Or, in Kiki’s (Minami Takayama) case, the witch that she wants to be.
Your flying broom mileage may vary with “Kiki’s Delivery Service,” but it is perhaps the most picturesque version of a story Studio Ghibli likes to tell: that first brush with independence where a characters needs to find the well of determination within themselves to assert the person they want to be in the world. Or, in Kiki’s (Minami Takayama) case, the witch that she wants to be. The film’s beauty is ever-present visually, of course, in the gorgeous watercolor seaside town that Kiki settles into for a year as a witch-in-training, as well as in the main themes by Joe Hisaishi. “A Town with an Ocean View” has a delicacy, tenderness, and precociousness that mirrors Kiki as she figures out the boring adult stuff like finding where to live that tends to drag us all down to Earth.