Hayao Miyazaki’s 1989 animation film “Kiki’s Delivery Service”, which is being shown at selected theaters in South Korea, flies on a substantial amount of charm and beauty to be savored. Although it is relatively less engaging compared to Miyazaki’s more compelling films such as “My Neighbor Totoro” (1988), it is still a fairly entertaining work decorated with enjoyable moments, and we gladly go along with its simple but bright story and characters. 

 At the beginning, the story, which is based on the children’s fantasy novel of the same name by Eiko Kadono, quickly establishes its plucky adolescent heroine and her family background. Her name is Kiki (voiced by Minami Takayama), and she is about to leave her family home due to her magical lineage. Just like her mother, she is a witch, and now there comes the time when she must go through her training period at somewhere else outside her hometown. 

 After not only her parents but also many of their neighbors give her a hearty sendoff, Kiki instantly flies away on a broomstick given by her mother, though she is not so certain about where she can begin her training period. At least, she is accompanied by her little black cat, which can be rather sarcastic during its conversation with her.

In the end, Kiki comes upon a port city on some seaside area, and it does not take much time for her to decide that this city is the one where she is going to stay. Although she unintentionally causes some trouble during her first several hours in the city, she fortunately comes across a number of nice people including a generous lady who incidentally runs a local bakery with her taciturn husband. Because this lady happens to need someone to assist her, she gladly hires Kiki, and she even rents Kiki a little staying place in her residence.

After trying to be as useful as possible during next several days, Kiki finally comes upon a job quite suitable for her magical ability. Thanks to her flying ability, she begins to work as sort of an express delivery girl around the city, and she is pleased to earn her living for herself as diligently giving helpful service to several clients of hers including a wealthy old lady.  

Leisurely rolling the story and characters from one narrative point to another, the film sometimes becomes quite humorous. I was tickled again by an episode where Kiki’s cat must disguise itself as a doll for a while, and this hilarious situation culminates to a quietly amusing moment of payoff thanks to a certain old dog which turns out to be more considerate and intelligent than expected. In addition, there is also a subplot involved with a local boy clearly smitten with Kiki, and their developing relationship along the story is balanced well between humor and sincerity.

In addition, just like any other work from Miyazaki, the film is simply lovely in terms of mood and detail. Its cell animation style is often quite vivid and striking with big and small touches to be admired and appreciated, and the port city in the film looks as crisp and gorgeous as those beautiful Mediterranean cities in South Europe. Although the period background of the story is not so specific, it is fun to watch how Miyazaki and his animators mix several different period elements into the main background of their film, and you will not be surprised at all when a huge zeppelin enters the picture later in the story.

Needless to say, there are a number of flight sequences in the film as required, and they remind us again that Miyazaki is absolutely peerless in case of the depiction of the joy and excitement of flying across the sky. Yes, it sometimes looks quite perilous for our young heroine whenever she rides on her broomstick without any particular safety measure, but we can put aside this realistic concern for a while as being entertained by those epic moments of flying across the screen. Fortunately, I happened to watch the film at the big IMAX screening room in a local movie theater of my hometown, and this experience easily surpasses when I watched the film for the time in the early 2010s.

Nevertheless, I also observed some weak aspects of the film during my viewing. Many of the main characters in the story besides Kiki and her cat remain to be more or less broad archetype, and there is not much conflict in the story except what unexpectedly happens to Kiki during its final act. This is not much of a problem in “My Neighbor Totoro” because it is so effortlessly driven by much more charm and spirit in comparison, but “Kiki’s Delivery Service” unfortunately struggles to stay afloat at times because it feels rather flat and plain in terms of story and characters.       

 Maybe this is because Miyazaki initially participated in the production of the film as a producer before eventually taking over the project later, but the result is still a quintessential Miyazaki animation film. While you can sometimes spot the foreshadowings of his very next work “Porco Rosso” (1992), you can also notice how much it influences recent Pixar film “Luca” (2021), which clearly emulates several works of Miyazaki here and there. 

In conclusion, “Kiki’s Delivery Service” does not reach the level of “My Neighbor Totoro” or “Spirited Away” (2002), but I must point out that even those middle-level Ghibli animation films have much more style and personality compared to many passable products such as, say, “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” (2023) and its recent sequel. It is not exactly great, but it is still wonderful to watch it from a big movie screen anyway.