Adventures with Miyazaki Part 4: Kiki's Delivery Service

With Kiki’s Delivery Service, Miyazaki continues in the vein of the relaxed storytelling method he utilized in My Neighbor Totoro. By that I mean he doesn’t focus so much on plot as he does on character and location. It’s not quite the rousing success that My Neighbor Totoro was and it’s not one of my personal favorites of his filmography, but it’s still decent and lovely to look at.

Kiki is a witch in training and has just reached her 13^th birthday. When a witch reaches the age of 13, they embark on a sort of coming-of-age pilgrimage in which they find a town or city that requires their assistance and offer aid however they can. Upon arriving in the town of Koriko with her best friend – a talking cat named Jiji, Kiki is befriended by a kindhearted woman named Osono who runs a bakery with her husband and, in exchange for helping around the shop, is allowed to stay in a room on the property.

She begins to run her own personal delivery service, flying baked goods and presents all over town. As she works, she meets all kinds of new people such as the artistic young painter Ursula who lives in a cabin in the forest and a kind-hearted old woman. All the while Kiki dodges the advances of a goofy young boy named Tombo who has a huge crush on her and an obsession with aviation. During her time in Koriko, Kiki strives to discover her purpose and gain a sense of self-confidence.

It’s funny, despite dealing with the ‘magical’ subject matter of a witch in training who has a talking cat and flies around on a broomstick, Kiki’s Delivery Service is Miyazaki’s most grounded outing yet. The animation is more straightforward and not quite as evocative or as memorable as in his previous films and while the aimless nature of My Neighbor Totoro’s plot worked in its favor, here it just comes across as a bit dull and meandering. Nevertheless, Kiki’s Delivery Service still carries Miyazaki’s trademarks of charming characters and beautiful animation and manages to entertain without being quite as successful as his previous films.

FINAL RATING: 3.5/5