Kiki’s Delivery Service: A Visually Stunning Anime with a Questionable Premise
A graphically impeccable and emotionally rich anime film that, however, tries to convince children that it’s time to start living independently at 13.
Following an ancient tradition, 13-year-old witch Kiki leaves her parents’ home and sets out to find a city where there are no other witches. There, she must live on her own for at least a year to be considered a true, adult witch. Taking flight on her mother’s old broom and accompanied by her cat Jiji, Kiki lands in the large and bustling port city of Koriko. Since flying on a broom is the only magic she has mastered, she becomes a flying courier and starts her delivery service.
According to Miyazaki, the witch’s ability to communicate with her cat is a sign of her immaturity. Therefore, the heroine loses this ability at a certain point and does not regain it even when her magical gift returns. It is worth noting that the girl’s mother, also a witch, cannot directly talk to the cat. This talent is exclusive to young witches.
Studio Ghibli’s Early Struggles and Breakthrough
When Studio Ghibli released two films simultaneously in 1988, Hayao Miyazaki’s “My Neighbor Totoro” and Isao Takahata’s “Grave of the Fireflies,” it suffered a financial setback. As expected, the double release attracted the attention of many parents and teachers who wanted to show their children an “instructive” film about World War II, but schoolchildren, frightened by the grim plot of “Grave,” refused to watch it. They were only interested in the joyful and happy “Totoro.” Moreover, the films did not appeal to teenagers who were expecting a new adventure blockbuster from Miyazaki like “Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind” or “Castle in the Sky.” If Totoro had not become a popular plush toy (Ghibli still earns from it as a brand), the studio’s history would have ended there.
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In the original version, Kiki and Ursula are voiced by the same actress, Minami Takayama (the future lead singer of the pop group Two-Mix). Miyazaki aimed to emphasize the spiritual kinship between the heroines. In the Disney dub, however, the role of Kiki was played by Kirsten Dunst, and the role of Ursula by Janeane Garofalo.
Kiki’s Delivery Service: A Commercial Success
The next Ghibli release had a completely different fate. Released a year later, “Kiki’s Delivery Service” earned over two billion yen on a budget of 800 million (18 and 7 million dollars, respectively) and became the main hit of the Japanese box office in 1989 – among both Japanese and Hollywood films. It was at this moment that Miyazaki was finally recognized as the leading director of Japanese animation and a “living classic.” In turn, “Kiki’s Delivery Service” was declared a masterpiece and showered with national awards, and it is sometimes mentioned among the best animated films of all time. We, however, disagree with this assessment, and we have major complaints about “Kiki’s Delivery Service.” But let’s take it one step at a time.
The opening and closing songs of the film are hits from the 1970s performed by Japanese superstar Yuming (Yumi Matsutoya). These compositions are considered one of the early examples of J-Pop, Japanese pop music at the intersection of Western and Eastern influences.
From Book to Film: Miyazaki’s Vision
The holders of the rights to Eiko Kadono’s 1985 fairy tale “Kiki’s Delivery Service” offered Ghibli to adapt the book two years after its release. At that time, Miyazaki and Takahata were busy with “Totoro” and “Grave,” and they decided that it was time to give a chance to a new generation of animators. Therefore, Miyazaki became the producer of the adaptation and hired Sunao Katabuchi as the director, with whom he had worked on the TV series “Sherlock Hound” (a joint Japanese-Italian anime with dogs as Arthur Conan Doyle’s characters) before starting work on “Nausicaä.” However, Miyazaki was not satisfied with the script developed under Katabuchi’s supervision, and when he wrote a new text himself (work on “Totoro” had been completed by that time), it became clear that he would direct it himself. So Katabuchi made his debut as a feature film director only in 2001, when he directed the animated film “Princess Arete” at Studio 4°C, which was ideologically related to the master’s films.
Kadono’s original book was a good-natured and simple-minded work about an independent witch who creates a small business, meets different people and helps them, demonstrating the breadth of her heart. Kiki did not experience any significant crises, and nothing particularly terrible happened to her. It was clear that the heroine’s independence, her life away from her parents’ home, was used by the writer only as a lure for young readers who love stories about independent children and dream of adventures without “suffocating” parental care. The main meaning of the book was the preaching of cordiality, empathy, and willingness to help those near and far.
Miyazaki found such a plot not exciting enough for a full-length animated film, and he turned “Kiki’s Delivery Service” upside down. The essence of his film is in the heroine’s independence and in the trials that befall any young person when they leave their parents’ home. Finding shelter and work, unusually hard work, lack of money, loneliness in the crowd… As she approaches the climax, Kiki becomes so ill that she falls into depression and loses both the ability to fly and the ability to talk to her cat, her only friend. And she has to heroically overcome this crisis in order to feel like a real witch and gain the respect of the townspeople.
When coming up with a new plot, Miyazaki wanted to inspire young Japanese women who in the late 1980s often lived with their parents, subsisted on temporary, unskilled work (including at anime studios) and waited for marriage and becoming housewives. The director sought to show that an independent life, with all its difficulties and hardships, leads to spiritual growth and that any obstacles can be overcome if you do not give up, treat people well, and in difficult times do not reject help offered from a pure heart (recall that relying only on one’s own strength led the hero of “Grave of the Fireflies” to a terrible tragedy).
The Problematic Premise: A 13-Year-Old on Her Own
All this is extremely cute, fair, correct, and psychologically deep (much deeper than in Miyazaki’s previous films), and we would not have had major complaints about “Kiki’s Delivery Service” if the heroine of the film was an 18-year-old witch who came to conquer Koriko. But Kiki is only 13 years old, she looks like a little girl, and it is obvious that she should still live under her parents’ wing and slowly learn about life in the modern world. Well, almost in the modern world – the world of “Kiki’s Delivery Service” is usually described as a prosperous alternative Europe of the 1950s, where there was no World War II. Big cities, cars, trains, telephones, developed business, police, public transport, airships and airplanes… This is not the Middle Ages, when a girl only needed to learn how to work in the field and at home to be considered a full member of society. Although even then girls were not thrown into “independent life,” but were either married off or given into servitude, and in both cases they were under the supervision of adult, experienced women (mother-in-law or housekeeper).
Miyazaki, it must be said, understands this, and therefore Kiki meets the welcoming baker Osono on her first day in Koriko, who lets the girl live in the attic in exchange for helping around the house. In fact, the woman becomes a surrogate mother for Kiki, and she behaves with her quite differently than landladies usually behave. But if the girl still needs maternal care, why does the film force her to rely on someone else’s woman, and not on her real mother? “Because that is the ancient tradition of witches,” the film answers and suggests not thinking about it anymore. However, it is impossible not to think about it.
Indeed, what parents, along with neighbors and friends, calmly and joyfully see off a 13-year-old girl on a long journey, at the end of which she will spend a whole year in an unfamiliar city among unfamiliar people? Obviously, heartless psychopaths. Or some particularly insane hippies. A 13-year-old girl in a large port city, without documents (!), almost without money, without connections… She will be lucky if she is turned into a sex slave for drunken sailors on the second day, not the first. True, Kiki is a witch, but her abilities are limited to flying on a broom. Take away her broom, and she is the most ordinary, weak little girl. Whom it would hardly be difficult to fool if professionals took over.
Yes, there are usually no brothels in fairy-tale towns. But Koriko is large, plausible, and complex enough to have everything, including dens (the police are there!). Yes, Japanese animation is packed with adventures of independent children. Miyazaki’s “Laputa” tells the story of two militant orphans. But they are orphans – the loneliness of Pazu and Sheeta is tragic. Kiki is lonely with living parents, and the film asks the audience to wish the girl to grow up, and not to return to her family. And this is impossible. Especially in the heartbreaking scenes in which Kiki loses the ability to fly, and no one can help her, because there are no other witches in the city.
The painting by the artist Ursula, which she demonstrates towards the end of the film, was painted by Japanese students of a school for children with developmental difficulties. Miyazaki only added Kiki’s face to this painting.
Final Thoughts: A Flawed Masterpiece?
True, her new acquaintance Ursula, a young artist, gives useful advice, drawing on her own life experience. But, of course, a mother’s advice and sympathy would be much more useful and pleasant for Kiki. And it is impossible to think otherwise. The film asks to worry about the witch, but this worry inevitably turns into hatred for the girl’s parents and into inventing slow and painful executions for them. However, if you are able to jump over this psychological barrier and believe in the absolute safety of Koriko for a teenage girl, then you are in for a charming cartoon with a lot of funny and emotional scenes, bright characters and a tense ending. Excluding the above considerations, this is one of the strongest examples of “female” anime. That is, cartoons built around female psychology and a female attitude to life, and not just making a girl or a young woman the main character.
And what a city Miyazaki created! The main source of graphic inspiration was the Swedish cities of Visby and Stockholm – the animator fell in love with Sweden when he visited it in the 1970s to (unsuccessfully) persuade Astrid Lindgren to sell the rights to the film adaptation of “Pippi Longstocking” – but in Koriko you can also see hints of Naples, Lisbon, Paris and even San Francisco. The director once joked that his creation is washed on one side by the Baltic Sea, and on the other by the Mediterranean. And all this hodgepodge somehow does not seem like a mixture of styles, but appears as a convincing and very beautiful place – one of those where you want to move. If, of course, you are of the right age and you have documents, diplomas and money for the first time. Although “Kiki’s Delivery Service” is an intimate, purely personal story without any “saving humanity,” the scale of Koriko and the diversity of its landscapes in themselves give the cartoon an epic touch. The quality of graphics and animation, as well as Joe Hisaishi’s soundtrack, are beyond praise. We cannot guarantee that you will like “Kiki’s Delivery Service,” but we can guarantee that you will enjoy watching and listening to it. Otherwise, it would not have earned two billion yen!