Hayao Miyazaki - Ranking His Movies From Worst To Best

7. Kiki's Delivery Service

Whereas Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli co-founder Isao Takahata preferred to make animated features more grounded in reality, with notable works such as Grave of the Fireflies and Only Yesterday largely dispensing with fantastical elements, Miyazaki opted to deal with the real concerns of his young target audience by infusing it with an element of the magical - with Kiki's Delivery Service, he did this quite literally. Adapted from the children's novel by Eiko Kadono, Kiki's Delivery Service follows the eponymous young witch as she struggles to set up her new delivery business in the colourful, bustling coastal city of Koriko. As much a fantasy about Kiki and her developing magical powers as it is a coming-of-age tale of a young girl moving from adolescence to early adulthood, it's another example of Miyazaki's preoccupation with flight - a concept which serves as a motif for the characters' own emotional and spiritual development. Kiki's Delivery Service beat Harry Potter to the punch when it came to annoying organizations on the Christian right - just as Rowling was lambasted for her portrayal witchcraft, so too was Kiki's Delivery Service accused of having a "darker agenda", although watching the film you'd be hard pushed to identify exactly what that is supposed to be.