2 t4,410 lb
Totoro weighs about 2 tonnes (roughly 4,400 lb) by our estimate. Studio Ghibli has never published a weight for him, only a height: about 2 m, according to the 1988 film guidebooks. A round body that size, about as dense as water like a bear or a person, comes out close to 2,000 kg.
| Big Totoro, high estimate2 m tall, 1.6 m wide and deep | 2.7 t5,950 lb |
|---|---|
| Big Totoro, our estimate2 m tall, 1.4 m wide and deep | 2 t4,410 lb |
| Big Totoro, low estimate1.2 m wide, 1 m deep, plenty of it fur | 1.25 t2,760 lb |
The only official size is the height. Tokuma Shoten’s Roman Album guide to the film and Ghibli’s own 1996 reference book give Big Totoro as 2 m (about 6 ft 7 in) tall. Neither gives a weight, and nor does the film.
Totoro is shaped roughly like an egg, so we treat him as an ellipsoid. Its volume is π/6 × height × width × depth. With 2 m of height and 1.4 m of width and depth, that is 0.524 × 2 × 1.4 × 1.4, or about 2.05 cubic metres. Living animals, bears and people included, are close to the density of water, about 1,000 kg per cubic metre. So the body weighs about 2,050 kg, which we round to 2 tonnes.
The width is the shakiest part, because he is very round and very furry. A slimmer 1.2 m by 1 m body gives about 1.26 cubic metres, or 1.25 t, and thick fur would pull the real number down further. A chunkier 1.6 m by 1.6 m body gives 2.68 cubic metres, or 2.7 t. Two tonnes sits in the middle.
The two smaller Totoros have no official heights either. The Roman Album only says Chibi Totoro, the white one, is about the size of a raccoon dog cub, and Japanese sources describe Chu Totoro, the blue one with the bag of acorns, as a size bigger.
Weight goes with the cube of height when the shape stays the same. If Chu Totoro is about 40 cm tall, a fifth of Big Totoro’s height, he weighs a fifth × a fifth × a fifth of 2 tonnes, about 16 kg. If Chibi Totoro is about 25 cm, an eighth of the height, he comes out at about 4 kg. Those heights are our reading of the film, so treat both numbers as rough.
The film gives a few hints of real bulk. At the bus stop, Totoro jumps once and lands hard enough to shake the trees and bring down a shower of rain. Mei sleeps on his belly earlier in the film, a small child on top of something heavier than a family car. And he still flies above the treetops on a spinning top, with Satsuki and Mei holding on.
Real Totoros are much lighter. A 2.1 m Totoro made of 10,000 pine cones on a wire and bamboo frame, built for a shopping centre in Kagawa in 2008, weighed 100 kg, about a twentieth of our estimate for the real thing.
Big Totoro is about 2 m (6 ft 7 in) tall, according to the Roman Album film guide and Studio Ghibli’s 1996 reference catalogue. Chu Totoro and Chibi Totoro are much smaller, and have no official heights.
No. Ghibli’s books give his height but not his weight. The 2 tonnes here is our estimate from his size and shape.
In Miyazaki’s early notes, Big Totoro is 1,302 years old, Chu Totoro 679 and Chibi Totoro 109. The film itself never says.
His own kind. The Art of Totoro calls him an animal rather than a spirit, and his look borrows from a horned owl: his working name was Miminzuku, from mimizuku, the Japanese word for that owl.
Last checked October 3, 2026.
