Character · Kiki's Delivery Service
Kiki
A thirteen-year-old witch, one black dress, one radio, and a year to prove she can live somewhere alone.
In Otakana the clue reads: Thirteen-year-old witch starting her training year
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Kiki's Delivery Service
- Letters
- 4 · Easy
Witches in this world leave home at thirteen for a year of training, and the training is not about spells. Kiki flies to a seaside city she picks out from the air, finds a bakery willing to rent her the room above it, and starts a delivery business because flying is the only marketable skill she has. The rest is rent, customers and weather.
What follows is a film about work. Kiki gets tired, gets homesick, delivers a cake through a rainstorm, and eventually loses her ability to fly, which Miyazaki has described in terms of artistic block rather than magic. The recovery is not triumphant either. She gets it back by resting, drawing badly, and talking to somebody who paints.
Studio Ghibli released it in 1989, adapting Eiko Kadono's novel, and it finished the year as the highest grossing film at the Japanese box office. Minami Takayama voices Kiki in Japanese and Kirsten Dunst in the Disney dub. The city is a composite of Stockholm, Visby and other European streets the team photographed on a research trip.
Spelling KIKI
KIKI is four letters that alternate K and I, so one confirmed letter usually gives you two positions at once. The Japanese キキ has no long vowels, which makes this one of the rare anime names that survives romanisation completely untouched. No silent letters, no doubling, nothing dropped. The row is short and unusually honest about itself.