Kiki's Delivery Service (1989)

Kiki's Delivery Service has all the charm, humor, and heartfelt moments of My Neighbor Totoro but with new characters and situations.  Based on a popular Japanese children's book, Miyazaki works his magic in bringing us a world that is familiar and comfortable, but also wildly imaginative and fantastical.  Here, the settings are the rural countryside where Kiki's family resides and a breathtaking seaside city one might expect to see in Europe on the Mediterranean.  What you don't expect is that in this world, magic and witches are commonplace and welcome.

Kiki is the 13-year old daughter of a witch who, according to custom, must leave home and train independently for a year to become a witch herself.  On a clear night with a full moon, Kiki and her black cat Jiji take to the skies on her mother's broom seeking new adventures.  They arrive in the seaside city, where a witch has not been seen in a long time.  With the help of the Osonos, owners of a local bakery, Kiki finds a place to stay and a service to provide- a personal delivery service.

Once again, Miyazaki forgoes any real plot, instead focusing on Kiki and the characters she meets in everyday life.  Kiki is a witch but, more importantly, she is a human being as well.  Like every one of us, Kiki tries to discover just what she desires in life, especially in consideration of her own special abilities.  Her crisis materializes in the weakening of her powers, leaving her unable to fly and unable to communicate with Jiji.  It's not a hard situation to identify with, and Miyazaki even provides an outlet for this theme through the character of Ursula, a painter who lives in the woods.  Just like Kiki, Ursula was born with a special gift- that of artistic abilities- but had to discover her own motivations, inspirations, and desires before those abilities could be fully awakened and nurtured.

The animation and backgrounds in this film are rendered in just the same fashion as My Neighbor Totoro- Kiki could easily be the long lost twin sister of Satsuki.  All of the characters carry a style I now recognize as Miyazaki.  And, like the Japanese countryside in Totoro, the seaside town is detailed and beautiful.  The scenes of Kiki effortlessly flying above the clouds (much to the torment of Jiji) and swooping down close to the ground are breathtaking and exciting.  It just doesn't get any better than this!

I saw the film with the new English dub by Buena Vista.  It was well done, and a comparison with a script off the Internet shows that it is quite faithful in meaning to the original Japanese dialogue.  Although there are the usual Internet zealots who despise this dub (and perhaps I would be one of them if I had seen a subtitled version), I think it is quite enjoyable.  If anything, it's the distinctive voice of the late Phil Hartman trying too hard to sound different that doesn't work.

The bottom line: this is a wonderful film that can and should be enjoyed by all ages.  If there was anything that I was disappointed about, it was that the ending seemed a little rushed- I didn't get a reeaallly satisfying sense of closure.  I think that this film is a little more preachy and moralistic than Totoro, which is more reflective in portraying its themes.  Of course, the Internet zealots claim it is the result of the new dub and soundtrack.  I'll have to wait for the subtitled copy to find out for myself...

Posted: 9-22-'98

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