This one waits until you're an adult to detonate. Kiki flies out on her mother's broom with a radio strapped to it, and then Miyazaki spends the rest of the film showing you what independence actually costs: the rain delivery that gets you a fever, the grandmother's herring and pumpkin pot pie that the granddaughter shoves aside with a shrug, the morning your broom just doesn't lift. Losing her magic isn't a plot twist, it's burnout, and Jiji going quiet forever is the cruelest, truest choice in the Ghibli catalog. Ursula's forest cabin monologue about drawing until it comes back is the best advice about creative dry spells anyone has ever animated. Yes, less happens here than in Mononoke. That's the point. Watch it again at 25 and Osono handing her the bakery attic will wreck you.**

Thirteen-year-old Kiki is a witch-in-training, and tradition says she must live on her own for a year in a distant town before she can become a full witch. She leaves her family and friends and flies off on her broomstick with her talkative black cat, Jiji. In the seaside town of Koriko she has trouble fitting in and nowhere to stay, until Osono takes her in as a boarder in return for running deliveries for her small bakery. Kiki soon starts her own courier business by broom. As she tries to find her place among the locals, she gains independence and learns what responsibility really means in this gentle fantasy slice-of-life film.