Kiki's Delivery Service: Sub, the 1998 Dub or the 2010 Revision?
Disney's 1998 dub added lines, songs and a different ending; the 2010 revision removed most of it. What each version is and what ANN said.
Kiki's Delivery Service is known in English mainly through Disney's dub, which exists in two versions. The original, released on home video in 1998, added lines, music and English pop songs and changed the meaning of the ending; a revised version from 2010 removed most of those additions. Against both stands the Japanese track with English subtitles. This page sets out what each version is, who is in it, and what Anime News Network's writers said.
The short answer
Watch the Japanese track, or Disney's revised dub. The original 1998 dub is the version some viewers grew up with, as CBR puts it, and it is a different film at the end: Jiji talks again where the Japanese version deliberately has him only meow. The two ANN reviewers who graded the film split on the dub, one giving it A and the other B; both gave the sub an A.
The Japanese track
The film opened in Japan on July 29, 1989, according to ANN's user-edited encyclopedia. Andrew Osmond's ANN review points out that Minami Takayama voices both Kiki and Ursula, the older girl Kiki befriends. Rei Sakuma voices Jiji; Todd Ciolek describes her performance as “a perky, childish tone that embodies Kiki's youth.” The encyclopedia lists Kappei Yamaguchi as Tombo.
The 1998 Disney dub
Justin Sevakis's Answerman column gives the history. Kiki was the first Ghibli film Disney released in the US, it went straight to VHS and laserdisc in September 1998, and it got an all-star cast: Kirsten Dunst as Kiki, Phil Hartman as Jiji, Matthew Lawrence as Tombo and Janeane Garofalo as Ursula. Ciolek's review names Jack Fletcher as the dub's director and adds Tress MacNeille and Kath Soucie in other major roles.
| Role | Japanese | English (Disney) |
|---|---|---|
| Kiki | Minami Takayama | Kirsten Dunst |
| Jiji | Rei Sakuma | Phil Hartman |
| Ursula | Minami Takayama | Janeane Garofalo |
| Tombo | Kappei Yamaguchi | Matthew Lawrence |
Sevakis lists what Disney changed under a contract with a firm “no cuts” policy: credits and some signs were altered to English, new music was added to scenes that had been silent, and Hartman “was allowed to improvise a few lines, and he also delivered a key line at the end in a way that drastically changed the meaning of the scene.” The opening and ending themes, Yumi Arai songs in the Japanese version, were replaced with two new English pop songs, “Soaring” and “I'm Gonna Fly,” written by Sydney Forest, whom Osmond's review credits with performing them too. Ciolek's review also mentions an older Streamline treatment, and ANN's user-edited encyclopedia lists a separate Streamline dub cast, with Lisa Michaelson as Kiki and Kerrigan Mahan as Jiji; we have not found how or where that version was released.
Hartman's Jiji
The biggest difference between the tracks is the cat. Ciolek: in Japanese, Sakuma's Jiji is childish and “disappears when she faces the demands of maturity”; in English, “Phil Hartman plays Jiji as the opposite: a wisecracking, cynical guide.” Ciolek thinks both serve the same theme. Osmond is cooler: he calls Hartman's Jiji an attempt to “Disneyfy” Miyazaki, “making the cat much more patriarchal and sarcastic,” and says the performance is great fun for a time but eventually becomes “a one-note heckle.” Ciolek notes that Jiji was among Hartman's last performances.
The 2010 revision
Sevakis: when the film was re-released on DVD in 2010, “the songs were back to the original Yumi Arai tracks, the additional incidental music and most of Phil Hartman's ad-libbed lines had been removed, and the important line at the end was restored to its original intent.” Ciolek, reviewing Disney's Blu-ray in November 2014, confirms it kept that trimmed dub and gives examples. Tombo's friends no longer worry aloud that they have hurt Kiki's feelings at the beach (“in the revised dub and the Japanese track, they say nothing”); Jiji's “don't panic” rainstorm advice is gone; and his line that the crows are “calling you an egg-stealer and you don't want to know what else” now ends after “egg-stealer.” Ciolek thinks most of the embellishments added to the film and wishes the Blu-ray offered the original dub as an alternate track. For what the ending change does to the film, see the ending explainer.
One detail does not line up. Sevakis wrote in 2018 that the original Disney version “has not been released since” the 2010 revision. Osmond's 2013 review of StudioCanal's UK Blu-ray, though, says that release includes the Disney dub and describes its “replacement opening and closing songs,” written and performed by Sydney Forest. Sevakis may have meant the US market; we have not checked the UK disc.
What the reviews say about the two tracks
| ANN review | Dub | Sub |
|---|---|---|
| Andrew Osmond, StudioCanal UK Blu-ray (July 2013) | B | A |
| Todd Ciolek, Disney Blu-ray (November 2014) | A | A |
How the English lines differ
Wikiquote's Kiki page includes both Jiji lines Ciolek lists as cut, the “don't panic” advice and the full egg-stealer line (transcribed as “you don't wanna know what else”), so those entries most likely transcribe the 1998 Disney dub; Wikiquote does not name the track. That is a useful warning: a Jiji wisecrack quoted online may come from the 1998 version rather than the 2010 revision. Our best Kiki's Delivery Service quotes mark the one cut line we use.
Releases
In 2017 GKIDS took over North American home video for most of the Ghibli catalog: ANN reported a Blu-ray and DVD re-release of Kiki's Delivery Service on October 21, 2017, with English subtitles for the Japanese audio provided by Ghibli. We have not checked which dub version each current release or streaming service carries, and availability changes by region.
Which to pick
Pick the Japanese track for the film as Miyazaki ended it, with Minami Takayama doubling as Kiki and Ursula and a Jiji who sounds as young as Kiki does. Pick the revised dub if you want English; it keeps Dunst, Hartman and Garofalo and, by Sevakis's account, puts the ending back. Seek out the 1998 version only as a curiosity, knowing its last scene says something the film does not. See also our page on subtitles, captions and dub dialogue.