Trivia / Kiki's Delivery Service

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• Acting for Two:
  • Besides voicing Fukuo in the Ghibli film, Kōichi Yamadera also voices the announcer and the police officer.
  • Minami Takayama voices both Kiki and Ursula, who frequently interact with each other.
• Approval of God: The author of the original novel, Eiko Kadono, has stated that she thoroughly enjoyed the Miyazaki film and had fun watching it. She was also relieved that, in spite of the changes, the world of her story was kept intact. She would even recycle some of the film's original ideas for the second book, Kiki and her New Magic.
• Breakthrough Hit: While it wasn't the first time a Studio Ghibli feature had been released outside of Japan, the 1998 VHS release of the film was Ghibli's breakout hit for international audiences, thanks to being the first to be dubbed and marketed by Disney. This release sold over one million copies and paved the way for other Ghibli features to be dubbed, particularly the international theatrical releases of Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away.
• Children Voicing Children: 16-year-old Kirsten Dunst voiced 13-year-old Kiki in Disney's English dub.
• Creator Backlash:
  • According to longtime Ghibli staffer Steve Alpert, the studio was dissatisfied after they discovered that Disney altered the soundtrack and inserted additional dialogue in their North American dub despite Ghibli's "no edits" clause (although the dub was released with not one second cut; the clause presumably only covered editing the footage, not the audio). In 2010, the dub was reissued with the changes reversed.
  • Sydney Forest, who sang on "Soaring" and "I'm Gonna Fly" for the Disney release, was incredibly saddened after finding out that her songs were removed from the 2010 Re-Cut.
• Creator Couple: In the Streamline dub, Lisa Michelson voiced Kiki and her then-husband Greg Snegoff voiced Fukuo. Michelson has since died.
• Creator In-Joke:
  • Kiki almost gets hit by a bus with 'Studio Ghibli' on the side of it. Other buses bearing the name can be seen when she's questioned by the police officer.
  • Ghibli (Romanized as "Jiburi") also makes the brand of pancakes Kiki favors.
• Cross-Dressing Voices: In the original Japanese version, Jiji is voiced by Rei Sakuma.
• The Danza: Kirsten Dunst provides the English voice of Kiki, which is her nickname in real life.
• Dawson Casting:
  • In the original Japanese version, 25-year-old Minami Takayama plays 13-year-old Kiki. Her vocal range is wide enough that she also plays Ursula, who's a grown adult.
  • Kiki was voiced by 31-year-old Lisa Michelson in the Streamline version. Oddly, her voice sounds identical to 16-year-old Kirsten Dunst, who played Kiki in the Disney version.
• Defictionalization:
  • There are a multitude of officially licensed Jiji plushies, if you ever wanted one similar to the plush Ket gets for his birthday party.
  • The mug that Kiki buys for Jiji can be purchased as well.
  • At least two separate fandom based cooking channels on YouTube, namely Binging with Babish and Feast of Fiction, have made their own recipes for the herring and pumpkin pie that Madame bakes for her granddaughter.
• Dueling Dubs:
  • Kiki has two dubs each in English (Streamline and Disney), Brazilian Portuguese (Disney and Discovery Kids), European Spanish, and Italian.
  • Latin America got three different dubbed versions: Disney, ZIMA and a new one done by Netflix in 2020, being the later two done from the original Japanese version.
• Flip-Flop of God: Hayao Miyazaki has originally stated that the reason why Jiji doesn't speak at the end of the film is because it's meant to symbolize Kiki's growth and maturity and how they’ve both become independent from each other, however in The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness documentary, Miyazaki instead states that he simply had nothing to say at that moment. It could also have just been symbolism for the viewers, with both facts being correct. However, a few years later, Ghibli would would go back to the idea that it was meant to symbolize Kiki's growth, with the added implication that Jiji never actually talked to start with, explaining that Kiki was actually talking to herself the whole time.
• In Memoriam: A dedication to Phil Hartman, Jiji's voice actor for the Disney release, appears after the credits; Jiji was Hartman's final original role as a voice actor before his murder in 1998.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • Tokuma Shoten released the Streamline dub in 1996 on LaserDisc as part of the "Ghibli ga Ippai" LaserDisc set (which featured every Ghibli movie up until that point), but it's now out of print. It hasn't seen an official release outside of Japan, and all DVD, Blu-ray, and streaming releases use the Disney version.
  • The uncut version of the 1998 English dub by Disney has never been re-released since the 2003 DVD run; since 2010, the only version of the Disney dub available is the edited version with lower-quality audio and no ad-libs.
• Late Export for You: South Korea took 18 years to release this film due to its ban on Japanese cultural products that was lifted between 1998 and 2004. However, it wasn't the only country that took that long to release it. Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Turkey also didn't release the film until 2007, for completely different reasons.
• No Export for You:
  • While the first novel has seen an English translation, the same can't be said for its sequels, which remain exclusive to Japan.
  • Ironically, the earlier English dub of the Miyazaki film by Streamline has only ever seen a home release in Japan.
  • Oddly enough, while Netflix got the 1998 version of the dub when they released it in regions outside of North America, Mexico and Japan, HBO Max uses the 2010 recut, which was notorious for its audio issues.
• Posthumous Credit: It was one of the last credits Phil Hartman received after his death (along with Small Soldiers and The Simpsons episode "Bart the Mother").
• Real Song Theme Tune: In the Japanese version, "Rouge no Dengon" and "Yasashisa ni Tsutsumaretanara" by Yumi Arai (later Yumi Matsutoya) serve as the opening and ending theme songs, respectively. They were released over a decade before the film was released.
• Serendipity Writes the Plot: Kiki is shown to have long hair in the book, but since she's constantly flying, the animators gave her short hair to make it easier to animate. The sign depicting her at the bakery has her original long-haired design.
• Studio Hop: International distribution hopped from Streamline Pictures to Disney (gaining a new dub in the process) in the mid-'90s, and then from Disney to GKIDS (this time retaining the same dub) in the mid-2010s.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Hayao Miyazaki was originally only going to produce the film, with Sunao Katabuchi directing. The original script writer dropped out and Miyazaki re-wrote the script himself, taking the reins as director. Katabuchi remained on as assistant director.
  • Early concept art shows that Kiki was going to have long hair, just like how she was depicted in the original book. This was eventually changed to her current hair style so it would be easier to animate.
  • Originally, the dog Jeff was going to chase Jiji around while he was trapped at the house. Miyazaki altered it to Jeff protecting him in the storyboarding stage, due to reasoning that such an old dog would have no interest in doing that much physical activity just to go after a cat.

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