One of my favorite movies as a kid — and my entrypoint to Studio Ghibli and the wistful worlds of Hayao Miyazaki — was Kiki’s Delivery Service. Even amongst a collection of nearly every Disney animated title, it was Kiki’s VHS clamshell that received some of the highest use. The Buena Vista trailers that played before were committed to memory: straight-to-video Jungle Book and Lion King sequels, an otherwise nonexistent movie called Summer of the Monkeys, and the U.S. release of Miyazaki’s Castle in the Sky. But even amidst the promotion of uninspired sequels and the plasticky smell of the VHS case, what I found within every rewatch of Kiki’s 102-minute runtime was hand drawn magic. I would later discover Miyazaki’s more fantastical visions of soot sprites, pilot pigs, forest spirits, Catbuses, and No-Faces, but it was the commonplace magic in Kiki’s Delivery Service that filled my dreams.
Kiki’s might be considered an outlier in Hayao Miyazaki’s career. At the very least, it would be easy to mistake it as lighter fare. Though it shares the trademark of following young people — often young women — as they come through the other side of a fantastic journey, Kiki’s Delivery Service is absent of the dark edge of Spirited Away, the environmental allegory central to Princess Mononoke, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, and Castle in the Sky, or the themes of war — present to some extent in a majority of his filmography, and especially in Howl’s Moving Castle, Porco Rosso, and later works like The Wind Rises and The Boy and the Heron. But even as an adult, it’s the Miyazaki movie I’ve returned to the most, and the one that continues to ignite my most hopeful imaginations.
Nostalgia has often been used as a weapon in enabling fascism. After all, making the country “great” isn’t presented as a forward-thinking ideology, but something that must be achieved “again,” reclaiming a manipulated snapshot of the past. I’m not the only person nostalgic for Miyazaki movies, and that yearning was on display as a full-blown representation of today’s flavor of reactionary authoritarianism through the “Studio Ghibli AI Art” that came and went — less like a wildfire, and more like the consumption of billions of gallons of water to cool AI servers.
This trend took little time to reach a deplorable low as the White House and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) expressed far too much enthusiasm depicting their militarized forces as heroes of cruelty with cute, rounded faces. (Unsurprisingly, these images share little resemblance with more apt Studio Ghibli titles like Grave of the Fireflies.) But even the more innocuous applications revealed the empty aesthetic exercise of the whole damn sham, little more than a cartoon filter put on an internet avatar to win at the trend.
Those championing the possibilities of AI show their hand through rote, defensive proclamations: “AI is democratizing art!” “Artists are crying because they realized they’re obsolete.” “Finally, art is accessible.”
There’s an impulse in that last statement that I can understand to some extent. Every time I sit down to pen an essay like this one, there’s the temptation to call the whole thing off. I struggle with the writing process even though it’s one I’ve successfully made it through several times before. It’s a process that requires trust: trust that even when I feel creatively blocked, the skill I believe I have is still there; trust that I’m not plateauing, but growing, and that I’ll continue to grow; and trust in whatever happens once the words come out, the editing is complete, and it’s out in the world. It’s not that it’s impossible to access those pieces that make up who we are, but it’s vulnerable to be who we are and place that in the purview of others.
This very tension is at the heart of Kiki’s Delivery Service. On its surface, Kiki’s is a classic coming-of-age movie about otherness (and, if you’re like me, a queer awakening in the form of Ursula, the hot, free-spirited painter voiced by Janeane Garofalo in the English dub). Kiki is the next in a line of witches to turn 13 and, as is tradition, will set off on her own for a year as part of her training. Accompanied only by her black cat Jiji, Kiki’s flight starts off shaky, but she is nonetheless excited to search for a town that could use a resident witch. Her hopefulness isn’t as much rooted in her training as it is the fantasy of picturing a new home and new people to meet. But, of course, things don’t always go to plan, and within the first 24 hours of their travels by broom, Kiki and Jiji run into a windy storm shortly after being snubbed by a fellow witch-in-training who claims she tells love fortunes. “What’s my special skill?” Kiki mutters to herself, dejected.
Kiki’s journey is one navigating the relationship between creativity and labor. Even as she and Jiji find a beautiful town by the sea — just as Kiki imagined — few residents seem impressed by the presence of a witch. The pair evade a policeman who shames Kiki for causing chaos with her flying, and are rejected when they try to seek shelter at a hotel. Even Tombo, the boy who helps them dodge the police, seems more interested in idealizing Kiki’s otherness as a witch than approaching her respectfully as a young peer. Kiki finds her people, though, mostly in the form of older women who share mentorship, inspiration, and similar struggles balancing their craft with the demands of labor.
We receive glimpses of the work and care that goes into the baked goods Osono sells with her husband as they prepare for the arrival of a baby; Ursula appears to be a full-time artist, navigating the moments when inspiration comes short; and though Barsa appears to be Madame’s maid and caregiver (though there’s a “roommate” energy there, if you ask me), the elderly women still find challenges keeping house and baking the herring pie Madame gifts to her granddaughter. The strength of these women and the love carried out in their labor (whether professional or otherwise) feeds Kiki’s inspiration throughout the movie. Within this community Kiki forges, labor is reciprocal — not transactional. Kiki helps Osono with the bakery and Osono provides her meals and a room. While Ursula patches up the injured doll Kiki was supposed to deliver, the young witch helps Ursula clean her floors. Even though the Madame is content to compensate Kiki when the pie isn’t ready in time, Kiki helps make the pie and manage chores around the house. This labor — coded as Pink Collar, or work traditionally feminized such as caregiving, domestic work, and some creative industries — is not presented as an obligation, nor is it presented as unskilled. It’s the way these characters help one another live a rewarding life full of possibility. These women inspire Kiki, but she inspires them too as the muse of the bread wreath displayed by Osono and her husband, Ursula’s painting, and the cake Madame gifts Kiki.
Kiki’s community-driven vision feels much more fantastical in the face of so-called AI “art.” The smug defenses of AI-generated facsimiles are eye roll-inducing, sure, but they also aim to invent an enemy: the gatekeeping artist who simultaneously overvalues their talents, and has talents so exclusive, AI is necessary to even the playing field. It’s no coincidence that the industries and skills targeted via AI crusades are precarious industries to begin with. Artists across all mediums are often underpaid and have little-to-no access to benefits or healthcare that aren’t from their own pockets. Between a cruel, Ghibli-style depiction of ICE deportation or ecstatic proclamations of the jobs that will be replaced by AI, the glee is directed at rendering whole communities obsolete.
What do we owe to others? In Kiki’s Delivery Service, the biggest crisis for our young witch comes after a string of interactions that deplete her magic without renewing it — unappreciative customers and difficulty feeling accepted by others her age. In the latter scenario, Kiki’s labor alienates her from Tombo’s friends as much as her magic as they remark on how unusual it is to be working at her age. But we see time and time again that community is what replenishes the spirit. It’s natural to the animals we see throughout the movie, from the geese that look out for one another from aggressive winds to crows that seek out the predator attempting to steal eggs. The whole town is all the better because of Kiki’s openness and generosity, and its community all the more vibrant for reciprocating her spirit.
When I return to Kiki’s Delivery Service, there’s undoubtedly an element of nostalgia, and yet my continued love for the film is not because of what once was, but what could be. I see a world where survival isn’t dependent on depletion. I see a world where we don’t resent what makes us unique, but with excitement for what each other can share. I see a world where we don’t root for others to be eradicated, but instead have curiosity toward what they need, how we can help, and how we can be vulnerable together.
That is exactly what AI art and all that it represents threatens to take from us. Of course AI-generated art is easier to access; there’s nothing to reach for. When we all put up the shield, all that’s left of us is avatars bumping against each other, connection effectively severed. If you look to Kiki’s Delivery Service and the messaging within so many of the Studio Ghibli films ostensibly celebrated in this recent trend, you understand how little there is to gain from isolation and competition.
I could never do what Hayao Miyazaki does as an animator, but I can be inspired by his work. To this day, Kiki’s Delivery Service challenges me to think differently about myself as a creative trying to survive on my work and as someone who wants to see the survival of my communities. I don’t need OpenAI or ChatGPT to mimic an aesthetic to prove I have nothing left to learn or master. We are all works in progress, whether it’s Kiki searching for the source of her magic or someone trying to figure out how to turn an idea into art. Kiki knows witches fly with her spirit, but she doesn’t reconnect with her spirit until it comes out of love for someone who needs her help.
Like Kiki’s magic returning to save Tombo in midair, art has always been at arm’s length. It’s worth it to reach out your hand.
Comments
I disagree with some of this, especially when it comes to art with a lot of different components.
Indie gamedev has a lot of programmers and writers who are not visual artists but whose art requires some kind of visual component. There’s a lot of (both paid and free) community resources out there, and those are great and fill in a lot of gaps! Unfortunately, this itself can solidify aesthetics and archetypes. “Fantasy” or “sci-fi” is going to look like the most generic versions of these things to fit as many fantasy or sci-fi scenarios as possible, and you’re only going to see popular subject matter. For example, there are not a lot of resources for depicting gender-nonconforming characters in visually appealing art styles. As usual, leaning on a community isn’t going to allow much room for departing from community norms.
Many of us even belong to overlapping communities that don’t generally understand each other. There are a lot of areas of interest a queer creator can have that will stick them in an artistic community that’s indifferent or even hostile to queerness (and let’s be honest, most of the queer community will look at anything too different and go “why do you want to write about that?” even when it’s pretty benign.) Reciprocal labor is the ideal, and collaboration between artists is beautiful when possible. However, this requires the artist to be accepted by the community, or to have found an enclave of kindred spirits, and we’re not respecting art or artists when we act like that’s always possible.
I do not think that people should pass off AI art as handmade. I’m way more comfortable with people using AI art noncommercially than commercially at the current time when there’s no model for compensating the artists whose work the AI is trained with. I think that if you can afford to hire an artist you should hire an artist, and that if something is reprehensible to create without AI, it is also reprehensible to create with it (note: this is about propaganda, NOT any kind of problematic fictional depiction, and also the propaganda would not have been any less propaganda if the IDF made a conscript do it instead of the robot.) I also think that if this is having negative effects on the environment, it should at least be limited until we can figure out how to do it differently, in the same way that if clay was doing that, society should limit its use of clay.
But we can’t talk about how the art world is elitist and detached from the common person at the same time as we’re criticizing the common person for having lowbrow tastes, and then lumping it all into Why True Artists Would Never Touch Clay In The First Place.
(Disclosure: I’ve used AI for design inspiration and for communicating what I wanted to a human artist I was commissioning, but not in a final product.)
AI, or fancy algorithms, are used in all kinds of art, but we still need artists to do new things—AI or not. We crave novelty and artists will give us this forever. Algorithms based on statistical probabilities are deficient in this arena, at the moment. Combinatorics are a playful novelty AI is showcasing with the Ghibli style craze, but these systems can’t create a new style from this.
Movies have a unique way of bringing stories to life, letting us experience different worlds, emotions, and perspectives. Whether it’s a gripping thriller, a heartwarming drama, or a visually stunning sci-fi, there’s always something powerful about the way films connect us all.
Well written! Love this piece, can relate to the love of the Ghibli and apprehension towards AI inset fields, I believe perspective is needed with that topic, art is always available to everyone, it doesn’t matter if your piece doesn’t look like the “acclaimed” pieces you see emulated and imitated, however it is easy to make it seem like everyone needs to be able to use AI to make they’re “own” art because they can just type something in and not even have to actually draw anything anymore. Where is the art and skill and actual interest in that? Does something have to be available to everyone to be fully appreciated?
This was a beautifully written and thought-provoking piece. I really appreciate the connection between Miyazaki’s vision of purposeful, human-centered work and the growing influence of AI in creative spaces. It’s a difficult balance — the promise of efficiency versus the loss of something more subtle, like vulnerability or intuition. Thank you for articulating this so clearly.
Really appreciated this reflection. The tension between creativity and automation is something I think about often too. While I share the concerns, I’ve also explored some language-focused tools — one that supports chatgpt français is this site: https://gptopenai.fr. It’s useful for practicing writing in French, but I agree, these tools should complement, not replace, the human touch.