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Ghibli beanbag plushies want to hang out and provide profound cuteness to your living space【Pics】

Casey Baseel Dec 22, 2023
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14 characters from half a dozen anime masterworks for your cuddling/decorating needs.

With just a few days until Christmas, you might be finding yourself scrambling to find a few last-minute gifts, something in the 20-to-40-dollar range, for a cinephile or anime fan in your circle of friends and family. Or maybe you’ve got all your shopping for others already done, and are looking to reward yourself for having been a good little Studio Ghibli fan all year long.

Regardless of who the recipient is, though, it’s a safe bet that anyone getting one of these new Ghibli beanbag plushies is going to have a big smile on their face.

A recent release from Ghibli specialty store Donguri no Kyowakoku, the lineup is collectively called Nakayoshi Otedama, or “Friendly Beanbags,” series. It’s made up of characters from a half-dozen of Ghibli’s most memorable hits, starting with, of course, My Neighbor Totoro.

In addition to the big gray guy, the mid-size blue Totoro and little white Totoro are here too, though with the gray and white both being 19 centimeters (7.5 inches) tall and the blue 18, their canonical height differences aren’t reflected.

▼ But we think that’s a forgivable omission when they look this cute.

By the way, the “beanbag” designation seems to be more a reference to the texture of the stuffing and the plushies’ weight, more so than any suggestion to try juggling or playing hacky sack with them, even if it looks like you could get a decent spiral out of the Catbus if you threw it like a football.

Moving on to the cast from another all-time Ghibli classic, here are four characters we met in and around Spirited Away’s Aburaya bathhouse.

The designers have done an especially good job capturing No Face’s personality, as his posture and masked expression convey the unique mix of tender loneliness and uneasy inscrutability that makes him such a compelling character.

The uneven texture of the plush material also helps create the illusion of wrinkly skin on the witch Yubaba, who along with Boh the mouse and an Otori-sama make up the rest of the Spirited Away contingent.

The other human in the lineup is Princess Mononoke’s San, who’s accompanied by red elk Yakul, though his rider/owner Ashitaka is absent.

There’s further fantasy-film fauna in the form of a fox squirrel. While this might look like Teto, the animal companion of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind’s titular heroine, Donguri Kyowakoku explicitly states that this is a fox squirrel from Laputa/Castle in the Sky, so ostensibly you’ll need to pick out a different name for yours.

And finally, if you love both Ghibli movies and cats, you’re really in luck, as aside from the Catbus we looked at earlier, there are also beanbag plushies of Jiji from Kiki’s Delivery Service…

…Lily, Jiji’s mate and mother to their children…

…and even Moon, the cat that Shizuku follows to antique shop Chikyuya in Whisper of the Heart.

Sizes vary by character, but the plushies are generally around 20 centimeters tall, with the Catbus’ length of 23 centimeters appearing to be the largest single dimension out of the bunch. Prices differ too, with the white Totoro 2,860 yen (US$20), blue Totoro, Otori-sama, and Moon 3,080, gray Totoro and fox squirrel 3,300, Jiji and Lily 3,520, No Face 3,630, Yakul 3,740, Catbus 3,960, Yubaba 4,070, and San 4,180.

The entire lineup is available now here through the Donguri Kyowakoku online store.

Source: Donguri Kyowakoku
Top image: Donguri Kyowakoku
Insert images: Donguri Kyowakoku (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12)
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