Kiki's Delivery Service

Truly an amazing animated movie! Ghibli done a superb job hand animating and creating the wonderful world of Kiki's which was written by Eiko Kadono.

The first Miyazaki film that doesn’t use his usual bag of surrealist tricks. Sure, the lead characters consist of a witch and a talking cat, but besides that it stays fairly grounded. It takes place in a recognizable location (it looks like Austria/Switzerland to me?) and once again the worldbuilding is very immersive, easily the best thing about the animation and film as a whole. The tone is very wholesome, it’s a light and breezy watch with beautiful visuals and a great score. However, much like _My Neighbor Totoro_, it doesn’t take enough artistic risk. It’s a fairly generic coming-of-age story that doesn’t hit many emotions or ideas that will stay with me for a longer period of time. It’s certainly more eventful than that film, and the more well defined protagonists make this a more engaging watch, but it’s too predictable and disposable for it to be great. 6.5/10