The Bechdel Cast - Kiki's Delivery Service with Joelle Monique

Episode Date: May 26, 2022

On episode, Jamie, Caitlin, and special guest Joelle Monique hop on their brooms and deliver this episode on Kiki's Delivery Service! (This episode contains spoilers) For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast. Follow @JoelleMonique on Twitter. While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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On the Bechdelcast, the questions asked if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism? The patriarchy's effin' vast. Start changing it with the Bechdel cast. Hey, Miss Durante. Yes, Miss Loftus? We had one very, very brief encounter. Now you have to be my best friend forever until I die.

Well, I think you're rude because you didn't properly introduce yourself. All right, I guess I'll just keep showing up until you change your mind. And oh, look at that. It worked. We're best friends. And now I'm going to save your life. It's because I was falling off of a plane. You know, it's it's complicated. It's complicated. Well, that was sure an intro welcome to the Bechtel cast my name is Jamie Loftus my name is Caitlin Durante I hesitated because I was like am I gonna like call myself Miss Witch or something but then I did I didn't and then it just made it sound like I didn't know what my name was look it's good everything's going great everything's going great it's fine you can call yourself Miss Witch why not yeah um this is the bechdel cast where we examine movies through

an intersectional feminist lens using the bechdel test as a jumping off point the bechdel test being a media metric created by queer cartoonist allisonchdel, sometimes called the Bechdel-Wallace test. There are many versions of the test, but the one that we use currently requires that two characters of a marginalized gender must have names, they must speak to each other, and their conversation has to be about something other than a man. And ideally, it is a narratively meaningful conversation. And spoiler alert, today is going to have no problems. The first scene passes, I think, 100%. Right. I don't think two male characters speak to each other at all in the entire movie.

No, I know that they make eye contact but also i was really interested in um usually we're having the reverse discussion but i didn't know until because i'm a big fan of this movie but i i'd never really researched the adaptation changes before uh it's the kiki delivery service episode by the way yes but i didn't realize that they gender swapped gg uh gg in the japanese dub is a lady cat uh and i guess that cats in um japanese fiction are traditionally presented feminine um and they switched it to phil hartman which i don't hate at all. Like I, I think it's the Phil Hartman, um, Gigi performances,

a delight, you know, it brings a certain newsies, Jenna say, whatever to, to the part. But originally, yeah,

I think that the only time I could find men interacting is when, um, a Sona's husband looks at Gigi, but I guess in the original movie, that wouldn't have even applied because Gigi is a girl in the original movie. How about that? Things I learned today. I do like that they're like, let's make this cat sound like he's from Long Island for some reason. You're like, all right, I'm okay with it. Does that mean the romance between the two cats because the other cat seems to be coded quite feminine. Does that mean it's a queer cat relationship? Let's say yes. Yeah. Let's say yes. Let's say

that. Okay, great. I love that. Anyways, welcome to the Bechdel cast. This movie is about women. And we have an amazing returning guest today let's get her in the mix yes she is a pop culture critic she's an executive producer at iheart podcasts she's executive producer and co-host of a new show comic-con metapod and you remember her from our little princess episode it's joelle monique i love that i could just talk about all my girlhood favorites with you i just get to come in here and talk about the women that shaped me last time we were really embracing all of my virgo libra aspects okay it's girls doing princessy things with pinkies up and today we're gonna embrace my power of no girl who i really love i I'm obsessed with Kiki. We're the same age.

She came out in 89, as did I. And that cat relationship is absolutely queer in my head now. I didn't know that in the Japanese version it was two lady cats, but now lesbians. And one is just very masc. And I think that's okay. And I love it. I love it. Joelle, what is your history with this movie other than you and Kiki both dropped the same year?

Yes. Yes. Okay. So around about, I would like to say, mid to late 90s, early 2000s, Cartoon Network introduced me to the world of anime and Kiki's Delivery Service is a movie they would play on Sundays, sometimes Saturdays. Maybe it would come on a late Friday night, but usually not. Usually it was like a mid afternoon thing. And that's when Joel was at home watching TV. And wow, did I fall in love really fast. You know, Spirited Away came out when I was older, and it came out in theaters. And I have like a much longer, in depth interaction with that film, just because it was advertised to me at the right age.

This movie was like, here's an old film you might like, children. And I really did. And it was so cool because it really took, I like to call it like a reverse fairy tale where there's a lot of magical elements, but it's completely grounded as opposed to a lot of the other things I was consuming, which is super high fantasy and, you know, very like almost all of the stories are Romeo and Juliet inspired, but they get together at the end. They don't die. It's totally fine, kids. Risk it all. Be rebellious. No consequences. Or is this, you know, was very much about a young girl just trying to figure it out and especially because I was the type of 13 year old who was like I'm pretty sure I could move to New York and pay rent and do it I think I could live by myself I don't need these other people and Kiki really spoke to me on that level she was like just out there doing it for herself um I feel like it was my

working girls before I became of age to watch that movie. And I really like it. So yeah, that's mostly my history. I saw it on Cartoon Network a lot. And then I got into college and I was able to stream it a lot. Shout out to LimeWire. Oh my gosh, I forgot about LimeWire. Never forget. Classic.

Never forget. Classic. Definitely destroyed my first Dell with too many LimeWire downloads. Yeah, I ended up with some real disgusting things on my family's computer as a result of LimeWire. But, you know, it was all in the interest of bringing music to the people or something. That's beautiful, though. Jamie, what your uh relationship and history with kiki's delivery service uh this is the miyazaki movie that i have the longest and closest history with i think i saw this movie i remember my friend samantha honeywell shout out because i was always like that's the coolest name I've ever heard um the

Honeywells had this on VHS the English dub um sometime when I was in elementary school my whole family was very into uh witchy stuff my aunt and uncle uh practiced witchcraft and so I was always really into witchy movies especially when they were young girls I had a black cat so it was just it was very easy to plug into the kiki fantasy and also like just I mean I haven't seen this movie in I want to say at least five years but probably longer because there was a time where it's in the u.s uh unless you owned miyazaki movies they weren't like the most streamable stuff it was a big deal when they were put on hbo and so i hadn't seen it in a long time and it's just like watching it back as in my at my advanced age i just it holds up so well kiki experiences burnout uh I was just like wow okay like this is they really

get into it um I adore this movie and I can't wait to talk about it uh Caitlin what's your history with Kiki's Delivery Service not a long one I hadn't seen it until about a year ago, not long after all the Miyazaki movies became available on HBO. And this one was at the top of my list to watch. So I did and I really loved it. And there are elements about it that are so relatable to me as a full adult yeah such as the burnout sorry i'm choking such as the burnout such as there's a line of dialogue where kiki says something like yeah i i used to think flying was fun until i started doing it for a living and I was like oh that is a thing that I can relate to but also my job is still fun still fun but anyway uh yeah I I really uh I think this movie has so much to offer and I know I sound like I'm crying right now but it's just because I'm choking on my own saliva I'm having a I'm having a day I don't know what my name is choking crying you need Ursula so tired you need Ursula to kind of intervene and be like look we're gonna go to

a cabin for a couple days we're just gonna talk it out like use my bed the cottage core elements yes oh my gosh yeah it is just a full cottagecore sequence the sweet like friendship intimacy of ursula letting kiki use her bed i feel like that was always my like my favorite moment in the movie ever since i was really little because you're like whoa a cool girl let you sleep in her bed and i still feel the same way the cool girl vibes throughout this movie are off the chart the first which she runs into on the way over i'm terrified of her to this day okay her accessory game alone crushes me and then to just be so cool as to say i can't even listen to music i'm flying she has a light because she's smart i just can't with this movie she's so and then she's like i

can tell like love fortunes and we never find out really what that means or what that entails and then she's like goodbye forever and you're like oh yes yes what it tells us is that she knows everything and she's too busy to deal with us because she's cool and she has other things to do she's cool she is snooty there are a lot of snooty characters i feel like snootiness is a motif in this movie but she's like yeah i'm sure that town seems really big to you but to me it's just whatever and then she goes down and then you get like a classic phil hartman uh reaction shot yes he's just like well she sucked yes if side eye were a voice like perfection it is very funny to me how like like i don't know i did a little bit uh i just

was like i'm very fascinated with how miyazaki movies were adapted by disney for distribution and how there's like there's always like these little changes that are made and the Gigi character also like they sort of Disney-fied his role in the story as like he appears as an animal familiar in the way that like a Disney princess's animal familiar would appear in like the dialogue cadence like obviously Gigi was always there for kiki but was like not as sarcastic not as like like a lot of the dialogue lines for gg changed where the spirit of the line is the same but they sort of like you know rewrite it for an american comedian so is it coded more so okay so coded a little salt here you're getting a little bit of your iago yeah yeah yeah uh you know pre this predates iago so maybe this is this is the foundation the build but i i feel like man

i really love gg and now i'm trying to imagine i would still i'd still want the comedian aspects i'd still want like a salty lady even if they decided to gender flip it back i think i would still be looking for a wanda sykes-esque like salty kitty and this would have been post iago too because this the dub at least the dub that's on hbo wasn't made until 1997 mind blown yeah yeah so then it had to be like early 2000s i was seeing it that's crazy it's really wild sorry i'm figuring out the timeline um wait there i found a little passage on uh gg just because i i i love learning about adaptation it's fascinating um okay so this is from scarlet journal wikipedia of course the depiction of the cat Gigi is changed significantly in the Disney version. In the Japanese version, Gigi is voiced by Rei Sakuma, a female actor, while in the English

version, Gigi is voiced by Phil Hartman. In Japanese culture, cats are usually depicted with feminine voices, whereas in American culture, their voices are more gender specific. A number of Hartman's lines exist where Gigi simply says nothing in the original. Gigi's personality is notably different between the two versions, showing a more cynical and sarcastic attitude in the Disney English version, as opposed to cautious

and conscientious in the original Japanese. In the original Japanese script, Kiki loses her ability to communicate with Gigi permanently. I guess the original cut of this involved the Phil Hartman voice coming back at the end oh boo boo but then they took that the original Japanese version in like I guess it was supposed to be a sign of Kiki's maturity that she could no longer talk to

her cat excuse me I think that it's a mark of maturity look for you to talk to your cat and your talk your cat to talk back so i don't know what that's all about but i literally watched this movie with flea yeah your black cat yeah dead ringer for gg not a lot of movies hold his attention but he was he was with me the whole time it was great nice i marked it more as like uh if you again this movie is so grounded in reality it's the idea of like magical loss of childhood and this idea that there's something else to be gained you know especially if it's considered under like this movie very much from the beginning starts with a thesis statement of like if you're going to be a witch you better be a good witch and have a good heart and i think she does that so much

throughout the movie and eventually it sort of becomes a it's hard it's hard to be a good person it's hard to live up to like your own ideals and standards and she struggles with it a lot but like she also loses part of her childhood in gaining these responsibilities and these new friends and you know there's new opportunity in this business. Some part of her does go away in exchange for that. And I always sort of viewed the cat's voice being gone as that exchange. And I think to leave it in is just, what a disservice to the story overall.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I guess that I don't, I couldn't find like if this was just like an organic decision or if there were complaints, but they re-released the American dub, like a redux of it with the same voices, but they took out the last Phil Hartman line so that the spirit stayed the same as it did in the original. And yeah, I agree.

I think it's like it's it makes me a little bit sad, but it's supposed to. Maturing is sad yeah like so hard yeah being a kid is awesome also i'm seeing that there was another english dub i think released in 1990 from streamlined pictures slash takuma but i don't i don't think it had the same kind of like mainstream availability as the Disney dub. So it is possible that you heard that one, Joelle. I wonder if that one ever hit the air. Because if I think about it, the first Miyazaki film I remember watching was um a rip of uh what's the one with the princess Mononoke and I watched it on a pc at my mother's office um and so that had to be like 2000 yes yes

it was fifth grade I was ready to go home and it was amazing. And then I'm pretty sure not too long after that, Spirited Away comes out. And then somewhere immediately after that, I find Howl's Moving Castle and Kiki's Delivery Service. It's all sort of very jumbled up in those early junior high, you know, late elementary years. But I definitely remember thinking, like, where are the American cartoons with girls like this? The fact that there were, like, young girls just being girls interested in maturing, but not being grownups, you know, actually addressing the PG-13, like, element of life, that time period and being like, this, these are people I can actually relate to and being sort of blown away. First by that, and then obviously by the art oh my god yeah it's like gorgeous it's uh yeah and and I think it's like it is wild to like I don't know it wasn't until I was like halfway through the movie then like oh yeah this movie came out the same year as the little mermaid and

the differences are quite clear and i love the little mermaid but you know like yeah i mean you love it because you get to be dramatic with it but i love him daddy and it's like right a lot of like throwing your shoe and running um which is fun it's fun to sort of embrace that but as a story that actually speaks to the conditions you're living under i think there's like there's just no comparison but i mean at the same time though the premise of the little like disney's little mermaid and kiki's delivery service is like pretty similar in the sense that they're both fish out of water striking out you know trying to figure one a little more literal than the other, yeah. Right, right. But the execution is, like, so different in, like, very fascinating ways.

Before we get too deep into the discussion, let's take a quick break, and then we'll come back and recap the story. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia.

I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradente. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk

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is Lucha Libre Behind the Mask, a 12-episode podcast in both English and Spanish about the history and cultural richness of Lucha Libre. And I'm your host, Santos Escobar, the emperor of Lucha Libre and a WWE superstar. Join me as we learn more about the history behind this spectacular sport from its inception in the United States to how it became a global symbol of Mexican culture. We'll learn more about some of the most iconic heroes in the ring. This is Lucha Libre Behind the Mask. Listen to Lucha Libre Behind the Mask as part of my Cultura podcast network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you stream podcasts. And we are back. So here is the recap of Kiki's Delivery Service. We meet Kiki, voiced by Kirsten Dunst in the Disney dub.

She is a young witch, I believe 13 years old, who, as per witch tradition, must leave home for a year to begin her training. And that night is the perfect night for her to leave because it's both a full moon and there are clear skies. So Kiki says goodbye to her mom and dad. She packs up her belongings. She takes her mom's broom and she sets off with her talking cat, Gigi, again voiced by Phil Hart hartman in the disney dub very sadly phil hartman's last voice role before he passed away no oh god which we don't have to go there today this is a happy episode uh i did think it was funny, even when I was little, how abrupt, like the movie just like starts. And Kiki is like, oh, I'm leaving home today.

Like, I feel like in a, I'm used to it. Movies like when, you know, kids and parents are separated. There's this like long, like, I love you so much. And they do like the family obviously loves each other. But it's just like Kiki's like, I'm leaving. And then they're like, I don't know. but it's just like kiki's like i'm leaving and then they're like i don't know should it be today and she's like yes and then two hours later they're like all right cool like they respect her decision and they they are like well best of like i just thought it was really funny well yeah it was really interesting about

the way that this entire film is that first of all kudos to miyazaki for just being like now i'm gonna set this up like story time because I feel like if you buy like a Looney Tunes beginning or even a Disney, it's like a lot of loud crashing music to let you know fun's about to happen. Like strap in kids like we're about to sling some jokes at you. And you start completely in silence in a Miyazaki film. It's like here's some bright colors. They're pastels. It's going to be peaceful and calm. And you're going to

learn some stuff and then it's underscored pretty quickly by just wind which we know Miyazaki is obsessed with and you get this sort of like natural orchestra going and then it's just radio waves and I think so much about being that age is about being alone and trying to figure out who you are you know you have friends, you have family, but it's a, I mean, at least for me, I spent a lot of time in my room being like, who the hell, I'm reading a book, I'm watching TV, I'm looking in magazines, like someone please tell me who I am

so I can start doing this thing. And for her to be listening to a radio and it starts off like the spirit of freedom, right? Which sort of becomes this banner for the entire film of what does that mean especially as you mature if a child for freedom is just like running around the block and screaming your head off but ideally when you're going out and sticking your claim and deciding who you are what does that look like and then on top of that it's a clear night and she's like oh i have a perfect night to leave and i love the idea early of bringing superstition into a witch movie in a casual way that i think a lot of girls do or again

at least i did very much like oh no then we have to act now conditions are perfect like go and it's completely her decision to to start her life i love the way it sort of bowls over her parents you know her father is like, you're growing up so fast. And then the duality of how she treats her parents, like with her mother, very strict boundaries, very much like I'm doing it. And you need to listen to me. And I'm setting the rules. And with her dad, you know, the first thing she asked is like, can you pick me up and spin me around when I was little. And I think it's such a beautiful personification of like, how she's divided as like, to quote the great Britney Spears, I'm not a girl, not yet a woman. She's in between.

We were just quoting that the other day. It is beautiful. They set up everything so effectively and so quickly. And I like that you find out that the mom is like president of witches or, you know, like whatever, whatever that means. I support it. That's great. Yeah. And yeah, like it seems like her mom is kind of like the breadwinner. You know, it seems like a very matriarchal system they've got over there.

And that you see her relationship like you see three generations of witches. And then it's, I think Debbie Reynolds is Grandma Witch, which Debbie Reynolds is canonically Grandma Witch. Debbie Reynolds was the old lady. Oh, was she a different one? The madame who was like, here is a herring pie. She should have been Grandma Witch, because then she could have been Grandma Witch across so many different Disney projects. Yeah. Was that her grandma her grandma or was that i thought it was just like a neighbor lady who was

like there was a neighbor lady but then her dad is like hey mom i just want to let you know kiki's leaving tonight and there's a second old lady in the lawn chairs outside right before she's off i i know we're only one paragraph into the recap but i also want to shout out just like the world building and how just like seamless and subtle it is where again if you're comparing this to like a disney renaissance movie it would be like once upon a time there was a family of witches and they started the tradition of leaving home when you're 13 years old to go and it would just be like this whole like story similar to how shrek opens like a storybook like here's an

exposition dump okay but this she's being shrek critical interesting so this is not shrekian in the sense that it just like drops you in this world and you just like go along with the world building but it's very easy to follow like it's just i i thought it was handled very in like a very cool and interesting way but it is shrekian in that we love it and it's perfect obviously yes of course yeah okay so she sets off on the broom with her talking cat gg also talking cat shrekian puss in boots well in the yeah a talking donkey talking cat yeah yeah there's a lot of parallels between kiki and shrek thank you both have witches no i see where we're going both have witches yes oh my gosh yeah it's it's's a fantasy paradise that is above reproach.

Both are set in a, like a very nondescript European place. You know, there is baking and Shrek. What would the gingerbread man and so forth. So yeah. Deliveries have to be made. Deliveries do have to be made.

A rescue takes place. You know, like we could keep going. Go on forever. This is extremely Shrekian. This movie is actually very Shrekian. Yes. Okay, so Kiki is not very good at flying on a broom,

but she heads south toward the ocean to hopefully settle in a city there. On the way, she meets another young witch. We already talked about her. She's the very cool snooty witch who has been developing her fortune-telling skills. Kiki, on the other hand, has not decided what her skill is going to be yet. It starts raining, so Kiki and Gigi take cover in a train, which starts moving and takes her to a coastal city where Kiki decides to settle. She hopes that witches don't already live in this city, because it seems like there isn't a need for maybe more than one or two witches in each city.

But she learns that no witches live there yet so kiki tries to make a good impression but she almost causes a traffic accident when she's flying around on her broom and the locals are mostly ambivalent toward witches there's also this cop who's who wants to reprimand her for this near traffic accident a cab a cab seriously the cop from kiki's delivery service yes okay so this cop gets distracted when someone in the distance is like thief stop this thief and the person who created this diversion turns out to be this boy tombo tombo thinks kiki and her ability to fly are really really cool but kiki thinks tombo is annoying and rude i love her attitude towards tombo it's very special you don't see that a lot in kids media in a way that's just very

straightforward yeah so while kiki is trying to figure out a place to stay she encounters a sono a bakery owner who needs to return something that a customer left behind and kiki offers to return it for her on her broom which she does and asona is grateful for kiki's help and she lets kiki stay in a spare room in her attic another great line where she brings kiki to this room that is objectively quite dirty and she's like well i'd help you clean it up but as as you can see, I'm pregnant. So I'm pregnant. I'm so pregnant. What can I do? Have you with Greg.

Can't really do much to help. Gotta go. And then Phil Hartman's like, this place is disgusting. Yep. Great. So she moves into the attic room. And based on her ability to quickly transport things to people on her broom, Kiki decides to start a delivery business. She gets settled into her new place.

She bumps into Tombo again, and then Kiki gets her first customer. A woman wants her to deliver a birthday gift for her nephew. The gift is a toy cat that looks a lot like gg and while making the delivery on her broom a strong gust of wind blows kiki off course and she loses the toy cat did not listen to geese and felt peril i know the right the wind stuff is always so fascinating because you're just like wow we're really these are very specific natural rules that she's ignoring uh that I don't think completely scanned for me when I was a kid and then Phil Hartman cat gg I keep thinking of his Phil Hartman

cat Phil Hartman cat's like you should have listened to those geese I was like who I guess if you were a witch and you're flying all the time maybe you would know to to those geese. I was like, who? I guess if you were a witch and you're flying all the time, maybe you would know to listen to geese. I thought that the geese were just, you know, vibing up there. I didn't know what they were trying to tell her. He translated it perfectly. He said, there's a big gust of wind coming. And then they made a shield of themselves to protect her. And then they were like, that wind's going to blow us.

And she's like, what? And then they hit her right in the face i i love that gg um is bilingual he speaks goose yes he speaks the language of all birds it seems like yeah legend so she loses the gift and she has gg pretend to be the toy cat until she can find the real one. So she searches for the toy and finds it in a house that belongs to an artist. And that's Ursula, right? Also, two Ursulas. That's Little Mermaid Synergy taking place. Whoa. Yes.

True. True. Yeah. The only reason I knew it was her is because it's Janine Garate granofalo garofalo garofalo there we go get it jean garofalo and uh she is the cool artist lady you would want to spend long nights talking to you about what does the meaning of your life mean yeah that was that was uh casting. I was like, oh, that just like fits. That's like her character that she plays. Yes, it's just her.

Yeah, cool girl energy. So the toy's damaged and its head is starting to fall off. So Ursula offers to fix it for Kiki if Kiki helps clean Ursula's house. So she does. Meanwhile, Gigi is struggling to pretend to be a toy, especially because there's a very big dog in the house. His name is Jeff. I love Jeff.

Jeff's a dog. But Jeff ends up helping Gigi escape, and he helps Kiki when she returns with the toy cat. So Jeff is an ally, and we we love Jeff Gigi's pure astonishment at Jeff he's a good boy it totally took me he'll do it it was amazing yeah there were so many moments in this movie where you expect things to go south and i kind of wonder i'm like oh maybe that's just like how american movies were conditioning our brains to think things were gonna go because i remember very clearly watching this movie for the first

time thinking that the older woman who i guess is voiced by debbie reynolds yes was going to shove kiki in the oven. Like I just remember like a Hansel and Gretel. I did think she was a witch at first because she's coded in such I think accidentally because you don't see her at first. Like somebody comes to the door and greets you and then

she's chilling in bed. Oh you mean her lesbian lover? Because those two women are lesbian lovers? Obviously. For sure. Very death on the nile of them um but then she has that old school stove where listen if hansel and gretel weren't getting shoved into like a stove that's set on the floor and made of like cast iron they were getting shoved into one of those brick wall oven things maybe that's why i thought it was gonna happen because i was just like wait no and she was an old lady who wasn't like inherently her grandmother so she must be right and that's yeah and yet another way that

western storytelling they're like if a woman is older and you don't know her personally she's about to kill you and you're like she wants to eat you suck your soul because she's jealous of your youth there are no children around her evil oh okay anyways no one tries to kill kiki it's shocking except for a few gusts of wind except the wind yeah the elements yeah The elements. Yeah. So sometime later, Tombo comes by the bakery to invite Kiki to a party that night at the aviation club. And she's still not thrilled with him at first, but she warms up to him and then really wants to go to this party. But first, she has to make a few deliveries because her business is starting to take off literally and figuratively wow wow kiki's a girl boss she is yeah i hope not right for one of her deliveries the pot pie is not ready yet because the old woman in the credits i think her think she's just madam. That's Debbie Reynolds.

Her oven isn't working, so Kiki helps her bake the dish and then helps her around the house. But oh no, now Kiki is running late for the party. And it starts raining when she sets off to make the delivery. Also, Debbie Reynolds' granddaughter is ungrateful for the pot pie. And Kiki is soaking wet, and she's so late for this party so she just ends up going home and getting into bed which also so relatable so relatable and then she gets sick I wanted to just really quickly shout out the pie because I don't know that we talked about this in our last Miyazaki episode but the like Miyazaki food scenes are kind of like the stuff of legend and that pie in particular

um it's just like so like I feel like that I don't know just like a little more detailed than it needs to be in a way that is very exciting there's like a crust of fish it's like a pie but there's a fish on top and you're just like i don't know great well and then even detailing it with like the highest parts of the pie got burned a little because it's a full roaring fire and it's not gonna cook evenly like the thought process that goes into food the way like the loaves of bread uh at the opening um silent husband as i like to call him like flips open the pans and twirls them on his fingers for the cat and i just would love to apparently there is a miyazaki land in

japan and i hear the food's okay and i would like to go to there and just eat my way through yeah i didn't know that existed god that's incredible yeah silent husband is exactly how and then he says one line at the end and you're and i've just i was like you can talk that's incredible. Yeah. Silent husband is exactly how, and then he says one line at the end, and I was like, you can talk? That's not how I thought he was going to sound. Yeah, no. I just did, his voice is so much deeper than I, I don't know what I thought he was going to sound like,

but I was like, whoa, okay. Okay, so Kiki does get sick for a few days after flying in the rain, but then she starts to feel better. She makes a delivery for someone who turns out to be Tombo, who shows her his flying machine, a.k.a. a bike with a propeller on the front. And they get on it and go to the beach where this blimp, a.k.a. they keep calling it a dirigible. I had never heard that word before. I'm going to keep calling it a dirigible yeah i had never heard that word before uh i'm gonna keep calling it a blimp but on the way to see the blimp they veer off course and his flying bike breaks

but they laugh about it until tombo's friends show up and invite them to tour the blimp but kiki doesn't want to go because she feels like an outsider among them she feels that they look at her as if she's kind of like an oddball outsider i like i like that they introduce kind of like chekhov's hindenburg in this like if you introduce a hindenburg like image it's gotta crash by the end of the movie it doesn't have to quite Hindenburg but I would say this did like a diet Hindenburg there's definitely a catastrophe involved with it's pretty scary I remember being very scary because you like it almost felt like a little uh titanic connect where you're like oh my god they're gonna get crushed. Like it's very scary. Yeah. Anyways,

Chekhov's Hindenburg, write it down. New merch coming soon. So when Kiki goes home, after kind of abruptly leaving Tombo and his friends, she discovers that she can't understand Gigi anymore so he just sounds like a cat meowing at her and not Phil Hartman making you know sarcastic quips which would be a big disappointment it'd be so devastating if you if my cat made sly comments all the time and then just abruptly didn't oh the heartbreak yeah just what a third of my entertainment is gone i kind of always imagine because you know like if you're like pet's voice in your head of course i i do always kind of apply a bit of a newsies accent to both of my pets and i wonder how much of that is like just latent phil hartman gg from my i'm like oh yeah of course if you have a little black cat is your animal

familiar it's gonna sound a little bit like phil hartman that's right i have a giant dog and she sounds dopey she has the tuba that follows jeff around uh all the way around just it did have a little oh god i was really hoping jeff would come back for more than a second but you know seriously he made a meal of his time on screen he really did it's a joy and a highlight okay so she can't understand gg anymore also gg has a cat girlfriend who again in the original Japanese version of this movie lesbian cats we've got lesbian old ladies a lot of queer representation in this film so Kiki also discovers she cannot fly on her broom anymore and she breaks her broom trying to see if she can still fly so she's losing her witch's powers. She's really depressed. She doesn't

want to talk to Tombo anymore. But then one day, Ursula shows up to visit Kiki, and they take a little like weekend trip together out in the woods. And Kiki confides in Ursula while she draws Kiki. And she tells Kiki that the same thing happened to her as an artist. She felt she couldn't really paint anymore but she realized what she needed was some inspiration and she needed to discover her own unique style. That scene really hit for me this time around. I needed it. Then Kiki returns home and makes another delivery for the madam except it's actually a gift a cake from her for kiki and she's so touched and she starts crying and they are going to celebrate their birthdays together and it's so beautiful but meanwhile oh

no there's a terrible accident with the hindenburg they're like oh no check out hindenburg and it's so beautiful but meanwhile oh no there's a terrible accident with they're like oh no check out hindenburg and it's blowing away because of strong winds so really the wind is the antagonist of this movie and the blimp is taking tombo along with it so kiki rushes off. She grabs a man's push broom and is able to fly on it again, but she's very rusty and wobbly on the broom. The blimp crashes into a clock tower. Tombo is about to fall off and die, but Kiki manages to get there in the nick of time and she saves Tombo. and everyone is so proud of kiki she's a she's a national hero wow and i don't know about anyone else but i legitimately burst into tears like when she grabs him and then like lowers him down onto the i was like oh my god it's beautiful and it's like it builds the suspense so well like you don't know if she i mean it's like you do but you do and then she

lowers him so slowly and it's so beautiful and it's so chaotic i guess that that is a that's a little mermaid parallel where ariel does save prince eric at um i think a few points in that movie but yeah um it's it is such a beautiful conclusion and then she i and then and then you find out i and then i get curious about the um timeline of the movie at the end because it's like she's supposed to be gone for like a year right yeah or so and then like how long has she been gone because at the end it's like i was like oh yeah i guess maybe it's been like two months maybe this she became a celebrity like two months into her year her semester abroad that's kind of where i thought the timeline was because so the movie ends with kiki and tombo flying together

kiki on her broom and tombo on his new and improved flying machine and then we get the credits we get a few we you know we check in with uh different characters and then there's a scene at the very end of the of that like credit sequence where kiki's parents receive a letter from her saying how she loves the city and now she has all this confidence and she's like doing great and i'm like oh well so she's still you know abroad and like on her year abroad basically so yeah i think it's only a few months into her adventures wild so that's the story let's take a quick break and then we will come right back to discuss definitely caruana galizia was a maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was murdered. There are crooks everywhere

you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradente.

And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions. Like, how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed? Or, can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job? Girl, yes.

Each week, we answer your unfiltered work questions. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in experts who do. Like resume specialist Morgan Saner. The only difference between the person who doesn't get the job and the person who gets the job is usually who applies. Yeah, I think a lot about that quote. What is it like you miss 100 percent of the shots you never take? Yeah, rejection is scary, but it's better than you rejecting yourself.

Together, we'll share what it really takes to thrive in the early years of your career without sacrificing your sanity or sleep. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. How do you feel about biscuits? Hi, I'm Akilah Hughes, and I'm so excited about my new podcast, Rebel Spirit, where I head back to my hometown in Kentucky and try to convince my high school to change their racist mascot, the Rebels,

into something everyone in the South loves, the Biscuits. I was a lady rebel. Like, what does that even mean? The Boone County Rebels will stay the Boone County Rebels with the image of the Biscuits. It's right here in black and white in the prints. They lying. An individual that came to the school saying that God sent him to talk to me about the mascot switch is a leader. You choose hills that you want to die on. Why would we want to be the losing team? I'd just take all the other stuff out of it.

Segregation academies. When civil rights said that we need to integrate public schools, these charter schools were exempt from that. Bigger than a flag or mascot. You have to be ready for serious backlash. Listen to Rebel Spirit on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts and we are back we're back on our brooms baby and we're ready to soar into the discussion

yes where to begin i feel like we've already it's it's hard to like keep your feelings at bay when discussing Kiki. Truly. Where shall we go? Can we talk about how this reflects just so many points in our lives? We've sort of been talking a little bit about it. Like for me, it's very indicative of the year between like junior high and high school. Like it sort of felt like that summer of like who am I going to be in this new school and there's going to be so much less like parental

and individual oversight and I'll be making a lot more decisions about like what kind of orgs I want to be a part of and all this stuff and then it also sort of reminded me of like when I moved out of the dorms in college which for me was like the second half of freshman year and I got my first apartment and I was like I could totally I have so much money shopping spree looks like all I can eat is pancakes damn um and then even now sort of with the aspects of like burnout and definitely female friendships at this point in time my life as somebody who's like not in a very seriously committed relationships. My female friendships are like the most grounding structural feature of my daily life. And I think she's surrounded by so many incredible women who see her so authentically.

And I love that this movie sort of embraces all of those moments and asks you if you're envisioning yourself as Kiki you don't need to change there's so many times when this could have flown off into like a makeup montage she's practically begging for one the whole movie she's like my shoes aren't right look at these pretty red shoes maybe I'll get those and I my dress it's not right mom like it's just dark and I would look better in lilac and the woman she lives with she's like I got invited to a party I don't want to wear she's like well that's not really a problem because you look great and cool and mysterious in this dope dress you have anyone else would have been like montage girl let's fix you so

people will like you and I love the idea that all these women essentially just encourage her to like be herself and take her time and get some rest and all the great advice you get from your girlfriends and it's so oh man it's the kind of movie you instantly want to share with the little girls in your life you're like please watch and consume and like internalize as quickly as you can yeah I mean and like I this has like been on my mind for years. And I guess I hadn't thought about how Kiki is like such a unique, shining example of just like the value of teaching kids in general, like when to say no. But in particular, teaching young girls when to say no. And also seeing that not result in some worst case scenario where Kiki is like she part of the reason she burns herself out is because she's so she works really hard. Like she is very, very, very accommodating to other people in a way that I feel like girls are often like conditioned to do. Trained to be.

And like she's always doing the most for other people in a way that is like speaks to how good her heart is but when she has to like when she hits a wall and she like is completely burned out and has nothing left to give no one's upset with her everyone's like yeah of course like we appreciated everything you were doing for us but like you don't have like don't hurt yourself don't kill yourself on behalf of like practice some self-care like literally i didn't like get back on your feet yeah well and the thing that really burns her out is the lack of appreciation right like yes it's the rain and it gives her a cold and all that but it's your grandmother and i worked really hard to make sure you could have this thing that she thought you would love in your again snootiness and complete rejection of this you know gift made with so much love like it's

so disheartening to her that she can't because i feel like before this kiki is always seeing the bright side of things you know when they arrive in the town her cat is like you know there may be which is like and there might not be we just don't know yet we have to go ask some questions she's like always a glass half full kind of gal but everyone's been accommodating and appreciative and supportive up until that point even her first customer is a woman and she gives her way more money than she was like i didn't even think about a price and they're like you poor girl okay this is what you asking for. She's overpaid a couple of times and you're like, yes, people appreciate her work. And then literally like Debbie Reynolds is like, you know, Kiki's like, you don't have to pay me if your pie isn't done. And Debbie Reynolds is like,

no, you came here, you worked. And it's like, wow, Miyazaki. And you know that like Miyazaki has been involved in like workers' rights and labor rights throughout his career too. So it feels very like intentional and thoughtful. Yes. Yes. Yeah. That's something that really struck me too where like a recurring theme slash motif is this idea of like Kiki isn't really sure what her work is worth.

And like part of me was like I don't even know if she's being overpaid by these people it's probably just that she's been conditioned to like not know her value which is another thing that girls are not ever taught how to negotiate for themselves or like not taught like how to know the worth of their labor and skills and stuff like that absolutely and her mom even makes such a big point of like she barely knows how to fly which sort of hit me on two points is like one you did this at 13 as well your daughter is like clearly very capable she's like checking the night she makes you're like i mean 13 is very young to be like out on your own start a business as far as like but as far as tradition goes it's like

i think parents often are like my babies when they were often doing things either you know more intense or just about as intense when they were their kids age and it wasn't necessarily harmful um but it was also sort of this idea of like kiki's sort of been i think only child syndrome where she's just around a lot of adults so she's very mature and she's running around and doing her own thing and she hasn't had the time to like learn potions or learn a trade really so that she's fully prepared for this journey and I sort of like that so much of her action is just gumption I just want to go to the ocean let's just go see what that's like we could probably this sound looks good like the train dropped me off here maybe that'll work you know like i could

take this pacifier back and then doesn't think about at all making that her job until again here's this older woman who's like well that could be a business and you don't have any place to stay like let me give you a room you poor child out on the street i love when she goes to the hotel which again i just think about if i was 13 trying to do it on my own i'd be like yeah i'm gonna check in so like is your parent around like who are you she's like who's responsible for this child which is also relatable too like as a 13 year old but also just as like a person of any age like doing a new thing going to a new place i think there's a lot of like i mean there's a lot of metaphors you can map on to kiki's experience like i was reading a twitter thread on our twitter

when we were posting about wanting to cover this movie and a listener was like this movie gave me the confidence to like go abroad when i was like a young adult and like live abroad and other people were commenting things like oh like I saw this as a metaphor for like pursuing art as a career and like how people generally respond to that but like how you have to like you know just kind of keep doing it and messing up at it until you kind of finally figure it out. And, and then just, I also think that similar to Paddington,

you can kind of map like, this is similar to an immigrant's experience. for sure. And there's all these just like relatable experiences. And yeah, we were already talking about some of them, but there's also, you rarely see a female character

like a girl of this age in a movie being allowed to just kind of fumble through what she's trying to do and like make mistakes but like learn and develop her skills and show emotional vulnerability but also show strength we had a very similar discussion on the spirited away episode too yeah because this is like something that Miyazaki is like known for being really good with and like I love that it's like she yeah similar to Chihiro Kiki is not great at everything the first time she tries it and you see her like get better in a way that feels like you're saying Joelle like very very grounded for the fantasy world that we're in and I think that also makes her more like accessible to kids that are watching the movie

because it's like most kids are not going to be amazing at something the first time they try it and like the way that Kiki like i don't know it stood out to me especially on this viewing the way that she like her strength is that she approaches the world with all this positivity and confidence and just like trusts that she's gonna find her place and it's like when she feels rejected enough times that's when she like loses herself for a little bit and loses what makes her so special which is that she is able to like just have this faith in herself that kids are very often able to have in themselves and that sometimes you know like at the age she's at when you're when you're 13 that's when you kind of start to question that and lose that and the

fact that she questions it and loses it and then like meets this amazing big sister who another really great moment that I remember thinking was really sweet when I was a kid too is the you know Kiki says I think something that a lot of 13 year olds in I mean regardless of gender say where they're like why would you want to draw like why would you want to draw me i'm like i'm not pretty i'm not cute and because i mean think of a time in your life where you'll feel less cute than being 13 years old oh my god and then her reaction to not be like oh no you're beautiful to laugh to laugh so fully and just being like it's not even a a rejection of that idea. It's a complete understanding.

Of course you feel that way. But no, let me tell you, girl, your face is beautiful. It's like that sort of like constant love and positivity and not over-dramatizing a moment, which I think often happens for like, oh, you feel bad? Stop everything. stop everything we need to make sure you feel good about yourself instead of just sort of embracing that that feeling is real and that you can sort of stay with that feeling and still recognize that there is beauty in you and and that you know you look good kid like you're fine i just think there's there's so much um just support and sort of the ideal support that you would hope young people would gravitate towards um and none of the negative to really counterbalance that at all it's like there's no need like we're gonna keep it

two thousand percent positive even if we compare her final heroic scene to any other movie's heroic moment which is always i've mastered my skills and now i can do the job that needs to be done which is ludicrous I mean if you talk to anybody working in literally any field who's sane and not a complete narcissist they're like oh I still have so much to learn there's I'm constantly messing it up I'm constantly questioning whether I'm doing it right I have no freaking clue how I'm gonna do this next step that I need to do and so to show her fumble the whole way until the very last second, like there's a moment where you're like, is he going to let this kid just splat on the ground?

Is he going to die in front of all these people? You don't know. Not really. And for it to be sort of this great moment and still be so celebrated and so not, you know, I think, again, it could easily be like, oh, she almost dropped him. Oh, scary. But instead it was like, oh, my my god she did it thank god and it's it's just all constant love and support and this movie feels like a warm hug guys if you need one you can watch this movie

it's getting me all teared up just describing Kiki like it's so thoughtful and like that night with Ursula is so special where like the only, Joel, I think you said this earlier, like she's begging for a makeover in the way that you would expect in a movie, like about young girls in general the whole time. And the only thing that changes about her is like her mindset in that trip.

Like it's so nice. It's perfect. Even the way that scene is scored there's an entire crescendo until she turns off the light which i'd never noticed before until this screening and so it's like it almost mirrors when she's about to fly so when she's about to fly it's like all the sound cuts out and then there's that wishing rustling and then she takes off and goosebumps by the way in the final scene where she just browsed her room.

She's like, I'm just doing that. You're like, oh, God, it's happening. But in this scene, it's sort of the opposite, where it's all the magic is in the actual notes of the music. It's not something that has to be concentrated on or really expressed. It's just naturally there. And when she turns off the light, it's even more magical. Because, you know, if you've been at a sleepover, when the lights go the light it's even more magical because you know if you've

been at a sleepover when the lights go off that's when the real conversation you know we're just two voices talking in the dark and and like being somehow even more honest and intimate than we were before when the lights were on it is like such a perfect encapsulation of just those girlhood sleepovers and i really love it it's so special speaking of i mean we already touched on this a little bit but i wanted to do a deeper dive into kiki's relationships with other girls and women because you have scenes at the beginning where it's clear that she has a good relationship with her mom we see her say goodbye to her like group of female friends that are like her age everybody seems very supportive of her you know they're all wishing her well and like so excited for her to embark on this journey

then when she gets to the city she befriends asono she befriends ursula the lesbian couple no woman betrays her in the whole like there is no and there's no real like villain of this movie either nope like except the wind yeah the wind is the sole villain of the like there's the only villain mostly just a challenger it's just something she has to learn how to work with yeah yeah like the the only villain is like her like loss of confidence and like the forces that cause her to lose her confidence society self-doubt is the real enemy yeah totally and then so she has all these like just wonderful supportive relationships with women and you know they kind of take on different roles where like a sono kind of becomes sort of like a mother figure but also a bit of a mentor like a a business mentor almost ursula is sort of like taking on this big sister

also mentorish role where she's like, yeah, I experienced something similar. You can confide in me. I'm going to give you some advice on how to get through this. You've got Madam and what is her lover's name? And again, I don't think they're not like canonically necessarily lovers, but. They definitely call her by a name yeah yeah barsa maybe yes yes that is absolutely correct are we supposed to think that barsa works for her i think there's like a line of dialogue that indicates that yeah she might be like an employee but it seems like they're in love that's probably what it's supposed to be it's so very unprofessional of debbie reynolds to be dating her employee it's very death on the

now this is how they could be together okay they she has to pretend to be the employee so they can live their lesbian lifestyle without judgment because it's also like i don't know what era we're supposed to be in but it seems like based on the cars it might be like the 40s or 50s i felt like when i heard aviation club i'm like world war ii right right aviation club uh that boy in striped hat and propeller hat and you know everything happens in miyazaki's childhood or present day and that's pretty much it true so i feel like i feel like this is probably just around the time he's in his mid-teens, which would be a little bit post-World War. In any case, she's got all these just wonderful supportive relationships with these women.

And then the one person her age who she befriends is Tombo, who, as we joked about at the very beginning does do that like i'm gonna wear you down until you agree to be my friend and i think you can kind of assume that he has a crush on her i think so yeah but also it might just be like you know he thinks she's really cool because she can fly and he loves to fly and maybe he just wants to be friends either way no romance emerges which again if you're comparing this and maybe it's not fair to compare like a studio ghibli movie to a disney renaissance movie but like it's fair because disney renaissance movies are the animated movies that i was watching as a kid in the u. US in the 90s you know even though a lot of those movies had a female protagonist it was stuff like yeah but she never had a mom she never had any female

friends if she met a boy he became her boyfriend if she had an animal sidekick the animal sidekick was there to help her get that boyfriend you know stuff like that i mean i think that's a very fair comparison though because it's the same years and and the disney renaissance movies were borrowing so heavily from miyazaki movies just way less effect like borrowing all the wrong stuff that not borrowing anything thematically that would have been helpful but like like that art is gorgeous fuck a message though we got that on lock not interested in evolving there but beautiful art yeah i also think like this is a this film really sort of challenges the idea of like i don't even want to say challenges that's the wrong wording this film sort of really highlights like okay she wants a boyfriend but has no idea like what that

actually means she just sort of sees like there's that moment where she's in the shop and it's a slow day and she's bored and she sees like a very elegant girl in her very large floppy hat and her sundress hop on the back of a boy's scooter and she's sitting side saddle how do they do that it's so elegant and you know just one hand brace gently on the back and the other around her guy's waist. And they zoom off. And it's all very romantic. And she lets out this sort of like deep sigh. And then when she has a chance to recreate this, she straight doesn't.

She's like, fuck sitting side saddle. She's like, this is how I ride my broom. I know how to fly. And she's completely in her element of like, oh, I know how to fly. Like I can get real low into the ground and I know how to hit these swerves and you're instead of guiding me and their relationship is entirely built on their desire to like fly and be up and move and it's sort of really interesting to it's a sort of challenge idea of like yeah she might want a boyfriend but she's not ready for it no nothing she's 13 like she just gets this opportunity to be friends and i think again what an aspirational thing for young girls

to have is just this idea of like you can just be friends with the boys and that's pretty awesome too and they can treat you fairly and respectfully and never try to objectify you or challenge you or make fun of you which i think especially coming out of like late 80s movies like porkies and a much better film but with similar themes fast times richmond high this idea of like boys are constantly just laughing at girls yeah and i think i think the idea that none of that happens here is it's kind of great yeah he like appreciates her like initially for her flying skills and then when he gets to know her better it just seems that he likes her character her like kindness and and positivity and yeah stuff like that and again like comparing it to a disney renaissance movie those plots are usually revolving entirely around the hetero romance versus

Kiki's delivery service is about like a very, just like internal struggle of Kiki, like growing up and coming of age and learning how to be a person in the world. And she makes some friendships along the way and those inform and inspire her but yeah it's just like it's not common that you'd have just a story like that about a girl like a teen girl imagine so very cool yeah I it's it's very it's very beautiful i think i i will say that that the tombo stuff the way it's developed is a little bit that's the only thing about the movie then

like it's a little clunky at some points he is following her around yeah uh she does repeatedly say i don't want to be your friend and it works out for them and like i don't know it's a perfect movie uh that did stick out to me for a second where i'm like tombo take the hint for sure she doesn't want to hang let her like if she wants to if she changes her mind let her come to you she'll let you know it's like the most respectful level of like because it's so i think because it's framed as being very innocent like she's so cool are you mad at me still why can you explain it's so i think because it's framed as being very innocent like she's so cool are you mad at me still why can you explain it to me i don't understand what happened right i want to hang out why are you sad what's going on like it's so much about like what what can i do to make

it better like i just i just want to hang out and be cool and it's never you know aggressive or and again never blaming or like oh she's like she's so frigid she won't talk to me i don't understand her just constantly going back to like can you just tell me what's going on and i think it's it's sort of the sweetest way you could be hopelessly i don't even want to say hopelessly in love but sort of like attracted to somebody and again not even in a romantic way but just attracted to that person who is this person please talk to me i feel like we can be good friends it's precious right yeah i agree jamie that like the way it's handled is a little like especially because like it works out for them and they become friends even though he did wear her down and not not really like take her hints and stuff like that but joelle you're

also right in that he's not really displaying aside from like some light stalking uh he's not he's not engaging in other toxic behaviors that yeah also usually get rewarded in movies so the only thing i wish is that asano hadn't sent her to his house that yes yeah i was like i guess a woman does betray her for a second. Like, you don't know what he's like. You don't know this boy. Is he good?

Right. Especially because Kiki's reaction is like, Osana, how did, how could you do this to me? And it's like, yeah, like you're throwing Kiki under the bus right now.

Like, that's not cool. That's truly like the only element that felt late 80s to me everything else was like timeless perfect no notes but that that part that little element it's like oh i bet that if that was written now it would be done a little differently the only other example of something like that for me was um so there's a pancake motif as well in this. I love a motif and there's so many motifs in this movie. One of them is a pancake motif. It's initially introduced when she is worried that she is only going to be able to eat pancakes because that's all she's going to be able to afford.

So it's kind of this like class thing and she's like getting her business off the ground and like not really earning money yet. But then later she's a girl boss building her empire which like we yeah we have joked about that before and i think there is like a possible like capitalist read to this but i choose to view her enterprise i mean it's not worth to get into yeah i just think you know she's she's not starting a business so she can get rich and exploit other people she's just like i have a skill that most other people don't seem to have because most other people are not witches who can fly on a broom and i'm going to use this skill and provide a helpful service in order to support myself and

learn independence yeah she has to live in a capitalist society and it's not her fault but she does have to live through it it is tradition it's tradition that you need to start a business on your 13th birthday yes um okay so she's talking about how she's only ever going to be able to afford to eat pancakes and then at one point she says if i don't get customers i'm gonna have to eat pancakes forever and then i'm going to get fat fat fat so i didn't appreciate but but then i'm like well that is a very like 13 year old girl thing to say because she's been conditioned to yeah i think that fatness equals bad yeah but i think if this movie were to come out today a line like that would be eliminated it's very little stuff like it is kind of wild that the grapes we have are like comparatively i mean

compared to like disney movies of the same era we've covered where it's like right cracking your knuckles being like all right where do we begin like rolling up our sleeves. Yeah. The last kind of thing I wanted to talk about is we have discussed on the podcast before the representation of women or girls as witches in media and how witches are often portrayed as villains. They're scary, evil seductresses, or they are like old body horror hags, or some other version of bad, scary witch lady. And how that was born from a historical fear and misunderstanding of women's sexuality, women's bodies, women's bodies, women existing in the world period.

But this movie doesn't do anything like that. It's borrowing some like iconography from witch stuff, such as a black cat and flying on a broom and like potions mixing that like we see her mom doing at the beginning and end. But other than that it's just like she's a witch and that's actually really cool and yeah um most people are fine with it except for that one cop and agab i found a great uh essay by christine john baptiste on bitch media from a couple years ago that like does a great job of fully unpacking

like Kiki's place in witch culture and also like Japanese magic girl culture. Yeah. It's really good. The passage that stuck out to me goes a little something like this. Hit it. Quote, like witchcraft itself, the film centers on the bonds between women. Though the

male savior remains a common trope in coming of age movies, girl meets boy, girl falls in love with boy, boy makes girl's lives better, it's women whom Kiki can trust as she learns about herself and rediscovers her strength. And it goes on to just kind of unpack how traditionally witches,

you know, it's a way of making women who are empowered and sustaining themselves and often engaging in like sisterhood and solidarity with other women seem like an evil and terrifying thing that is worthy of violence and this is this movie saying the exact opposite like it's a strength kiki's using her powers for good while also knowing her own worth she like gets self-esteem and gives self-esteem to the women around her and they're all kind of in it together there's no and there's no villain in the story and she's like she's accepted it's it's very beautiful. It's so nice. Is there anything else we want to talk about? Actually, one thing that I was curious about,

because this is something I noticed a lot in My Neighbor Totoro and this movie in Kiki's Delivery Service, was that you see young girls' underwear a lot, which in animation is a very deliberate choice you have to like very deliberately animate that animation famously not real yeah correct and i was like okay is this just sort of like my puritanical american point of view where i was kind of weirded out by the the very frequent shots of young underage girls and seeing their underwear or is this maybe a cultural thing that I'm just not fully aware of especially because these movies never like sexualize the characters in any way

there's never any kind of like predatory camera work happening but at the same time i was like why do we see their underwear so much it's a good question and and so we consulted our guest on the spirited away episode ayumi shinazaki and i asked if she had any insight about this. And she sure did. And she sure did. And we are so grateful. And this is what she had to say. Jamie, would you do the honors?

Sure. So Ayumi says, regarding Kiki's delivery service and my neighbor Totoro, let's start with this unfortunate panty question. I'm not even someone I would consider a historian of Japanese animation as a whole, but since magical girls have been around a long time and have watched a lot of shows from across the decades, I'm unfortunately very familiar with this topic. I do have to admit that as someone who has taught very young Japanese children for years,

kids who wear dresses often end up showing their panties without realizing it because they're children and they play and they're literally not thinking about stuff like that yet and I wouldn't want them to have to which obviously true of all kids. However there is a reason why we never see panties and spirited away after Miyazaki paid attention to media for young girls. Even now it's an audience whose comics and cartoons are generally panty free but also there were major changes made to regulations in children's media in the 90s which from my understanding occurred after the pokemon seizure fiasco i don't know what that

means the pokemon cartoons back in the day had so much flash animation that they would occasionally cause kids to have seizures so they were like heavily edited before they came over to america i don't know much about what happened on the japanese side but i do know that when i started airing over here and people caught wind that that had happened that there was a lot of concern among parents about their kids watching the show that is what i was thinking seizing pokemon cards because that's what happened at my school if you had pokemon cards they were seized that is how i interpreted that as well okay continuing i want to look into that that's wild um continuing with ayumi um when it comes to the concept we can blame osamu tazuka the god of manga who began work

in comics and animation from the 1950s he began to draw panty shots in Astro Boy for the character of Uran, who is a child, and went really wild with the Marvelous Melmo in the early 70s, a magical girl series about a nine-year-old girl who gets magical candies that age her up or down, and whose panties can be seen just all over the place. While earlier magical girl shows had been for girls and was thus largely panty-free,

this was a show focused on teaching sex education to children for the record parents complained about the show but primarily about the sex education part not the panty shot part what a confusing world we live in i know boomer parents uh really really uh wow okay. Or I guess this would be the boomer parents parents. Anyways, later on in the 70s, we also got the first fighting magical girl cutie honey who is rendered nude all the time despite being 17 years old. And parents definitely complained about that nudity. Fair. Her series has been a lot of variations in terms of levels of sexualization depending on the intended audience as she's been rebooted panty shots had become extremely normalized in media

not targeted to girls in japan to the point where some viewers might be numb to it but it's not just you i did some googling in japanese and found a lot of parents and or feminist blogs and social media posts asking if it's okay to still show these two movies to kids often only realizing the panty shots were weird in the context of hearing non-japanese insight on the films if these movies were made today i think they'd have either very few panty shots or none at all due to that change in regulations of children's media in the 90s improvement can be seen in ponyo to be sure where she is designed with adorable poofy white shorts. Oh yeah, she is. The regularity of panty shots in media, especially media for teen boys and young men is so normalized that it's often

celebrated or shocking when a show doesn't cross that line. Luckily, I mostly watch shows for kids, so I don't have to be subjected to that most of the time. It goes on further. But first of all, thank you so much, Ayumi, for that contextualization. What a wild history. What a world. And also, I think, as Ayumi points out, another example of a male auteur filmmaker

realizing kind of the implications of what he was doing or sort of like connecting some of the dots and and seeing how his work could be interpreted or the similarities of far more troubling depictions of young girls in media and then course correcting as a result so another shout out to Miyazaki for kind of recognizing that but yeah that is something because I grew up watching Totoro that was the only um Miyazaki film that I had exposure to as a kid and I remember thinking as a kid like wow there's a lot of underwears in the movie. And that's weird because I try to hide my underwear. So, yeah, I was just curious about that.

So once again, thank you, Ayumi, for providing all of that insight and context. Very, very helpful. And I want to learn more about the Pokemon. Thank you, Joelle, for telling us what the Pokemon seizure scandal is. There's so much, God, so much, so many,

so many bizarre things to know in this world. So is there anything else that we wanted to touch on? I think that's it from me. Well, I'm good. I feel, thank you guys for this. I really appreciated taking a trip back.

I watch Howl's Moving Castle like three times a year. It's my favorite Miyazaki film. Unfortunately unfortunately i'm so sorry i want to be better like every time i'm like oh but look at how and then she's old and she's learning life lessons it's so great um i mean we have so many requests for all of these movies like when we announced we were doing it's gonna take us years yeah so we're going like everyone's like well why aren't you doing princess mononoke and it's like we will just skip us we will get there we have one at a time please uh but if you haven't already done howls i will at two thousand percent come back for howls moving castle come back for how because it is

oh so freaking good um and it does have a bad language but we can talk about her later um but yes strolling back to kiki and just what a way to honor your inner 13 year old child if you're doing that kind of work in therapy like i am um i was like look at her she serves to be loved and just supported and look at how great things turn out when she trusts her heart and and herself and oh god what a beautiful movie it really it truly is i forgot how episodic it was in it's i i love an episodic movie i just uh kiki i i can't wait to show kiki to my niece when she's older yes also shout out to the children's book that this was adapted from a 1985 book by Aiko Kodono which I read that there were pretty significant adaptation changes that Miyazaki made in the script and that originally the author was not thrilled with those changes and the project almost got shut down because of it. But eventually the author was like, actually, go ahead.

Some of the more cinematic moments, such as the Hindenburg crashing, was not in the source material. Fair. That felt like a movie moment. But the book was also kind of episodic uh and i think that's probably where that structure in the movie comes from but yeah i just wanted to shout out the source material i haven't read it oh my gosh guys one of the notes from the author is this kiki's delivery service was inspired by one of my daughter's drawings it was a picture of a witch flying through the sky listening to a radio musical notes dance around her reminded me of photos of new york from a bird's eye view that i had seen in life magazine there were beautiful

images and i felt like there was a story there oh god i love this so much more it's so precious everything about this is so wholesome and thank you thank you for noting that the source material is by a woman because i feel like that very much i mean clarifies a lot always always happy to like give miyazaki his flowers for being exceptionally good at taking great care with um his characters who are women but also shout out to aiko kadono and also just a quick shout out because this is the dub that I and I think all of us are very emotionally attached to Kirsten Dunst man what what a run what a career holy shit the fact that Kiki's delivery service the Disney dub is like the 50th coolest thing she's ever done is uh just a testament lover r.i.p phil hartman jean graff roll drill i fucked it up too and of course jeff the dog

jeff and jeff the dog as himself feminist icon jeff the dog. Truly an ally. Does this movie pass the Bechdel test? Yes, it does. Yes. Almost constantly. As Jay mentioned from scene one. Yuck. Perfection. And that brings us to our nipple scale. Zero to five nipples based on how the movie fares, examining it through an intersectional

feminist lens. I'm going to go like four and a half maybe 4.75 even the only thing i'm really docking it for is how the tombo character does that i'm gonna wear you down and i'm gonna not respect your boundaries and that's not really interrogated in any meaningful way and it ends up working out for everybody because they become friends and that behavior should not be encouraged or portrayed in such a way that it yields good results or at least without a significant like having to reckon with that behavior because i'm all for like uh i think it actually could be really valuable for boys watching movies to see that behavior and then see of like oh I can't do that and I will not be rewarded with friendship

if I do that and like watching a character learn that could have been it just it feels like the only missed opportunity of the movie because it does take her a while like she's like oh you're rude and you didn't introduce yourself and you don't even know my name and you know like she's not receptive to it for a long time but i wish there had just been more of a clear when she does switch and like she gets excited to go to the party after he invites her i don't really know why what inspired like what's the catalyst for so i wish yeah he had been like i'm sorry for stalking you uh I won't do it again here's an invitation to my party something like that would have worked a little bit better for me but um otherwise like there's just so much to love about this movie there's so much that it's doing

well that media that's like appropriate for children like a you know kids and family movie that especially in mainstream American cinema was not doing at all so I love the relationships between female characters in this movie I love that it's an exploration of a girl who's figuring things out and exploring what she likes and what she wants to do and what her skills are and who she is and what type of person she wants to be and how the world and you know like external factors and other people that you encounter are going to maybe put a damper on your attitude sometimes but like learning how to deal with that and overcome those obstacles and just like the whole character arc and just like exploration of her character that happens

in the movie is just like so wonderful. We're in desperate need of more of those types of stories and characters still to this day four and three quarters nipples one to kiki one to asono one to ursula one to the lesbian couple and my three quarters nipples i don't know if i should do gg or jeff the dog because I love them both so much. Add silent husband and they each get a part of the quarter. Okay. True. I'm into that. Silent husband. Look and then you know Greg at the end.

Greg is there at the end. There is a Greg born from the Gregnancy and we have to acknowledge that. Young Greg. Cousin Greg. Anyways. I'm going to meet you there. I'm Greg. Cousin Greg. Anyways. I'm going to meet you there. I'm going to meet you at 4.75. I do think the Tombo story was a missed opportunity to completely subvert literally everything else going on in children's media at that time.

At least in the West. And I do. I'm very into right now learning about the Disney-Studio Ghibli relationship and how it seems, it also seems like Studio Ghibli movies had a huge impact on how Disney animated movies look, but how Pixar animated movies are written

with a point on strong emotional stories and subverting what you're used to seeing. I just think that that interaction between the two studios is really fascinating and speaks to Studio Ghibli so much because it's like Miyazaki's movies are so good that they made Western movies progressively better over time because the bar was simply so high.

Come on, icon. Come on, influencer. made western movies progressively better over time because the bar was simply so high come on icon come on influencer and that like Miyazaki was inspired by Disney originally so it's like this weird like back and forth relationship for sure I you know not to hand it to men, but it's just interesting. Kiki is just, I loved her when I was a kid. I love her now. I think it's like the more time that passes, the more I'm astounded that there's a story about a young girl learning her own worth and like not, you know, learning things over time and like discovering what makes her special even if she her skills are not honed yet she's a kid like of course and finding these supportive figures that are rooting for her that she can be vulnerable and emotionally honest with and even just like simple writing choices I don't know if this is the writer of the original book or if this is a Miyazaki choice don't know but but just the fact that I feel like a lesser movie would have Kiki rediscover her confidence through

Tambo but it's Ursula this character who was in the movie for like three minutes comes back and has this incredible arc and teaches Kiki awesome big sister stuff another titanic parallel is ursula draws not like one of her friends no no no no no but whoa i wouldn't have caught the comparison it's not any romantic thing but both sort of serve the same purpose of being like you are independently of everything else going on, beautiful and yourself. And I care about that individual. Yeah. Yeah.

In that moment, they were both completely at ease and uniquely seen. Yes. There's no denying. Okay. The parallels there. The Titanic. The Shrek parallels. I mean, the Shrek.

The Shrekian nature. I mean, there's no denying it. Yeah, I just it's it's an incredible movie. And I am excited to watch it more frequently now because now it's like, I don't know, as an adult that makes stuff for a living. That scene with Ursula, I'm like, hmm, got to return to that more often, I think. To the woods. It's real good. Away.

To the woods. Joelle, what say you you uh wait i gotta get my nipples away oh sorry yeah sorry sorry sheesh all right i'm giving one to ursula i'm giving two to kiki love it i'm giving one to gg the japanese gigi the girl Gigi how many and I'll give the remaining .75 to Phil Hartman Gigi because I appreciate both of them and I think that Phil Hartman Gigi is an excellent ally and a Yago style

hilarious animal sidekick Joelle what say you I agree with you guys entirely i can't go above or below this ratings for the obvious reasons already stated um i do wish um tombo which now that i'm saying it is too close to sambo so i would change that name and i feel like the reason kiki accepts his invitation to the party is just she's been accepted by so many adults and has this career this is her first opportunity to like hang out

with kids her own age and i sort of wish that had been hit harder who else is going to be there is that mean girl who doesn't like her grandma gonna be there because i could skip that um yeah also um the car they drove around in would terrify me, too. She was very right to be afraid of a car filled with mad children with a word monkey scribbled on the side. I don't know what you're getting into, but nothing good happens in that car. I promise you. Not a seatbelt in sight. Ursula obviously gets one. Asano totally gets one.

I'm going to give one to her mother because he has such a beautiful line. We sort of see her trying to and not even like she's not like a bad kid she's not trying to contradict her mother but she is trying to create space that's just her own the whole time she's around her mom and there's this like iconic moment for me anyway where she gets away from her mother and she's like my mom has been teaching me to fly since i was a baby she taught me to never be afraid and I was like oh moms are the best they're just the best like there's so much love and respect in that line that she doesn't get to necessarily show her mother when she's around her because you don't when you're 13 um and I thought that was such a lovely tribute to the woman who sort of shaped her before we get to meet her so one goes to mom um i'm gonna give uh one just to debbie reynolds

for being debbie reynolds um yeah and then one to the dog one to the cat because obviously uh they have supported and uplifted this story and you know way to hold it down for the kids when the parents are distracted really appreciate making sure everything goes smoothly when adults are doing adult things shout out to pets yeah it's incredible and then i that when when you said the thing about her her mom it is like fascinating in the miyazaki movies we've covered so far so kiki's in spirited away there is like this interesting needle he seems to thread with his characters where it's never like a reject tradition embrace modernity or reject modernity embrace tradition it's always like embrace a little bit of both and like even in kiki's outfit where like she has the bow is hers and that's her

like modern girl thing but she's wearing the traditional dress and like sticks by it even when she's like teased for it and i i like that kind of thematic blend of like there's always some old and some new and his characters like see the value in tradition but also like leave the shit they don't like behind and it's a it's a good way to live your life oh well and that's kiki's delivery service yes it is joelle thank you so much for joining us this has been an absolute delight thank you guys so much for having me i need to end seriously come back for how's moving castle will do where can people follow you on social media check out your stuff support your stuff yes uh you guys can find me all over the internet at Joelle Monique. That's J-O-E-L-L-E

M-O-N-I-Q-U-E. Please, please, please go check out my new podcast. It's called Comic-Con Metapod. There are no dashes in there. Don't worry about it. Comic-Con Metapod. Four separate words. I'm really excited about it. We have some great interviews for you.

We just did the most chaotic interview of my life with Seth Green and Donald Fald faze on um it's i think we're gonna release it uh this coming wednesday whatever that is do they talk about being two of the members of du jour from josie and the pussycats we don't even get to do sure because they're supposed to come on for 15 minutes and they stay for an hour and halfway through they're just talking to each other and we were like let the tape roll and it was so much of seth being like here like donald will start talking in a negative tone about himself stuff be like don't you dare don't you do it he's like you're really out here working and trying they're such good buddies in real life we tried to make them debate but they had all of the same feelings about everything and so the debate totally it's very chaotic but so much fun and we had um john carlo

esposito on who is as kind and warm as you'd want him to be the absolute opposite of gus his character on breaking bad um not at all a bad guy totally like good human from the like 20 minutes that we got to interact with him to the point where we were crying over fandom which if you followed me on any of my other shows you know like fandom is everything i love fans uh not the toxic kind but the kind that are just really loving their content and get into theories and you know media has the power to change lives, as you guys so know. And to see somebody who, you know, makes it valuing their fans and these very precious interactions, you know, and then to the point where he is actually shedding tears. I mean,

transformational. We felt so much lighter. We were like, just in disbelief. My co-host Hector and I were just like, I can't believe this happened.'s the most like just uplifting positive interview we've had in so long um so there's a lot of great stuff out there and if you know anything about hector he's just wonderful brilliant treasure the best adorable human um so i hope you guys will come check it out it's available wherever you get podcasts comic--Con, Metapod. Hell yes. Check it out. You can check us out on Instagram and Twitter at Bechtelcast. You can check out our Patreon, aka Matreon, at patreon.com slash Bechtelcast, where you get two bonus episodes every month and access to the entire back catalog of bonuses of which there are over 100 can you

believe it uh the passage of time is wild like that wow wow uh yeah this this month the month of may we are doing face off and top gun so if you want a very different vibe, head over there. Oh gosh, I'm going to be tuning in, guys. It is a great follow-up. Chaos. Watch me grapple with the fact that I think Face Off is an amazing movie. It's so good.

No shame. They took the face all the way off. I was shocked. And then they put it back on to someone else. The amount, I just wasn't expecting to see the faces off quite so much. And I was like, so as a big body horror fan, ooh, I love when those faces are not on. Anyways, head over there for that. You can check out our merch at tpublic.com slash the Bechdel cast.

Follow us on Twitter, Instagram at Bechdel cast. And what do you say, gang? Why don't we get on our brooms and Zoom? Time to kick off. Let's Zoom on those brooms. Zoom, Zoom, Zoom. Bye-bye. Zoom, Zoom, Zoom.

Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16, 2017, was assassinated. Crooks everywhere unearths the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks. She exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state. Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour. If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation, then I think it sort of eases us a little bit.

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