When a Cat Stops Talking To Her...

I am delighted that a local Hong Kong TV station (ATV World) recently shows a Miyazaki anime every Sunday. It showed Kiki's Delivery Service yesterday. Even though Kiki is a bit too young to be my anima figure, I love this story of the little witch's growth.

I guess Kiki's age is somewhere between 12 and 14, the later stage of Lolita period when a girl becomes a young woman. In order to train herself into an independent witch, she leaves her parents in a village and flies to a city on her broom. Jiji, her little black cat accompanies her on her shoulder and continues to chat with her.

I see this anime as a story of the emergence of independent self and consciousness in a young girl. In the first half of the story, Jiji the black cat chats with Kiki in the human language. I think this is a sign that Kiki has not fully developed her own consciousness yet. She can chat with her cat because the boundary between she and Jiji is still quite vague. And she can fly on a broom without thinking. She can do it unconsciously.

But after she becomes aware that she likes Tombo, a bespectacled mischievous boy, she loses her magic power. She cannot fly. Jiji no longer speaks a human language but only meows. Moreover, he goes out to court his white dream she-cat. Kiki now has separate consciousness from Jiji's. Anyway, a city is a place for separate consciousness.

It does not give one a blanket of protection and oneness that a village would provide her... Having her own consciousness, she has to re-learn how to fly, that was simply a natural thing for a witch's daughter. I guess this part of story symbolises the difficulties that an early teenager experience especially in the relationship to the people around her. It is the pain of re-birth. I guess she's lost ability to fly because she still do not know how to handle her newly gained separate self.

Close to the end of story, she flies again to save Tombo, who hangs onto a rope attached to an airship that has accidentally started flying. Now flying needs a reason and determination. She has to be fully aware of her ability to fly so that she can use it better and in a conscious manner (so she would not abuse it). But after she is able to fly again, she is accepted by the people in the city as a heroine. It is the beginning of her life as a young adult.