Running off on your own and finding adventure and success is a common fantasy for young teens (and old adults, for that matter!) but here we have a girl whose only desire is to find her avocation. After a few false starts, which includes learning how to operate that broomstick, she winds up with a job delivering for a bakery run by a sympathetic woman. Of course, Kiki also has to learn to cope with disappointment, hardships, and her own lack of faith in herself. The settings (imagine a kind of fairy-tale Germanic village on Japan’s Inland Sea) have that otherworldly charm that good children’s illustrations have, and the shifts of perspective, the warm colors all lend the film both the strangeness and comfort that good stories can create.