‘Stranger Things’ and ‘Studio Ghibli’ Meet In New Fan-Art

Mash-ups are a pretty popular genre of fan art as artists design the way they’d like to see two of their favorite worlds crossing over. But sometimes you get a pairing so perfect, it’s a wonder why you have never thought of the two merging together before.

The latest example of this is the strange, yet well-fitting crossover between Studio Ghibli’s films and art style and the nostalgic veins of The Duffer Brothers’ Stranger Things on Netflix.

The first piece of amazing fan-art comes from @SaqmanDesign and imagines how Stranger Things would translate into Studio ghibli’s animated world.

As you can see by the art, the characters’ wardrobes and looks are so distinct, that they make the perfect subjects for an animated makeover. Eleven even seems like she’d be the perfect main character of a Studio Ghibli film.

The next piece of art comes from @IstharVegaLuna and is more direct about its imagining. This fan-art imagines that Eleven is waiting for the Catbus alongside the Demigorgon instead of My Neighbor Totoro‘s famous characters.

This character switch puts a much more maligned feeling into the film’s famous scene, and while the Catbus was already an eerie addition into the film (as some fans even have a theory where the Catbus was ushering Totoro‘s two lead characters to their deaths) this makes the original scene a little more creepy.

Studio Ghibli is a prolific animation studio in the anime scene. Not only have eight of its anime films gone on to be part of Japan’s fifteen highest grossing anime films, it’s most notable release, Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away has grossed over $290 million USD worldwide.

The studio’s mascot is Totoro, from 1998’s My Neighbor Totoro, and is one of the most popular characters in Japanese animation. It went on to be the start of Hayao Miyazaki’s larger success in cinema. My Neighbor Totoro was received well by critics during its initial release, and has gotten a strong cult following in the years after. You can often find Totoro making small cameos in Studio Ghibli‘s other works since its release.