59-3 - Kiki's Delivery Service

A 13-year-old witch moves to a new city, starts a delivery business, and then loses the thing that makes her a witch. It’s gentler than that sounds, but not as simple.

This week on Toonami Absolution, Alyx, Jon, and Sam cover Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989), Hayao Miyazaki’s adaptation of Eiko Kadono’s 1985 novel and the first Studio Ghibli film to do well on its initial release.

Kiki leaves home on the night of a full moon, as young witches traditionally do at 13, to spend a year on her own. She flies to the port city of Koriko with her black cat Jiji and settles above a bakery run by the kind-hearted Osono. She starts a broomstick delivery service and befriends Tombo, a boy obsessed with aviation who admires her flying. After she misses a party he invites her to and falls ill from a delivery in the rain, Osono quietly arranges for the two to meet again.

A flight on Tombo’s bicycle-powered flying machine goes well, but Kiki is intimidated by his friends and her confidence collapses. She loses her ability to fly and to understand Jiji. When an airship accident leaves Tombo hanging from a drifting mooring line, she has to find her way back to her powers fast.

We cover the Disney English dub, with Kirsten Dunst as Kiki, Phil Hartman as Jiji, and Janeane Garofalo as the painter Ursula. We also talk about the earlier Streamline Pictures dub made for Japan Airlines flights, how the film depicts creative burnout, and why the dub’s wisecracking Jiji differs from the original.

🔔 Subscribe for our ongoing watch-through of Toonami and Adult Swim’s film catalogue.

📌 Topics covered this episode:

– Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989) recap & review

– English dub discussion: Disney (1998) and Streamline (1989)

****

Toonami Absolution is a weekly podcast where Alyx, Jon, and Sam revisit the Toonami and Adult Swim shows that made them, and you, you.

From the block's early days with shows like Space Ghost: Coast to Coast and Transformers: Beast Wars to the imported anime that made Toonami and Adult Swim appointment television for a generation of kids, such as Cowboy Bebop, Sailor Moon, and Dragon Ball.

****

See more Toonami Absolution stuff (including the video version of the podcast) by checking out our Linktree!

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.