It’s such a good movie y’all

Kiki’s Delivery Service was one of my favorite movies as a child, and it holds up wonderfully. It’s a Bildungsroman, a coming-of-age story about a young witch who must go out into the world and begin her training. Kiki leaves her childhood in a small country town, moves to a metropolis, gets a job as a flying delivery girl, learns to live independently, discovers romance, has a spiritual and psychological crisis of confidence, and emerges at the end as a fully self-actualized person, confident in herself and her abilities. Like a lot of Miyazaki movies, there isn’t really a villain; the story is more internal than anything else, with Kiki having to overcome self-doubts and fears to rise to meet her potential. That’s specifically what I want to talk about today.

Kiki’s character in the movie is shown as being very extroverted, almost alarmingly so. She wants to be friends with everyone she meets and she’s looking for ways to help people. In fact, early in the movie one of the crises she faces is coming to terms with living in a huge, impersonal city. It would be ridiculous to call her shy. But at the same time, she very clearly suffers from a lot of social anxiety. Technically speaking, the climax of the movie features Kiki losing her ability to do magic and then having to regain so as to rescue her friend who is carried away by a runaway dirigible. But the emotional crisis she faces seems to be wholly psychological: she wants to make friends and have a social life, but she keeps sabotaging herself and she doesn’t know why. I doubt I noticed that aspect of the film much when I watching it as a kid, but it’s inescapable to me now. I’ve been dealing with social anxiety my whole life, and it’s shocking to me how well Kiki’s Delivery Service portrays it.

There’s mainly two specific scenes I’m thinking of, both involving her relationship to her Tombo, her romantic interest and friend. Tombo is an aeronautics enthusiast, and is immediately amazed and fascinated by Kiki’s ability to fly. Kiki, for her part, shows no interest in Tombo. But when he invites her a party at the Aviation Club, she responds with excitement and terror. She very clearly wants to go to the party, but she’s also very clearly freaked out by the idea. What if the people there laugh at her? What if she doesn’t have the proper clothes? She decides to attend but is delayed and caught in a rainstorm while making a delivery. Embarrassed, she lets Tombo go without her.

There is a very specific feeling, a queasy mix of relief and shame, that comes with skipping an event one was simultaneously dreading and looking forward to it. I’ve done this before and I know it well. Kiki wants to go to the party, there’s no denying that. But the rainstorm doesn’t prevent her, not really. She arrives home late, but Tombo is still waiting for her. Getting soaking wet in the storm reinforces her preexisting anxieties, that she’s not pretty enough, that her clothes are ugly or unsuitable, etc, and gives her an excuse to follow her instincts. Later, of course, when she’s feeling better, she regrets missing it, but it’s too late by then.

The other scene I want to talk about cuts even deeper. Kiki and Tombo are hanging out together later in the movie, having finally established a friendship. Kiki’s enjoying herself greatly until a car full of Tombo’s other friends pull up. Tombo’s delighted to see them, and wants Kiki to meet them. Instead, Kiki makes her excuses and runs away. Key to this scene is that while Kiki is convinced that Tombo’s friends have contempt for her (“You should have seen how Tombo’s friends looked at me”), there’s not really any evidence of that in the scene itself. When they discuss Kiki, they seem more impressed at her having a job than scornful. Kiki’s day is not ruined by disdainful rich kids driving her away, as a casual observer of the scene might conclude. It’s ruined because she’s afraid that might happen. And she seems to know this too. Later, she tells her cat “Gigi, I think something’s wrong with me. I meet a lot of people, and at first, everything seems to be going ok. But then I start feeling like such an outsider”

I was re-watching Kiki’s Delivery Service just a few days ago, and it was this scene that made me realize I needed to write something about it. Because everything in this scene was just so bitingly familiar. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve felt that mingled sensation of fear and jealousy as a friend of mine, somebody I’m comfortable with, drifts off a larger, terrifying group of people I don’t know. I can remember that happening at a sleepover at a friend’s house when I so little that I can’t even remember the names of anyone there. But I remember that feeling of betrayal. I’ve made my excuses and slipped away from groups, or hid in the corner and smiled awkwardly more times than I can count, at High School, during College, and at summer camps in between. And of course, later you feel like an idiot and a coward and you wish you could do it all over again but you can’t rebuild those bridges now, it’s too late. When I was younger I wrote bad poetry, not just about being lonely, but about that sense of rage at myself. What was wrong with me? I wanted to know people, other people knew people, everyone I met seemed nice, and yet I could not sustain a connection. Over and over again I found myself drifting away from people. I apologize for how personal this is getting, but I don’t know of any other way to explain why this scene hit me so hard.

Did I mention this movie has a dirigible in it???

Kiki’s Delivery Service is a remarkably subtle movie in some ways, and there’s never a scene in it where Kiki “overcomes her anxiety” or “learns to talk to people”. But I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Kiki loses her magical abilities right after it. And the movie is fairly explicit about the connection, even if it’s never laid out in so many words. “We fly with our spirits”, Kiki explains to a local artist who’s befriended her. (Side Note: Wikipedia claims that the artist’s name is Ursula, which is never once mentioned in the movie but I’m going to use that for convenience’s sake).  And Ursula’s reply, though ostensibly about Kiki’s magical crisis, works well as mental health advice as well. You just go on. There’s no magic trick to cure yourself, you can’t force yourself better. You go on, one day at a time, you take care of yourself, and you learn to appreciate what you can do. You just go on.

I want to talk about Ursula, because Kiki’s relationship with her and Osono is another element of the film that really moved me. Both Ursula and Osono are people who meet Kiki and go out of their way to help and befriend her. Osono runs a bakery, and after Kiki does her a favor she gives her a place to sleep and helps to start her business. Ursula meets Kiki after a misadventure in the nearby woods. She later bolsters Kiki’s bruised sense of self-worth by asking her to model for a painting and giving her useful advice (as detailed above). That these two women reach out to a stranger with uncommon kindness is not atypical of a Miyazaki movie–one of the things I love about them is that people just tend to be good. But it strikes me that there’s a connection to our theme of dealing with social anxiety as well. Both Osono and Ursula want to help Kiki almost from the moment they meet her, and go out of their way to do so. This is especially clear from Kiki’s meeting with Osono. Kiki, who at this point is lost, hungry, and has nowhere to go, is ready to slip off into the streets right after their meeting. It is Osono who insists that she come inside and have some coco, then pulls her story and troubles out of her, and then offers her room and board for a pittance. Later, she helps Kiki set up her delivery business and finds her her first clients. Kiki is grateful, delighted, and eager to repay her friend, but it’s very clear that she never would have asked for any of this. She never could have. In one clear example, she plans to use most of her savings to purchase a telephone, until Osono assures her she can just make use of the bakery’s. She very clearly does not want to impose.

I have never been alone and friendless in a strange city, but as I detailed at tedious length above I have found myself floating through enumerable social situations, frozen away, unable to truly join. I have found myself hiding in my room instead of going out with friends until people stop asking me, or lurking in corners of parties until I finally slip out. But throughout my life, I have always met people willing to drag me kicking and screaming into life. People willing to take the time and energy to get to know me despite everything. People who remember me when I assumed everyone had forgot. And I am so, so grateful to those people. Embarrassingly so, considering the circumstances. But I recognize and sympathize with Kiki’s effusive gratitude towards Osono and Ursula. And I appreciate the lesson inherent in these friendships. You can’t do it alone. I can’t speak for anyone else, but to the extent that I’ve overcome my anxieties and become a semi-functional member of society, it’s due to people who have taken the time to reach out to me.

The point of this post isn’t to show what the real story of Kiki’s Delivery Service is, or to tell people how to interpret the film. I have no idea what message Miyazaki intended people to draw from it, or what most people see when they watch it. But to me at least, this movie does a stunningly good job of portraying what social anxiety can look like, and in a remarkably subtle way. As I said before, Kiki is not really a shy character. She’s friendly and outgoing and confident much of the time. But no one can be anything all the time, and I love that we have a character who goes through so much of what I went through and continue to go through. Kiki was one of my favorite movies when I was very young. I don’t remember really remember my response to it all that well. I think I was mostly excited by the dirigible.

But I wonder how much of that message I took it subconsciously even then.

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