Beauty and the Beast is also my favourite Disney film and I was born a year later after its release. It really is a tale as old as time as I can watch it time and time again and witness the timelessness of the animation right before my eyes. More than any other Disney character, Belle is someone I can personally relate to and her journey is one I admire. She overcomes many obstacles to discover her love for the Beast and through that relationship she provides us with the important moral that love comes from within. The fight for that love that comes at the climax of the film provides for me one of the most moving scenes from the Disney Renaissance period and what I believe metaphorically shows us the rebirth of Disney animation as a whole after the release of the Little Mermaid. The music also consists of some of my all-time favourite songs and even the score is something I can listen to for hours. No matter how much I love the other Disney films – classic or renaissance – Beauty and the Beast will always be my favourite and hopefully I will get to share my love for the film with future generations, may that be with the animation or in the Disney Parks.

Keep up with the great website.

I like animated movies, both those for children and those for adults. More specifically, I like good animated movies. And I think it’s important that movies for children be good for a variety of reasons. I believe exposing kids to good quality entertainment helps them to develop a sense of how things like story and art work, even if they don’t consciously understand these ideas. And since parents have to watch these films too, sometimes over and over again (unless they’re using the TV as the electronic babysitter), I feel there’s value in letting them know if the movie is a quality product or not.

True, many characters in many films do things that may be unlikeable or outright wrong. But Hubie never pays a price for his bad behavior. In most children’s film, when a hero does something morally questionable, he or she is later faced with the consequences of this poor choice. Hubie only has to deal with a brief fight with Rocko which is over in seconds for no good reason. And Hubie never suffers for mocking Rocko’s dream.

Your last point is mainly a personal attack, so I don’t want to get into it too much. Suffice to say, I like writing about animation, even if it’s animation I don’t like. I actually enjoy explaining why it is that I feel it just doesn’t work. It’s all my opinion, which you can take or leave. I didn’t like the film, but I certainly didn’t lose sleep over it, or any other movie I didn’t enjoy.

Like you, it was only after looking up the film online after-the-fact that I became aware of the discrepancy (I watched the old-release english version), although for me I found out about it the next day! To tell the truth, it’s been strangely and actively bothering me for the last couple days, more than I thought it would.

Let’s get down to it: I think I had arrived at the same conclusion that you did; that Kiki losing the ability to talk with Jiji was a result of her losing her grip on her magic, and it makes more thematic sense that it is returned when she regains her confidence.

Interestingly, although the original book does talk about the “bond between witch and cat”, and the possibility of that bond fading as they grow older… as I understand it, she never actually loses her powers in the novel (the whole dirigible scene was actually made for the movie). She is also able to communicate with Jiji freely throughout her year of witch training. I don’t know if that persists in the book sequels, (written after the animated film’s release) but I suppose if we’re talking about the film, that only goes about halfway into the novel storyline-wise anyways.

I have read that Miyazaki may have intended the loss of communication between them to be a “coming of age” consequence (which might have come across better under different circumstances), but that seems like a very abrupt turn of events given the rest of the film. If, say, Kiki stopped understanding Jiji for the first time right at the end, AFTER regaining confidence in herself, I could see that making perfect sense. But she loses communication at the LOWEST point of her journey; when she’s losing faith in herself, losing her magic, and arguably needs someone to talk to the most. THAT is why the original ending is so confusing, I think. That ability to communicate with her lifelong friend along with the ability to fly – her magic – are the things Kiki is trying to figure out how to get back, and the two are shown to be connected. I do like your take on it, equating Jiji more as a family member than an “imaginary friend” figure, making the “coming of age” justification even more jarring.

By spinning the situation around and making communication with Jiji about Kiki’s “coming of age” and no longer about her magic/confidence (which the movie earlier explains IS the problem) makes it a very bewildering “2-for-1″ plot point that really sticks out sourly, and quite frankly, a bit lazily. The fact that this comes up SECONDS before the credit montage only makes things more frustrating. It’s really a small thing, but that one little detail does not mesh well with the rest of the story in my eyes. I have to wonder if this bothered the original english release team for the film to the extent that it bothered me, to the point where they made that adjustment to the ending (and apparently Miyazaki approved the changes made, so perhaps on some level there is some agreement there?). I don’t know if we’ll ever know for sure at this point.

I have no idea why this was bothering me so much, to the point where I’m sending a message to the author of a three year old article, but I just had to get it off my chest a little bit. It’s been bouncing around in my head since I saw the film. I don’t know if you’ll ever see this comment, but know that you have at least one supporter in your analysis of Jiji’s situation!