After talking about it for a few years, I finally sat down with some friends to watch Kiki’s Delivery Service. Given that this is one of my friends’ favorite movie, I let her pick the version we watched and so we settled in to watch a high-quality VHS rip of the original US publication of the movie. My friend cited music and some artistic choices as the reason for this selection and I, who had a vague idea of what the movie was about (burnout/depression/growing up/loss of creative spark), went along with it. I’d never seen the movie. I didn’t have an opinion. I knew that a lot of people had very specific and very strong opinions, but I didn’t really know why. After watching the movie though, I kind of get it. The specific songs chosen back in the day lend a very particular feel to the movie and, since one of them is right near the start of it, I can understand how changing the song would change the tone of the movie rather strongly. I also understand that the decision to make the cat, Jiji, speak again at the end of the movie is important to a lot of people and that it significantly changes one of the final notes of the movie, not to mention how a viewer might feel as they watch the credits roll and move on with their life. I only very recently saw the movie for the first time, so it wasn’t a very formative experience for me and while I am tempted to see how the more recent edition of the movie feels with the altered music and a story that ends more closely aligned with its Japanese source, I don’t know that I want to spend another couple hours on it (this isn’t a statement about the quality of the movie or anything, just a reflection of that fact that I don’t like to rewatch movies in quick succession). I will probably watch the movie again someday and maybe then I’ll watch the more recent version just to compare how it feels, but I really don’t expect my opinion to change that drastically since most of how I feel about it has little to do with the song selection and more to do with how burnout and creative work is depicted.

At it’s heart, Kiki’s Delivery Service is a movie about growth and change. It’s also about community, friendship, dealing with the complexities of life, and so on, but the core of it always comes back to dealing with change and how one grows (or doesn’t grow) as a result. What interests me the most is how the subtle themes of never being able to go back are worked into that and then muddied by a moment late in the movie (all versions of it, though for very different reasons). The entire movie shows Kiki always moving forward or standing still, despite the fact that it is pretty clear at some points along the way that maybe going home would have been the better option (though, far be it from me to suggest someone ever return to their parents’ house). Even at her worst moments, when she is feeling her worst and her least capable, she still does her chosen job, even if it requires her to walk through a city she used to fly over. Even when she gets into trouble, she always acts to either deal with it or get out of it, never letting the terms of her situation dictate her choices or force her to take a metaphorical step backwards. While the stakes at play in most of these moments vary wildly (everything from failing to make a delivery, connecting or not connecting with someone who wants to be her friend, or saving a life), Kiki meets each one with some kind of action.

All of this focus on Kiki moving forward, growing and becoming independent and finding her balance, is kind of undercut at the end when the metaphor for her movement out of childhood is abruptly undone. At the beginning of the movie, Kiki’s black cat acts much more like a friend than a pet and speaks to her, often as a voice of caution or advocate for stability. As he speaks to her less and less, his behavior also changes to depict him going from a witch’es familiar and sidekick to just a normal cat, a process that reaches its conclusion by about midway through the movie. This change is actually one of the catalysts for Kiki’s sink into depression and inaction, since she sees it as another sign that her magic, the thing that makes her a witch, is disappearing and pushes her deeped into her emotional malaise. Eventually, it prompts her to look to far less tangible and concrete places for her confidence as a witch (and as someone who can fly, since that’s what her self-conception of being a witch is represented as in the movie) as she is supported by an artist friend she made on an earlier adventure. While it certainly makes sense that her cat, a representation of not just her childhood but also her status as a witch (since Jiji is described frequently as being integral to her indentity as a young witch), might begin to speak again at the end of the movie, when she’s regained her powers and her confidence in herself, that limits Jiji’s ability to represent her growth and movement from the simple, untested confidence of youth to the battered but much stronger confidence born of experience.

Regardless of whether Jiji speaks or not, he is once more an active part of her life beyond that of a normal cat. This reassertion of Jiji as a familiar, speaking or silent, signals her relationship with Jiji is at least partially tied to her power (I mean, he was still a good pet cat at worst) and muddies the statement Hayao Miyazaki is on record as saying, that the decision for Jiji to remain silent in the Japanese version of the film is an indication that she has grown up and is no longer a child. The sheer fact that Jiji, this representation of both her childhood and power, continues to be a part of her live beyond being a pet indicates that some part of her childhood is being carried with her into her “adult” life. The only difference Jiji speaking or not speaking makes is which metaphor he winds up serving as the focus for and, as a result, which one is the text versus the subtext. If he speaks, he represents primarily the ties Kiki will retain to her childhood as she continues to grow and develop as both a person and a witch. To a lesser extent, a speaking Jiji also represents Kiki’s reclamation of her powers as a whole, but stops short of saying anything about what kind of growth she’s had over the course of the movie. If he remains silent, he represents Kiki’s growth beyond the need to rely on concrete proof of her powers in order to continue wielding them, but his ability to represent her ties to her past and her childhood is limited as a result since he is reduced from a speaking familiar who has been a part of her whole life to an unspeaking familiar who is a representative of her status as a witch.

Having said all that, I don’t think it matters to the overall message of the movie beyond a personal preference for how you want to “read” the metaphor at play here since, practically, no one grows up in an instant and taking a degree of your childhood into your “adult” life is a fairly normal and healthy thing for people to do (especially given how frequently “childishness” is made to stand in for having fun or finding joy or just not being a miserable, boring, drab adult and how childhood is often an important aspect or trait for the protagonists of a lot of Ghibli films). I just think that it’s very interesting that, as a result of this tiny change made as a part of the translation and adaptation of Kiki’s Delivery Service, we wound up with one movie made to fit Miyazaki’s interpretation of the story (which makes since since he was the director and writer of the whole dang thing) and another that is willing to allow a bit of childhood to stick with Kiki as she continues the process of growing up (in direct opposition to Miyazaki’s stated intent about the movie’s meaning!). I think it’s a good thing for that to exist, though, since Kiki’s a thirteen-year-old girl. She should be allowed to be a child still! There’s just much value in the “bringing a part of your childhood with you while you grow up” message as the “you do not need concrete measures of your abilities to have confidence in them” message and both editions existing means you get to take your pick! Believe whichever one you want to believe! The second message matters a bit more to me, personally, which is why I’m leaning more toward the “silent Jiji” crowd, but who knows! Maybe I’ll finally watch that version someday and find that the end of the movie is missing something without it. I won’t know until I watch it.