Out main protagonist with her obligatory black cat that will curse you until the end of time.
Just like what I mentioned in my previous post, the second of the three Studio Ghibli movies that I will review here is Hayao Miyazaki’s Kiki’s Delivery Service. This reflects a change of mood from the darker Grave of The Fireflies, but which one of them is better? Read on for my take of the first Hayao Miyazaki movie reviewed here.
Story:-
Kiki, an apprentice witch has to go away from her home so that she can train her skills further. All she knows is flying with her broom Harry Potter-style, so she opened a delivery service at a big town near the sea. There she gets to hone her skills while meeting plenty of people during the course of her job.
Admittedly, the story in this movie is inferior to Grave of The Fireflies, but it is still decent. For what the story’s worth, just like Grave of The Fireflies, the movie has good pacing with excellent transitions between plots. Unfortunately, the ending is not as good as the one in Grave of The Fireflies, but then again Grave of The Fireflies’ ending is excellent and will be hard to match. This movie’s ending, by comparison is tame, filled with clichés and probably predictable too.
One thing Kiki’s Delivery Service has done better than Grave of The Fireflies is the character development part, which show how our main protagonist evolved as she faced and deal with obstacles during her job as a transporter/delivery girl. Despite of that, there are no strong/interesting characters in this movie, and that’s a shame.
We got to see a lot of flying here.
Character Design:-
It was not that different from the one in Grave of The Fireflies, if you ask me. The lack of black hairs here is forgiven because of the non-Japanese setting this movie is using.
Voice Acting:-
This movie is definitely inferior to Grave of The Fireflies in this aspect, because while voice acting in this movie is decent, it is a class lower than what you hear from Grave of The Fireflies. Plus, the performance of Kiki the main protagonist here is nowhere near the gig done by the awesome Setsuko from Grave of The Fireflies.
More flying here. Don’t blame her because that’s all she knows.
Music:-
Meanwhile, this movie trumps Grave of The Fireflies in this section. The OST and OP/ED themes in this movie are simply superior, and definitely a positive point for this movie. The OP theme in particular is very well done.
Meanwhile, while she is not flying, she is doing what we called in my country as “corner baring”. Hilarious really.
Animation/Direction:-
This movie matched Grave of The Fireflies when it comes to animation (probably remastered DVD source anyone?) and the same thing can also be said about fast-paced scenes. The little choreography this movie has is excellent, especially during the flying parts and the ending scenes.
Meanwhile Hayao Miyazaki’s directing is a little bit better than the one at Grave of The Fireflies, with good selection of camera angles during those aforementioned fast-paced scenes in the paragraph above, combined with his ability to emulate good control of the storyline the way Grave of The Fireflies’ director did.
This overadventurous old lady try to imagine herself flying like our protagonist.
Conclusion:-
8 out of 10. The inferior story is why Kiki’s Delivery Service scored less than Grave of The Fireflies. The last movie from Studio Ghibli that I will review here is Spirited Away, another work of Hayao Miyazaki. I heard a lot of good things about that one, so I will keep my hope up.
Forgiveness given for the lack of black hair in this Europe-like settings in the middle of 19th century.
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I love this movie so much!!!!