Kiki's Delivery Service (1989)
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
A young witch, on her mandatory year of independent life, finds fitting into a new community difficult while she supports herself by running an air courier service.
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What critics compared Kiki's Delivery Service to
Casarosa combines elements of Ponyo’s interspecies friendship, the episodic small-town dynamics of Kiki’s Delivery Service and the sun-drenched derring-do of Porco Rosso into a sweet, gentle tale about identity, authenticity, and finding your people.
Luca is if Casarosa attempted a combination of Fellini’s La Strada with Miyazaki’s Kiki’s Delivery Service .
There are surface-level similarities — Casarosa has spoken about the influence that Miyazaki’s early TV works left on his art style, and it shows — especially in the design of Giulia’s chunky cat who takes an early suspicion of Luca and Alberto, and in Giulia’s burly fisherman father Massimo, both of whom look like they stepped straight out of Kiki’s Delivery Service .
Director Enrico Casarosa’s Luca is Ponyo and Kiki’s Delivery Service with some major Call Me By Your Name undertones (it’s almost shocking Disney let a film this queer coded release at all–to the point where the film not taking that leap is ultimately a disappointment).
But the pattern is unmistakable, from the protagonists’ wise, grounded fathers in My Neighbor Totoro and Arrietty to Kiki’s sweet parents and supportive mentors Osono and Ursula (Kiki’s Delivery Service) and Sosuke and Ponyo’s formidable mothers (Ponyo).
Also, for fans of Kiki’s Delivery Service, Bob is likely to remind them of Jiji, another black cat who is a wonderful companion to his human friend.
Hirasawa is both spirited (no pun intended) and shrewd as Erica; Terajima is an absolute hoot as Bella Yaga as she screeches and shrieks like the world will end; Toyokawa broods and grunts in a fitfully funny turn, while Hamada provides ample mirth in the feline role of Thomas that is reminiscent of Jiji in Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989).
A first run at a new medium with a breezy, light-on-plot escapade reminiscent of Kiki’s Delivery Service rather than the densely intricate narrative of Jones’ own Howl’s Moving Castle .
Bella Yaga’s familiar, a talking black cat named Thomas, is similarly reminiscent of Jiji in Kiki’s Delivery Service .
Ghibli fans will no doubt be reminded of “Kiki’s Delivery Service,” about another underage witch with a faithful feline sidekick, although “Earwig” isn’t nearly as charming, despite its having been drawn from a Diana Wynne Jones novel.
Additionally, evoking Kiki’s Delivery Service and other beloved Ghibli classics a few times only manages to emphasize the deficiencies here.
On-screen, the eponymous Earwig (Kokoro Hirasawa) follows in the footsteps of Spirited Away's Chihiro and Kiki's Delivery Service's titular figure.
The studio’s film catalog is a true embarrassment of riches with (though not limited to) “Grave of the Fireflies,” “Kiki’s Delivery Service,” “Princess Mononoke,” “Spirited Away,” “Howl’s Moving Castle” and “The Wind Rises.”
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Shout-out, too, to Whoopi Goldberg as a talking black cat, which has echoes of Studio Ghibli’s Jiji from Kiki’s Delivery Service .
(Hence the rationale for handing the reins of The Cat Returns over to young Morita, a production assistant on the classics Perfect Blue and Miyazaki's own Kiki's Delivery Service .)
That means Ghibli loyalists won't have to suffer any flashbacks to the compromised versions of My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service that circulated in America in the ’80s and ’90s before stricter quality controls were put in place.
Directly preceded by two of the studio’s most memorable animated films – My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki’s Delivery Service – Only Yesterday was helmed by The Tale of the Princess Kaguya’s Isao Takahata, who co-founded Studio Ghibli with partner Hayao Miyazaki.
Isao Takahata’s 1991 Only Yesterday was not Ghibli’s first feature, however; it was preceded by Hayao Miyazaki’s 1986 Castle in the Sky, Takahata’s brutal war drama Grave of the Fireflies and Miyazaki’s fluffy merchandising bonanza My Neighbor Totoro (a pairing that Ghibli had the perverse backbone to originally release as a double feature in 1988), and Miyazaki’s 1989 Kiki’s Delivery Service.
Even if you don't make it to Princess Mononoke, I can't urge you enough to check out two of Miyazaki's previous films available on tape here in the U.S. -- My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service -- both of which mix timeless, youthful themes with sly, wholly original animation and a decidedly outre sensibility.
I’ve already been over these themes in my Nausicaä and Castle in the Sky pieces, but even films like My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki’s Delivery Service have a genuine love for the natural world.
Princess Mononoke, the latest Japanese anime export from the legendary Hayao Miyazaki (Kiki's Delivery Service, My Neighbor Totoro) is neither a bad film nor the masterpiece so many are making it out to be (Roger Ebert, why have you forsaken us?).
Princess Mononoke is the latest film by the great Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki, who also made My Neighbor Totoro (1988, released here in 1993) and Kiki's Delivery Service (1989).
A box-office phenomenon in its native country, Miyazaki's epic, visually sumptuous Princess Mononoke may come as a shock to fans used to the quirky, idiosyncratic comic touches abundant in his My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service.
The first Miramax/Miyazaki title, Kiki's Delivery Service, was released direct-to-video; Princess Mononoke will have a theatrical run before taking its place on Blockbuster shelves.
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The everyday “magic” (shades of “Kiki’s Delivery Service”) is only magical on first sight.
As with the most childlike of the Japanese animation master’s previous films — My Neighbor Totoro , Kiki’s Delivery Service — the dreamlike quality of Ponyo is reflected in the way the magical elements seem not to come as a complete surprise, even to the grown-ups.
He’s shown his love for airships and flying in classics like “Castle in the Sky,” “Porco Rosso” and “Kiki’s Delivery Service,” and he brings that same eye to the undersea world, giving us fantastical fishy creatures and wildly imaginative ships.
The buzz: The latest film from Japanese animation master Hayao Miyazaki marks a return to his littlest kid-friendly works like “My Neighbor Totoro” and “Kiki’s Delivery Service,” after a series of more mature acclaimed fantasies “Spirited Away,” “Howl’s Moving Castle” and “Princess Mononoke.”
And that for him, "normal" and "gentle" mean the enjoyable and only slightly less bizarre "My Neighbor Totoro" (1988) and "Kiki's Delivery Service" (1989).
Ponyo is a kids film at heart, though; it's much closer in tone to the tween-witch escapades of Kiki's Delivery Service than it is to feral growlings of Princess Mononoke.
Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989, Disney) takes place in a magical variation of our own world.