Kiki’s Delivery Service

As you can most probably observe from the artwork in the picture above, Kiki’s Delivery Service is another one of Studio Ghibli’s masterpieces. This movie was produced in 1989, a long 19 years ago, but the vibrant artwork still triumphs over certain modern animes of today. So far, Ghibli’s movies have never disappointed me… Well, perhaps besides Howl’s Moving Castle, which didn’t leave that big of an impression on me.

Today, I took some time off to watch Kiki’s Delivery Service and after finishing it, the only thought on my mind was, “Darn! The movie was so damn short!”

From my above reaction, you can roughly guess how good the movie is - Ghibli really should consider making a sequel for it.

This is a small trailer for the movie. Enjoy it! The song in it is splendid too.

Summary

This movie tells of the story of a 13-year-old female witch, Kiki, who’s leaving her hometown for at least a year for independent training. She left on one clear night with her black cat, Jiji, with her family and friends sending her off.

By a stroke of luck, she came to a beautiful town by the ocean. She decided to stay there and train.

At this town, she found a nice lady by the name of Osono who provided her with lodgings and meals.

Seeing that her expertise is flying, she decided to set up her own business called Kiki’s Delivery Service whereby she’ll help people to deliver stuffs for a small fee.

At this town, there was a boy by the name of Tombo who was quite interested in Kiki…

Out of a sudden, Kiki’s witch powers disappeared and she got very frustrated. Luckily, thanks to the help of her friend whom she met in the forest, she managed to get her spirits back.

After that, Tombo was in the midst of trouble and at the nick of time, Kiki’s witch powers returned and she successfully saved him…

End

I shan’t spoil the story further for those who haven’t watch it yet. Of course, there are much more funny and sad moments in the movie itself so if you like my summary of it, there’s only 1 thing for you to do now - Go watch it!

Besides the storyline, the music in the movie was excellent too. Well, this was to be expected since most of them came from Joe Hisaishi, who is well-known for his many melodious tunes from other Ghibli movies like Spirited Away and My Neighbour Totoro etc.

My favourite tune would have to be ‘A Town where you can see the Ocean’. Below is an orchestra version of it performed by the Hong Kong Symphony Orchestra. Notice that the tune is similar to the one in the trailer above.

Now, you may ask, why would I suddenly watch this movie? Well, I was actually brought to it through its music. My school’s Harmonica Band would be performing ‘A Town where you can see the Ocean’ in our first ever concert at Esplanade recital studio in June this year. That’s how I came to know of this great movie.

Now… What other Ghibli movies should I watch?

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Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989)

~ by Lustrous Realm on April 30, 2008.