Kiki's Delivery Service

Not everyone loves, or even likes, the films of Studio Ghibli. Japanese director/actor Takeshi "Beat Takeshi" Kitano famously thinks they give children an unrealistically optimistic version of things, focusing too much on concise happy endings. For reference, Kitano makes films like Kikujiro which have an unusual pacing, plot structure, and moral, in this case focusing on a young boy looking for his mother only to discover she made a new family for herself without him and proceeding to spend the rest of the movie going on adventures with the ragtag group of friends he makes. There is no real destination, just a series of events that reflect Kitano's worldview, which was formed by a rough childhood in the poorer neighborhoods of Tokyo, possibly with yakuza presence that was treated as normal.

While Kitano's view of things is not wrong, it is not the only way to interpret or appreciate Studio Ghibli's work, especially those directed by Hayao Miyazaki. You could say that Kitano is a realist teaching children what the world will be like for them. Meanwhile, Studio Ghibli operates on a different philosophy, which I would summarize with the GK Chesterton quote: "Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed." The stories are meant to give confidence and reassurance that failure is not always inevitable. For this reason, most Studio Ghibli lead characters are children with a fresh look at the world, seeing what adults around them refuse to or failed to deal with. Even if a child watching experiences the world differently than the character, they can empathize with them anyway and learn from their mistakes and successes.

So, what can we learn from each of these animated films? Are they lessons for children, or for everyone? I will not cover every tiny little thing you can learn (a long list), instead focusing on the bigger morals of each story that direct its flow and character choices. For example, many of the films teach us about how meaningful friendship is, especially between two very different people: boy and girl, privileged and left out, gifted and average, etc. Related to that is the fact that love should be based on friendship and trust, not just fluffy feelings and plot devices. So, generally, I will leave out this sort of thing as a specific lesson from any one film.

Today, let's talk about Kiki's Delivery Service, namely the main question posed: what happens when your skill and/or hobby and/or purpose in life becomes you job, just the thing you have to do?

When I was younger, I sometimes wondered why the movie had so few witches in it. I knew that the story was about Kiki, but I wanted to see more powers and talents. Other than her flying on a broomstick, which she is still learning how to do, we only see her mother mixing potions and a random acquaintance talking about her fortune telling. Nothing else. Even passing mention of witches never really goes into any detail about what else they do or where they live or how they communicate with each other. Now that I am older, I can see that the real purpose of the movie is not to explore the lives of witches, it is meant to follow the coming of age story of just one representative witch. The film's purpose is to explore what happens to our spirits when a skill we were once excited about mastering becomes our source of income, the thing we have to do whether we feel like it or not.

The story follows Kiki, a thirteen-year-old witch who leaves home for her kickoff year of independent training. Apparently this is normal for all witches to do at some point after their thirteenth birthday. Her mother came to Kiki's hometown for training years ago and met Kiki's father. She is the only witch there and a neighbor comments on their surprise when she flew in on her broomstick, indicating that witches often choose places without other witches to train and often stay there indefinitely.

Kiki wants to see the ocean, so she takes her cat Jiji after convincing her parents to let her go ahead of schedule and flies south until she finds a gorgeous town on the coast with a clock tower. After the initial shock of the big city and the lack of friendliness, she finds a home at a bakery with kind owners, makes tentative friends with a boy named Tombo who is in the local flying club, and begins a small delivery business with her broomstick since that is her only magical skill so far. She experiences many things, including the burden of fulfilling work promises, paying for groceries, and generally being responsible in a large city. Along the way she meets Osono, an artist living in a cabin in the woods surrounded by crows. One could argure that Osono is sort of a stand-in for a witchly mentor, as represented by her devotion to one skill, the presence of crows around her (witches' pets of old), and her advice for Kiki in various situations.

For the most part everything is fine until it all comes to a head throughout the course of one afternoon. Tombo invites her to a flying club party, causing her to switch gears from acting as though she does not like Tombo to being openly flustered by the prospect of a party. Her baker friends assures her that the black dress she always wears is pretty, and Kiki must accept that it is for she has no time; an urgent delivery is waiting for her. She goes to to the home of a kind old woman who is struggling with her electric oven, and helps the woman use the wood oven to bake the pie instead. Unfortunately, the woman's clock runs slow and time is running out. They wrap the pie and Kiki flies off, but it begins to rain on the way. She makes it to the lavish house, drenched, and the door is opened by the old woman's granddaughter dressed in a pretty pink party dress. The girl is not at all thankful for the pie, as it is a herring pot pie that she hates, and slams the door in Kiki's face after accepting it. Kiki then flies home in the downpour. Just as Tombo gives up on waiting for her at the door, she arrives back. The baker say she can still catch him, but she is too overwhelmed by the day, goes to bed, and ends up falling sick for a while. Tombo sends his regards and is sorry she came down sick, so Kiki seems like she will pick herself back up without any trouble.

Sadly, and rather suddenly, Kiki loses her ability to fly any more than a few feet following that stressful day of rain, embarrassment, and overall low self esteem. This sends her into a depressive funk, and she stops finding joy in anything, her delivery business on hold. During this time she goes to spend a few days with Osono, who says something similar happened to her when she got into the habit of painting copies of other people's work, trying to capture an idea that was not hers and losing sight of how to paint at all. They agree that Kiki has to refind what it was that made her love flying, beyond it being a skill she just happened to focus on due to having no others and no money.

Later, Kiki spends a day with Tombo for the first time after the rainy day and they go for a ride on a bicycle being transformed into an airplane by the flying club. It currently has nothing more on it than a propeller powered by pedaling, but Tombo determinedly rides it with Kiki sitting on the back all the way to the pier to see the Spirit of Freedom, a blimp he is very excited about visiting. They have an accident on the way there, nearly being hit by a car and flying off the side of a hill, but they are unharmed and they retrieve the knocked off propeller blade. It is a very nice day and Kiki admits that Tombo is a nice guy when suddenly his friends show up in their car, reminding her that she does not feel like she fits in and other classic teenage feelings. After this incident, she stops being able to understand what Jiji says, which is almost more devastating than losing her magic.

That evening Kiki continues to struggle with depression, hanging up on a call from Tombo and doing very little. That is, until tragedy strikes the next day: strong summer winds blow a visiting blimp off course, sending it crashing into the clock tower and knocking Tombo out the window to hang from a single rope. Kiki is still unable to fly well, yet she perseveres, finds a broom, and forces it into the air until she manages to catch Tombo mid-fall. It is not done gracefully, but she has no more care for what the people around her think and pulls it off, catching him in midair. The film ends with her participating more in the flying club activities, continuing to work in the bakery and at her delivery business, and writing happy letters home. She continues to ride the the beat-up broom she saved Tombo with, although Jiji's voice is never heard again (in the original).

Miyazaki once explained that Kiki's inability to hear Jiji talk anymore is a metaphor for growing up. I interpret this to mean that while she loves and appreciates Jiji, she is no longer an innocent child closer to animals than to people. She is a growing young woman who wants friends and connections and to like herself. This point is emphasized by the fact that her ability to understand Jiji stops after two key events: a particularly stressful day of more grownup responsibilities in the rain that shakes her faith in herself and a nice day turned sour that shakes her already unstable faith in Tombo, reminding her that she wants friends yet believes the city people to be spoiled and/or out of her reach.

When Kiki left her hometown, she was full of young, naive spirit, as pointed out by the other young witch she came across on her journey. Now, she understands better that the world can be a challenging place and being a teenager comes with insecurities and a constant adult search for joy. No longer is it so simple to like herself; it does not come automatically after a certain age. Suddenly unstable in her foundation of self, unsure if she is defined by her work or by her spirit, she begins to lose hold of the joy of flying, no longer knowing how to be creative with it and grow, only stagnating as a delivery service worker. She wonders if she should have other skills, even though previously she was mostly fine with only flying, in large part because she had no other exotic skill to practice.

The movie reminds us that even the most amazing talents and abilities can begin to feel like mundane tasks when we rely on them for money, when they stop feeling like a choice. This is actually a common theme in Japanese tragedy-dramas. The most common example is a musician or dancer taking their skills for granted, at least a little, until they experience a terrible injury to their hand, leg, eyes, etc. (See stories like Swan, Glass Mask, Madoka Magica, and others.) What was simply what they did before now defines their entire being because the lack of it causes a gaping hole they never consciously filled. Fortunately in Kiki's case she is not injured, but she is still shaken into remembering what flying means to her and what she can do with it. Sometimes a little pressure reignites the fire.

Many fires are reignited in the end of Kiki's Delivery Service, as shown by the epilogue credit scenes. Kiki may have accidentally broken her mother's broom, symbolically breaking from her childhood, hometown, and parents' shelter, but it opens the door for her find her own way of flying. The terrifying incident that almost led to Tombo's death shook her out of her selfish stupor, not giving any more thought to her jealousy or resentment, feelings he stirred in her alongside the thrill of a boy's interest and a friend's care and effort. When push comes to shove, she knows that Tombo is important to her and that is all that matters. She also knows in some part of herself that she is the only person who can save him. All this might be metaphorical for any kind of situation that could shock an artist into realizing what they have been doing wrong: over-complicating their art while not really putting any soul into it. You need to have a purpose, to know your work does something good besides earn a few coins. Pushed beyond all comfort zones, including her own self confidence alone and in front of others, Kiki overcomes and gets the job done. From there, she is able to rebuild her skills and enjoy them as a part of herself, not just a job. The best scene at the end is when she flies her broom alongside Tombo as he pedals the bicycle-based flying machine the club finally finished, a club she may very well be a part of now, accepting her ability to be strong as part of group.

Although the original English translation featured Jiji talking once more, if only briefly, the original Japanese version had him do nothing more than meow, cat-like, again. This is because Kiki's self confidence is much improved, but she cannot return to being a child. Jiji is still with her, but the people in her life are more important to her, just as Jiji's new family is important to him.