“Flying used to be fun until I started doing it for a living.”

Kiki, a young witch, moves out of her family’s home one day in order to settle down in a town and improve her powers, a thing every young witch eventually has to do. After a bit of a treacherous journey, she finally finds one, where she is overwhelmed by the number of people that she meets, and how many of them aren’t so kind, though, eventually, quite a few she meets are. After using her broom to fly and help someone, a bakery owner invites her to stay at her home and work for her, using her flying abilities to deliver things.

I first watched this movie about a little over a year ago, and I really liked it, but was also quite disappointed by its ending. Because of this, I wanted to give it a rewatch to see if my thoughts improved, and you can probably already guess if they did significantly or not based on my score, but nonetheless. Even the first time I watched Kiki’s Delivery Service, as well as on this viewing, I was super into it because of its themes, and to be honest, I think I resonated with them even more on this viewing. I find that what it has to say about purpose and creative burnout is really relatable, not only just for me and where I’m at right now in life, but for most people, and I think how it portrays mental health in general is deeply profound.

Kiki, being the main character, is the one who experiences these same emotions that everyone has, which makes her an incredibly relatable character. Not only is she just a super good and selfless person, but she also has her good and bad days mentally, which is not something that a lot of movies really portray hardly at all (which isn’t necessarily a good or bad thing, depending on the movie). Immediately from the get-go, you kind of are going on this whole adventure with Kiki, because all the emotions she experiences are extremely relatable, even for people who aren’t as young and still growing, me included. This is elevated to a whole different level when she eventually loses her powers (which isn’t a spoiler since it’s in the premise), something that symbolizes one of the themes I mentioned, being creative burnout. What it eventually has to say about protecting your mental health instead of going full throttle with everything is not something that you’d see from a lot of media, especially nowadays. It’s one of Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli’s most personal movies, I would say.

Adding onto that, her whole experience with not knowing what to do with her life is something that really hit hard the first time I watched it, and certainly still hits hard, as it is, yet again, something I can deeply relate to. She’s a witch, but unlike a lot of the other witches, particularly one (whom she meets early on), she doesn’t know what she wants to focus on in her craft, and this leads to her getting a job, which is what leads to her burnout. To sort of sum up her character as a whole, I think she is one of Studio Ghibli’s best in my mind.

I really like her little cat, named Jiji, and what he represents as well. He’s kind of just the fun side character for most of the movie, but as the film goes along, he also has a little journey (very little) of his own, which was rather heartfelt and sweet, to be honest. Additionally, how his character changes by the end, especially for Kiki, and what it represents, as well as how it ties into the movie’s themes, are some of the most impactful aspects of the entire film.

Tombo is another great character too, a young boy who is very clearly interested in Kiki. Unlike Kiki, however, his path in life is very clearly set for him, as he already has passions and goals that have led him to know what he wants to do for the rest of his life. You’d think that this would make him somewhat of an unlikable character because the whole movie is about the opposite of what Tombo’s whole situation is, but he isn’t, because of his compassion for Kiki and understanding what she’s going through. I also think their very subtle little romance with each other was a nice addition to the story, because, since it is subtle, it doesn’t take away from what the movie’s really about.

The thing that I saved for last in this section of my review was something that I saved for last because it’s my favorite thing about the whole movie, even on top of its themes. Ever since I first watched Kiki’s Delivery Service over a year ago, the score has constantly been replayed on my so-called “chill” playlist, because I think that the score for this film is not only the best from Studio Ghibli and Joe Hisaishi, but one of my favorite scores for a movie, period. In fact, it’s in my top five. It’s just a beautifully whimsical score that perfectly conveys a sense of adventure, sadness, joy, and a whole other bunch of emotions. It’s a score that I will probably continue to listen to for the rest of my life.

After praising this movie for so much of this review, you’re probably wondering why I don’t rate this as one of my favorite movies of all time. Well, to be quite honest, I think Kiki’s Delivery Service is so close to being a perfect film, and would be a perfect film if it had a few tweaks to the story, but even those few things that keep it from being great really do keep it from being great. I don’t have anything to mention that I feel mixed about, so I’ll just jump straight into the negatives and what I think kept this from being an all-timer for me.

First off, the thing I would say hurts this movie the most is the pacing. I like the slower pacing for the most part, but there are parts where it meanders quite a bit. I wouldn’t quite say that it’s a boring movie, but it does feel directionless a bit every once in a while. The scenes that feel like they meander do eventually lead to a pretty good payoff, as they are tied to the themes, but in the moment, they feel like they are unnecessary and don’t add to the story. I don’t know, to wrap that point up, I would just simply say that for a lot of the movie, unless you’ve seen it before, it’s kind of hard to know what it’s deeply about or where it’s going until towards the end.

The other negative is one thing that really bothered me on my first watch, but I do think that I got over it rewatching the film, so it’s definitely the lesser of the two negatives, but it’s the climax. The climax, at least for me, just doesn’t quite feel like it fits or was where this story was heading, and not in a very good way. The whole film is a rather quiet and slow story, and the climax is not that at all. It’s very much trying to be a big and epic way to finish off the story, but it simply comes off as anticlimactic since that’s never what the movie was really about. It was never a fast-moving movie at all, so the climax just ends up feeling like it doesn’t belong.

I really like Kiki’s Delivery Service, however, I really do. I would say that, behind Whisper of the Heart (which I really need to give a review of, as it’s one of my favorite Ghibli movies), it’s the studio’s most personal movie, and the themes and message of it hit hard for me. I just see potential for it to be a great film rather than a really good one, which is why it kind of frustrates me.