At San Diego Comic Con earlier this year, cosplay devotee and former Mythbusters host Adam Savage paraded around as the bear from The Revenant, dragging a fake Leo DiCaprio carcass alongside him. For the New York gathering, he went as a much sweeter fuzzy creature. Savage walked the floor as Hayao Miyazaki’s beloved Totoro, and received more hugs than knowing giggles. “The Revenant bear was a great joke and I got a round of applause from the vendors, which is hardened group,” he told The A.V. Club once out of costume last Friday. “Totoro is based on nothing but love,” as you can see from the below adoration:
Though Savage is a Miyazaki fan himself, he explained that he got the idea from a someone who had posted on his Tested website, ultimately building the spirit’s body like a “Chinese lantern” made up of concentric circles constructed from rattan. “He actually ships in a television box,” said Savage, who had changed into a Stranger Things-inspired T-shirt. He could not see out of Totoro’s rotund shape, so instead used a small camera hidden on top of the head, and looked at a monitor hidden within. “You’ll see all these people hugging me where their face buries in Totoro’s fur at the bottom of frame,” he said. The walk was not without mishap: Shortly before he was supposed to emerge one of Totoro’s ears broke. He improvised with some hot glue, a coat hanger, and a USB power supply, and Totoro was good to go.