Name: A coming-of-age story, where the ordinary and the magical come together
Item: Kiki's Delivery Service
Rating: 85
Author: Xetrint

Waifra

A coming-of-age story, where the ordinary and the magical come together · Waifora

Kiki's Delivery Service is a lighthearted coming-of-age story revolving around Kiki, as she discovers more of the world outside of the rural town she grew up in.

While it has a very simple plot, there's something unique about the setting, theming, and pacing that all seem to really work together in telling this story. It reveals a clear dichotomy between rural and city life, the magical and the mundane, and selfless and the selfish, all of which seem to add to Kiki growing into her own as she strives to be independent in an unknown place.

Visually, it's beautiful. The backgrounds are colorful and gorgeous. Kiki's and Jiji's designs are simple, yet dark and distinct, which is really effective in showing how they contrast with the colorful, modern world around them. Characters are expressive and dynamically animated. I loved the various character interactions, especially when little bits of personality are given to the supporting characters. It made the world feel more lived in and the characters more believable.

The slow pacing and lighthearted nature of everything make this a very nice, chill watch; however, I feel that the pacing of the latter third of the film ruins the experience a bit. Spoilers below regarding that.

Spoiler, click to view

Towards the latter part of the film, Kiki is confronted with her magical powers weakening. Frankly, it feels like a plot device that comes seemingly from out of the blue and is used as a conflict for the sake of there being a conflict. It doesn’t help that the main explanation for why this happens is essentially because "Kiki’s having an off-day." All that said, I don’t have much issue with it.

The problem with the pacing occurs once a second, larger conflict comes along to coincide with Kiki’s weakened magic: an airship is swept away by strong winds, causing it to crash into a clock tower, with Tombo, a boy Kiki recently befriended, dangling from the airship by a rope, holding on for dear life. Predictably, Kiki regains enough of her magic in this time of need, saves Tombo, and everyone celebrates.

While this sequence of events does make for a grand, final spectacle to cap the film off, once the spectacle is over, the movie just sort of... ends. While we get to see moments of the cast's lives in a brief denouement before the credits, the way the movie ended was jarring, especially when compared to the slower pacing of everything that preceded. It felt like the movie had a big disastrous conflict just for the sake of having a big conflict.

Overall, issues of pacing aside, I would definitely recommend Kiki’s Delivery Service. I didn't grow up on Studio Ghibli films, and even at the time of this writing, there’s plenty I still haven’t seen, but even in spite of that, I don't think you need to have any kind of familiarity or nostalgia with Ghibli films in order to enjoy this one. Of the Miyazaki films I've seen, this one is my favorite, for being such a fun watch. While some of his other works have grander plots and more profound themes, this one was fun, through and through.