Kiki’s Delivery Service by Eiko Kadono is a novel that originally became popular in Japan but then became popular in North America through a TV show. This novel is about a young witch who goes off on her own for the first time with only her cat Jiji as a companion. Together they explore a new city and Kiki learns what is it like to be on her own for the first time. The titular Kiki, daughter of a witch and a folklorist (a man fascinated with witch history), is a wide-eyed girl with her head in the clouds and her feet on the ground. This is what sets her apart from a lot of children protagonists: she’s very all-encompassing. A practical girl who wakes up some days with bright ideas and hope, and others with doubt and reservations. Kiki is a three-dimensional character who follows a formulaic children’s story that avoids ever feeling tired or predictable by Kiki’s own merit. But while the novel of Howl’s Moving Castle was written by a beloved Welsh author, Kiki began her life in Japan, created and written by Eiko Kadono in 1985. I went into this review more-or-less totally clean and with a new eye. I was taken in by the bright cover and the hope for a fresh, lively tale. Fortunately, that’s exactly what Kiki’s Delivery Service, well, delivers.

Review: Kiki’s Delivery Service by Eiko Kadono | Books and Bao Review: Kiki’s Delivery Service by Eiko Kadono | Books and Bao

I confess to not having read the original English translation (by Lynne E. Riggs) nor to having seen the film in around five or six years, but I’m glad for that. That big pond is a town called Koriko, where, when she first arrives, Kiki is made to feel unwelcome and looked on with suspicion. She has a year here before she can return home to her parents and tell them what she has achieved.She doesn’t come from loneliness — she comes from a place of love and connection. She’s excited for the journey ahead, for a chance to grow up. It’s a classic coming-of-age fantasy setup. And unlike the above films, where a journey starts with loss, Kiki’s Delivery Service starts while Kiki still has something left to lose. Loneliness is threaded through many Ghibli films, many of which feature protagonists who set off on a journey not because they particularly want to, but because they’re forced to. Kiki leaves home because of witch tradition, but unlike other Ghibli heroes, she jumps at the idea — even skipping a planned camping trip with her father because she’s so excited. But in Spirited Away, Chihiro is forcibly separated from her parents, and winds up in a strange spirit world. In Howl’s Moving Castle, Sophie is cursed by a witch and leaves her hat shop to trek to the Wastes. In Princess Mononoke, Ashitaka ventures out from his village to seek a solution for the terrible curse consuming him. And on a less fantastical note, in Whisper of the Heart, Shizuku navigates the doldrums of adolescence. When Kiki arrives in her new city, the citizens don’t take too kindly to her — a hint that this journey won’t be as smooth and victorious as she might have thought. She’s a stranger in the large crowds, unaccustomed to bustling traffic and staring people. Jiji voices his concern: maybe they should find another town that’s friendlier? But Kiki is determined to make this work.

Book Review: “Kiki’s Delivery Service” by Eiko Kadono Book Review: “Kiki’s Delivery Service” by Eiko Kadono

While it would be possible for this story to leave a sour taste — a witch, heavily judged and shunned, must prove to the locals that she is not, in fact, evil — instead the theme reads a little differently: local people learn from Kiki to be kind and accepting of others, especially those who are unusual. Goro Miyazaki on making Studio Ghibli’s first CG movie: ‘I spent a lot of nights not being able to sleep’ In one chapter, for example, she must deliver a poem and a pen as birthday presents from a secret admirer. Her curiosity about the poem leads to it being lost, and so Kiki — with the help of her talking cat familiar Jiji — must find a solution to the problem she created. By the end of their movies, the characters have found connections with others, but because we know the depth of their original loneliness, these relationships take on more meaning. They aren’t superficial; they’re deep, necessary emotional connections fostered throughout the whole movie, and an answer to solitude. Studio Ghibli films often interrogate the notion of loneliness and emotional connection, centering on heroes that reluctantly strike out on their own, such as Sophie in Howl’s Moving Castle and Ashitaka in Princess Mononoke. But in Kiki’s Delivery Service, loneliness isn’t explicitly in the forefront; it slowly folds itself into Kiki’s life as the story stretches out. Even when she’s surrounded by friendly people, she’s ultimately alone.

Hayao Miyazaki’s 1989 animated feature Kiki’s Delivery Service masterfully handles a lot of traditional topics around growing up and finding a path in the world. But it also touches on a facet of growing up that society tends to overlook: It’s a lonely process. Finding your way is lonely. Separating from a close family unit and making your way in a new place is lonely. Kiki comes from a very typical family. There is nothing extraordinary about her. She never faced crazy adversity or has any special powers other than being a witch. Being a witch is even pretty normalized within her family, friends, and community. This is something a little different than a lot of novels in the United States. Many main characters are either extraordinary or have faced some source of adversity. Kiki overall lives a very typical life and comes from a loving and supportive family.

Book Review: Kiki’s Delivery Service by Eiko Kadono - U.OSU Book Review: Kiki’s Delivery Service by Eiko Kadono - U.OSU

In other words, Kiki is a girl who learns from her mistakes, from her leaps of faith, and from her yeses and her nos. Her story is not unlike that of a Pokémon trainer: at age ten a young witch must begin to decide how to spend her life. Her approach to the situations she comes across are consistently surprising – sometimes mistakes are made; other times ingenious solutions are found.Kiki’s Delivery Service is refreshingly light and breezy in an era where many middle-grade fantasies have become elaborate operations. There’s certainly nothing wrong with that (and, indeed, some readers more used to that type of fare may find the minimal worldbuilding in Kiki a bit disappointing), but there is definitely something to be said for the gentleness of this book in a year that has seen surprisingly little of it. While the protagonist is 13, the reading level of this story is probably more appropriate for younger readers and would also make a great read-aloud, even for those who aren’t reading on their own quite yet. She’s a girl with a good moral compass. Her tenacity and her curiosity go hand-in-hand, leading her over and again into and out of trouble, with Jiji sometimes serving as her conscience and sometimes being entirely voiceless and useless — as all our consciences often are. While reading this scene I remember thinking, “You’d better not mess this up, Kiki! What if these two could have ended up together forever, living happily ever after, and you ruin all of that before it begins!” So invested was I in Kiki, Jiji, and their escapades. Coinciding with the release of the film in the West, an English translation of the novel hit shelves in 2003. Now, however, we have a fresh new translation for 2020 by Emily Balistrieri. It’s doubly important to get this theme across given that this is a children’s story, where clarity of themes is vital. Another thing that’s vital is the tone and language of the book.