Continuing with my exploration of the works of Studio Ghibli, here’s the more childish Kiki’s Delivery Service. In terms of production values, this is a far cruder film than Spirited Away. There’s so little detail in the trees and landscape that Kiki whizzes past. Thematically it’s also much simpler, about a girl finding her independence and nothing else. Yet it’s so sweet and so heartfelt that I think I like it more. Spirited Away is objectively the superior film but this one is truer to itself, knowing what it wants to do and sticking to just that. My one major complaint is that Hayao Miyazaki is so obvious here about how he has a fetish for flying and wants to showcase it everywhere. Come on, there’s such a thing as too much.

Kiki, a 13-year-old girl born to a witch family, leaves home on a broomstick with her black cat Jiji on a traditional one year of training by herself. She is expected to find a town without a resident witch of its own and make her own way. After getting caught in the rain and hitching a ride on a train, she find herself in the port city of Koriko. She is delighted to find herself in such a large city and at first the residents are amazed at the sight of a flying witch. But they lose interest quickly and Kiki has trouble finding a way to productively use her skills. Then at a bakery, a customer leaves behind a baby’s pacifier and she volunteers to return it by flying on her broomstick. The grateful bakery owner Osono offers Kiki her attic to stay in and the little girl starts a delivery service business using her broomstick. Her very first delivery goes wrong as she is caught in a powerful gust of wind, is attacked by birds and loses the toy she was supposed to deliver. Despite all of her difficulties, she makes many friends along the way and has many more adventures.

As expected for a film adapted from a children’s book, this is both simple and sweet. It isn’t really about witches at all as Kiki’s only real power is flying and talking to Jiji. It’s all about the aesthetics of soaring through the air on a broomstick while wearing a black robe. I was curious at first about this being set in modern times with cars and telephones and trains when it features witches and magic but it makes sense in context. Along with being about Kiki establishing herself, this can also be said to be about witches adapting to the modern world and finding their niche. It’s amusing that this film predates the delivery services that are ubiquitous today due to online shopping. The fact that witches are a known quantity in this world doesn’t make much sense as they ought to be way more valuable than they seem to be but one has to make concessions to what is still a children’s story. It does fit well with the Western European style architecture, characters and clothing. The art employed here doesn’t have the sheer wow factor of Spirited Away but it’s very pleasant and pretty.

Putting aside how crazy it is that the witches send out 13-year-old girls to live on their own, this works surprisingly well as a story about children learning to be independent and confident. One of my favorite scenes is the first morning when Kiki wakes up in the attic and needs to go to the bathroom. She is so shy that when she sees Osono’s husband, she hides out in the bathroom for a while until he goes away. It’s a well crafted and endearing moment that feels so much more authentic than how Chihiro keeps falling and slipping in Spirited Away. It’s great too how she simply boycotts the rich girl who is seemingly unappreciative towards her own grandmother and wants nothing to do with her. The crisis at the finale is too much but I loved how she encounters all kinds of mundane obstacles in the course of doing her deliveries and resolves them with the help of friends. Through it all, Kiki feels like a real and distinct character in her own right, and not just another one of the standard little girls that appear in Miyazaki’s films.

There are some choices I’m ambivalent about, such as using the cat Jiji to represent Kiki’s childhood and immaturity. It feels odd to me that Miyazaki treats flying as fantastic and fun for both children and adults but everything else including Jiji as something to be grown out of. All in all, I really enjoyed this film and appreciated how it has a positive tone without being preachy. It’s not a very ambitious film and that is just fine as it is proportioned and balanced to be just right.