Kiki’s Delivery Service was released in 1989 in Japan.
The previous movie, TOTORO, was also a family type animated movie and this Kiki’s Delivery Service followed the same line. Personally I like Castle in the sky or Nausicaa of the valley of the winds first of all because the message and dream of people are fantastic. However, most of family or kids in Japan would probably choose TOTORO or Kiki’s Delivery Service for their favourite works of Hayao Miyazaki.
Hayao Miyazaki made a trip to European countries for this movie inspiration and that the stage of this animation was probably set in an image of pre war time city of Sweden. Story was simple, maybe the simplest story among his works. A girl with a magic (a witch, who is KIKI ) is trying to help people with her power although she is a beautiful minded and quite standard looking girl. One day, her boy class mate is left in the air by accident, so she hurried there rinding on her broomstick to save the boy. She will be the big help as she wish and all her friends jumped with joy at her great job. Yes, such a simple story.
But the simple story helped all the family to understand it well and this movie made a big hit with a huge sensation in Japan to make the box record of Japan ( now the NO.1 Movie of the record is Spirited Away, 2nd is Howl’s moving castle, 3rd is Princess Mononoke. ALL his movies !).
This movie was mainly targeted young girl of Japan, and the theme song was selected from a top singer-songwriter’s ones. The song also was a million hit before the movie and this movie helped the revival hit of the song in Japan. Miyazaki usually use a totally new song with collaboration with Jo Hisaishi, this selection is very special and rare. It’s said that producer, Toshio Suzuki, recommended this song to Miyazaki at the beginning and was accepted.
Beware fo the song, in USA version or international version, the theme song is different from the Japanese original song.
Miyazaki made a clear audience target when making KIKI’s Delivery Service. Usually his target is roughly the adult or family. But this time he focused on girls’ life by targeting girls audience.
When this movie was made, Japanese girls were said that their life style changed much in comparison with traditional Japanese minded girls. What KIKI shows is almost traditional mentality of Japanese girls, which means they try to help the world by contributing society. Good old time of Japan’s girls textbook was something like this concept. They at the time wanted to help friends aroundthem, husband in the family, andanybody suffered around them. A good virtue of old time Japan seemed to be vanishing then.
In the movie, KIKI has something like above type of Japanese tradition of standard girls. I thought so in the first time watching.
It’s of course impossible that all of them go back to old time mentality in Japan, but Miyazaki probably thinks that virtue is something that should never disappear from our mind whenever we may live with people.
The time stage was set around the war time, it means maybe more than 50 years ago. So when we Japanese, especially for me as 48 year old man, see this movie, it’s natural to remember the time we had in Japan then. KIKI looks like a standard Japanese girl of that era. But I also think she is a lovely girl for any countires’ people because her mentality is a substantial part of any people in any countries. That’s why this movie tells something to all the viewers in the world.
KIKI’s Delivery Service is a very simple movie for a Miyazaki movie. But theme of this story is very deeply common for all of us.
Many of Japanese family type people say Kiki’s Delivery Service is one of the best of Miyazaki films. If you are family type person, I’m sure you will like this movie.
