Kiki's Delivery Service

I would have to say that out of all the Miyazaki films so far, Kiki's Delivery Service is still one of my top favorites. While his epic films are more exciting to watch, I always felt that Miyazaki's talent in story telling shined in his coming-of-age films. Stories about daily life and growing up are the types of films I felt reached people on a personal level. Many people could relate to the characters. What I loved most about Kiki is the theme of childhood and believing in one's self.

Unlike Miyazaki's other films, Kiki's Delivery Service doesn't deal with any actual antagonist. The only "villian" Kiki has to deal with in the film is within herself. Throughout the film, Kiki learns how to live on her own by earning money delivering packages. Something I hadn't noticed the first time I watched this film is the fact that Kiki's Delivery Service is the only film where having money is big concern. One interesting example is the scene when Kiki is at the bakery waiting for potential customers. In this scene, we see not only Kiki's concern about money, but also concerns about her looks. Because of these concerns, Miyazaki is able to add a sense of realism to the film as well as character developement.

Another interesting thing I noticed in this film is the way Miyazaki sets up his world. As we already know, Miyazaki loves to create strong female characters for his main roles. While Kiki may not be considered strong in the beginning of the film, she does meet various women who are strong and have professional careers. For example, we have Ursala who is an artist, Osono who is a baker, and Maki who is a fashion designer. Of the all the women Kiki meets, she chooses Ursala as her role model. Ursala is the one Kiki relates to the most. She is also the person who helps Kiki regain her powers.

In contrast to the theme of flight, which in Miyazaki's films usually represent freedom, I felt that Miyazaki used rain/water as a way to remind us that we are still part of the earth and to not take advantage of our freedom. For Kiki, I saw the weather as one of her major obstacles. Usually when Kiki becomes overly excited, she is always interrupted by bad weather. We see this early in the film when Kiki decides to leave home because it will be the "perfect" day. While Kiki may be able to fly high and soar over the city, the rain constantly brings her back to the ground. She even becomes sick and unable to leave her room because of it. She is reminded that life isn't easy and that not everything will always go her way. Luckily for her, the rain is also helps guide Kiki. If it wasn't for the rain, Kiki wouldn't have discovered the big city she ended up staying at. She also wouldn't have learned how to rediscover the source of her magic.

Something else I noticed about the film is the change of music and dubbing. In the English dub, the music for the opening and ending sequences were replaced with more American songs. There was also additional background music in scene that weren't there in the original Japanese version. Another change is near the end of the film when Kiki regains her powers. In the Japanese dub, Kiki is no longer able to speak with Jiji the way she use to. However, in the English dub, Jiji is able to speak to Kiki again. This change obviously made fans upset since it changed the way we saw the film. Fortunately for us, there has been a new release of Kiki's Delivery Service by Disney with most, if not all, the Japanese songs, music, and dubbing back the way it was from the original.

Personally, I loved both the Japanese dub as well as the English dub. Of course do prefer the Japanese dub, but I also love the English dub since it was how I watched the film the first time I saw it on TV. I loved the film in English and watching it in Japanese only helped intensify my viewing experience.