is a world-famous animation studio, and you may know their films – Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro  and Kiki’s Delivery Service are just a few of the internationally released full-length features.

I’m trying to figure out what structures underlie the films. Continue reading →