Kiki's Delivery Service

***Kiki's Delivery Service*** (Japanese: 魔女の宅急便 Hepburn: *Majo no Takkyūbin*, "Witch's Delivery Service") is a 1989 Japanese animated coming-of-age fantasy film written, produced, and directed by Hayao Miyazaki as an adaptation of the 1985 novel of the same name by Eiko Kadono.

## Synopsis

A 13-year-old Kiki moves to a seaside town with her talking cat, Jiji, to spend a year alone, in accordance with her village's tradition for witches in training. After learning to control her broomstick, Kiki sets up a flying courier service and soon becomes a fixture in the community. But when the insecure young witch begins questioning herself and loses her magic abilities, she must overcome her self-doubt to get her powers back.

## Why It Found It's Own Inspiration

1. Kiki's overall character design is very appealing and cute.
2. The film has a great, emotional, and relatable coming of age story that has a theme that many millennials in the workplace could relate to.
3. The film has excellent animation for its time and the backgrounds are pretty as well.
4. While the story is mostly realistic, it does have fantasy aspects, such as witches, which helps to balance it out and help it appeal to more people.
5. The coming of age story has a very somber tone, which only adds to its reliability.
6. Kiki is a really likable character. She is definitely flawed in the beginning and has to mature in order to gain her confidence, but her childishness never gets to the point of being obnoxious or unlikable.
7. The film has incredible vocal performances from the original Japanese sub and the Disney dub, especially from Phil Hartman and Kirsten Dunst.
8. The story is almost on par with Only Yesterday with how relatable that the themes and characters are, as opposed to the studio's more fantastical works such as Spirited Away.
9. Just like in My Neighbor Totoro, antagonists doesn't make appearances here.
10. The movie also has lots of good comedy to help balance the more somber tone with lighter moments.
11. The movie contains tons of memorable quotes, both comedic and inspirational, which includes...
	* *“It's not really important what color your dress is. What matters is the heart inside.”* - Kokiri
	* *“We can fly with our spirit.”* - Kiki
	* *“Flying used to be fun until I started doing it for a living.”* - Kiki
	* *“Painting and magical powers seem very similar to me.”* - Ursula

## Bad Qualities

1. The 2010 edit of the Disney dub suffers from bad sound mixing which makes the actors sound like they're talking through a filter.
	* Speaking of which, the 2010 version cuts out most of the sound effects and dialogues from the 2003 version to match the original Japanese version, also cutting most of Phil Hartman's dialogue, which is an insult to him, as the movie was dedicated to his memory after his death in 1998.
2. The Streamline Pictures dub, although faithful, isn't as polished as the Disney dub. Lisa Michelson makes Kiki sound way older than her age, and a very similar voice to Satsuki from the Streamline dub of *My Neighbor Totoro*.

## Reception

*Kiki's Delivery Service* has a 97% critic rating and 88% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes, a 4/5 on Letterboxd, a 7.9/10 on the International Movie Database, an 8.29/10 on MyAnimeList, 4/5 on AnimePlanet, and 83.86% on Kitsu. Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert gave the film a "two thumbs up" and Leonard Maltin described it as "a beautifully animated, kindhearted gem".

## Videos

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## External Links

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