How Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice saved Stu­dio Ghibli

After leav­ing school, the neces­si­ty to cre­ate hand-drawn maps became sad­ly irreg­u­lar, as to me, a per­son­al­ly scrawled Ord­nance Sur­vey could col­lapse the roads between my house, my friends and our favourite haunts. Even if it was a make-believe town, this cray­on car­tog­ra­phy pin-dropped imag­ined adven­ture and excite­ment just down the road, although in real­i­ty it was a nagged car ride away.

The attain­able fan­tas­tic is so often the key to mak­ing a kids’ adven­ture film fly with audi­ences, and Stu­dio Ghibli’s Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice, which cel­e­brates its 30^th anniver­sary this year, soars among the best of them. But before the stu­dio could take off, they need­ed to plan their route. They need­ed a map.

In his book ​‘Mix­ing Work With Plea­sure’, Ghi­b­li super pro­duc­er Toshio Suzu­ki says that ​“being able to draw a map is one of the basic skills one has to learn in life,” some­thing he was tasked with doing for Kori­co City, the coastal town that’s home to an extra­or­di­nary young witch and her bur­geon­ing couri­er busi­ness. ​“It is one of the most impor­tant jobs of a pro­duc­er to cre­ate maps,” con­tin­ues Suzu­ki, ​“whether based on real or imag­i­nary worlds.” But his work on the film didn’t just map out Kori­co City – it set a blue­print for the stu­dio itself.

Pri­or to the release of Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice, Stu­dio Ghi­b­li had released three fea­ture films: Cas­tle in the Sky, Grave of the Fire­flies and My Neigh­bour Totoro, the lat­ter two arriv­ing in cin­e­mas in 1988 as a dou­ble bill (sure­ly Fire­flies has to go first?) and a dou­ble flop. Sunao Katabuchi, mak­er of the 2016 ani­mé In This Cor­ner of the World, was ini­tial­ly in the director’s chair for their next one, Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice, but just a year before release, Miyaza­ki announced he would be tak­ing con­trol of the metaphor­i­cal broom han­dle (some­thing he did again with Howl’s Mov­ing Cas­tle and future Mirai direc­tor Mamoru Hosoda).

While Totoro has its unde­ni­able charms and mer­chan­dise licens­ing perks, Ghibli’s fourth film, about a teenage witch seek­ing adven­ture and inde­pen­dence, became a hand­book for Japan­ese animation’s elder states­man. In his direc­to­r­i­al state­ment, assess­ing the film’s the­mat­ic val­ues, Miyaza­ki said that the, ​“true inde­pen­dence girls must now con­front involves the far more dif­fi­cult task of dis­cov­er­ing their own tal­ents,” a notion he has explored through­out his career.

That quote could also be applied to the wolf war­rior San in Princess Mononoke, the bath house bat­tler Chi­hi­ro in Spir­it­ed Away and Sophie, wiz­ard wran­gler of Howl’s Mov­ing Cas­tle. Miyaza­ki stu­dent Hiro­masa Yonebayashi’s films Arri­et­ty, When Marnie Was There and Mary and the Witch’s Flower (made with Stu­dio Ponoc) share this same nar­ra­tive DNA, and their strength is per­haps in part thanks to Kiki’s sta­bil­i­sa­tion of the studio.

It was Suzu­ki who piv­ot­ed the studio’s mar­ket­ing towards young women, the idea being that they might see them­selves in the entre­pre­neur­ial, free-spir­it­ed Kiki. It paid off: Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice became the third high­est gross­ing film of the year in Japan, behind Rain Man and Indi­ana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Build­ing on the strong the­mat­ic and visu­al iden­ti­ties of My Neigh­bour Totoro and Cas­tle in the Sky, Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice achieved huge suc­cess, which may have helped Ghibli’s ear­li­er films to then find an audi­ence. ensur­ing the studio’s lega­cy through the cul­tur­al adop­tion of images and ideas that would become its defin­ing hall­marks. Crisp blue skies, rolling green hills to lay back on, find­ing one’s place in the world, the impor­tance of hard work, find­ing adver­si­ty in per­son­al chal­lenges rather than those imposed by an antagonist.

There is one moment in the film which cap­tures the ethos of Miyazaki’s work bet­ter than any oth­er: Kiki, zip­ping through the sky on her broom­stick, seam­less­ly merges into the V‑formation of a flock of migrat­ing geese. It’s only brief, but this shot reveals two essen­tial aspects of Miyazaki’s work. The majesty of flight has always been a point of fas­ci­na­tion for him, from sketch­ing planes in his youth, to his ​‘final’ avi­a­tion-themed epic The Wind Ris­es, via numer­ous thrilling flight scenes across his oeu­vre. And, of course, there’s the porcine fly­ing ace adven­ture, Por­co Rosso.

Yet even more impor­tant than the pure aer­i­al spec­ta­cle is the pro­jec­tion of a ide­al­is­tic vision of human­i­ty; mag­ic and nature oper­at­ing in har­mo­ny. In the skies above Kori­co City, a world that feels so full and lived in, it seems strange­ly achievable.

When Suzu­ki asked some chil­dren to draw a map of their home­towns, and then one of Kori­co City, he was sur­prised by the results: ​“The sur­round­ings they lived in held no sense of real­i­ty for them. But they were hap­py to draw a map of a movie locale, and it was accu­rate.” Suzu­ki had mixed feel­ings about this, but it’s a tes­ta­ment to his and the studio’s skill at design­ing beau­ti­ful, mem­o­rable worlds. If you could draw your­self into your town, or one designed by Stu­dio Ghi­b­li, it’s not going to be a hard choice. Pass me the blue and green crayons.