Many years ago, Hayao Miyazaki described My Neighbour Totoro (1988) – his timeless children's classic and his second feature for Japan's Studio Ghibli – as a film created without a sense of jeopardy. It's a phrase we've pondered and conjured with around these parts often: more perhaps than is strictly necessary or even particularly healthy.

Film, we can all agree, thrives on conflict. It exists as a series of diametrics, as obstacles, as nightmares, as tensions. Great cinema, invariably, may be reduced to sequences and strings of perfect and imperfect oppositions.

So how is it that a cutsey-pie cartoon made without any sense of jeopardy is as close to perfection as anything that has ever been committed to celluloid? What is it that elevates a pretty and pastoral piece of nostalgia detailing how two little girls spend their summer holidays toward greatness?

My Neighbour Totoro contains no sense of jeopardy for an adult, but everything hangs in the balance for its diminutive heroines Satsuki and Mei. The grandeur of their respective imaginations infects their otherwise sleepy surroundings with bizarre enchantments and creations. The attic of the dilapidated farmhouse where they move with their academic father is populated by the same soot sprites that proved so useful in the boiler room of Spirited Away . Friendly, outsized, pebble-eating trolls dwell within the wooded area near their new home. When Mei disappears, a many legged cat-bus can be relied upon to save the day and the little girl.

There are unspoken and unspecified details behind their recent relocation. Their mother is recuperating in a nearby hospital. We’re unsure of her ailment, but we make note of her headscarf. Has her illness impacted upon the family finances? Is that why they now live out in the sticks?

Miyazake never works out the details beyond the interests and scope of the two little girls. The characters are beautifully drawn: Mei is as stompy as Satsuki is resourceful. Mother is gentle and otherworldly. Strangers, even friendly ones like “granny”, are intimidating until they cease to be strangers.

Interestingly, this very child-centric universe has turned out to have semi-miraculous uses in the area of cinema therapy and speech development. But even the grumpiest adult will succumb to its charms.

This anniversary reissue will be screened with subtitles and in an adorable English dub featuring Dakota and Elle Fanning. Either way, My Neighbour Totoro is not to be missed.