Synopsis
Panda! Go Panda! (1972) is a Japanese animated short you can watch online on iFILM. Little Mimiko keeps house alone while her grandmother is away, and she's not scared one bit — she cooks, she does the laundry, she runs the place. Then two visitors wander into her yard: a baby panda and his enormous, kindly Papa Bear.
Isao Takahata directed it; a young Hayao Miyazaki wrote the script and storyboards, a full thirteen years before My Neighbor Totoro. Their signature is already here — a tiny girl ruling a big house, talking animals, and gentle nonsense, like a panda gravely deciding to "become a papa for the second time." Half an hour, no villains, just two zoo runaways turning a sleepy town upside down.
Think of it as a 35-minute preview of everything Studio Ghibli would become: warm, funny, and never preachy. A lovely way to show a kid where Japan's greatest animators got their start. Stream Panda! Go Panda! (1972) online on iFILM.
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