Miyazaki Madness, Part 5: "Kiki's Delivery Service" and my Ghibli origin story

This is where it all started for me

On Thursdays, I’m publishing reviews of classic movies, including pieces that have never appeared online before taken from my book 200 Reviews, available now in Paperback or on Kindle (which you should really consider buying, because it’s an awesome collection!). In this series, we are examining the filmography of my all-time favorite movie director - and newly minted two-time Oscar winner with his win for The Boy and the Heron - Hayao Miyazaki! We will be looking at all of his theatrical feature films along with the movies he wrote but did not direct, for a total of 15 weeks of Miyazaki Madness! The series continues today with Miyazaki’s 1989 classic Kiki’s Delivery Service. Enjoy…

Kiki’s Delivery Service

1989, Dir. Hayao Miyazaki

Originally published in 200 Reviews, combining writing from 2012, 2013, and 2023

The more I think about it, the more I realize that my first viewing of Kiki’s Delivery Service was a truly seminal moment in my filmgoing life. It was not just the first film by Hayao Miyazaki that I had seen, or even just my first anime, but very likely the first foreign film I ever watched. When my mother bought Disney’s dubbed VHS tape for me sometime in the late 1990s, she unknowingly opened a whole lot of doors that would lead to various cinematic obsessions later in life.

I was, of course, cognizant of none of this as a child. I do not think I even knew the film was Japanese. I probably thought it was just another Disney film, albeit one that was quite conspicuously better than its fairy tale fellows. It has, in fact, taken me well over a decade now to understand exactly what Kiki’s Delivery Service means to me, as I see something different every time I return to it.