User:The great Jay/sandbox

Release
Kiki's Delivery Service premiered on July 29, 1989, in Japanese theaters. Its distributor rental income was ¥2.17 billion, with a total box office of ¥4.3 billion (US$million) in gross receipts. The film was 1989's highest-grossing film in Japan. It also grossed HK$4.04 million (US$,000) in Hong Kong upon release there in 1990. Later re-releases and international releases between 2004 and 2023 grossed US$10,366,082 worldwide, adding up to US$ grossed worldwide.

English dubs
The first official English dub of Kiki's Delivery Service was produced by Carl Macek of Streamline Pictures, who previously dubbed Castle in the Sky and My Neighbor Totoro at the request of Tokuma Shoten for Japan Airlines' international flights. Since Tokuma was pleased with the dub of My Neighbor Totoro, the company would allow Carl to work on the dub of Kiki's Delivery Service on November of 1989. This dub is available only in the Ghibli Laserdisc Box Set. The Disney English dub of Kiki's Delivery Service premiered at the Seattle International Film Festival on May 23, 1998, and was released on both VHS and Laserdisc on September of 1998. The dub released on home media in 2003, alongside the releases of Spirited Away and Castle in the Sky. In the United Kingdom, the film was released on Blu-ray by StudioCanal alongside a release of Grave of the Fireflies on July 1st, 2013, while in North America, Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment released the film on Blu-ray Disc alongside Princess Mononoke and The Wind Rises, on November 18, 2014. GKIDS re-issued the film on Blu-ray and DVD on October 17, 2017. In 2020, it was announced that both the original Japanese version and the Disney dub were made available to be streamed on Netflix.

Differences between versions
Disney's English dub of Kiki's Delivery Service contained some changes, which have been described as "pragmatic". The changes were approved by Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli. The depiction of the cat, Jiji, is changed significantly in the Disney version. In the Japanese version Jiji is voiced by Rei Sakuma, while in the English version Jiji is voiced by comedian 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 Jiji simply says nothing in the original. Jiji'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 Jiji permanently, but the American version adds a line that implies that she is once again able to understand him at the end of the film. More minor changes to appeal to the different teenage habits of the day include Kiki drinking hot chocolate instead of coffee and referring to "cute boys" instead of to "the disco".

However, when Disney re-released the film on DVD in 2010, several elements of the English dub were changed, reverting more towards the original Japanese version. Hartman's ad-libbed lines as Jiji were removed, and Forest's opening and ending songs were replaced with Arai's original Japanese opening and ending songs. Additionally, Jiji does not talk again at the end, implying that Kiki never regains the ability to talk to him, and many of the sound effects added to the original English version have been removed. The English subtitled script used for the original VHS subbed release and the later DVD release more closely adheres to the Japanese script, but still contains a few alterations. Tokuma mistakenly believed the Streamline dub was an accurate translation of the film and offered it to Disney to use as subtitles. As a result, several additions from the dub appear in the subtitles regardless of whether or not they are present in the film.

Home media
The film became available on home video in the United States in 1991. Buena Vista Home Video's VHS release in 1998 became the 8th most-rented title at Blockbuster stores during its first week of availability. This video release sold over a million copies. The Japanese DVD was the best-selling anime DVD for February 7, 2001. The Blu-ray release later grossed over US$21.7 million from disc sales in the United States,. In the United Kingdom, it was 2018's seventh best-selling foreign language film on home video, and 2019's fifth best-selling foreign language film (below four other Japanese films, including three Miyazaki anime films).

Reception
Upon release, the film received critical acclaim. At the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 98% of 43 reviews are positive for Kiki's Delivery Service, and the average rating is 8.1/10. The critics consensus reads, "Kiki's Delivery Service is a heartwarming, gorgeously-rendered tale of a young witch discovering her place in the world." Metacritic, another aggregator, collected 15 reviews and calculated an average rating of 85 out of 100, signifying "universal acclaim".

Initial reviews for the film were positive. Mark Schilling of The Japan Times gave a positive review, praising the realism of Kiki's character, as well as citing various scenes that emphasized it. The film also received similar acclaim in America once it was released there. On September 12, 1998, it was the first video release to be reviewed as a normal film on Siskel and Ebert rather than on the "Video Pick of the Week" section. Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune and Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave it "two thumbs up"

Retrospective reviews were also positive. IGN 's Andy Patrizio praised the film for its simple but meaningful story, as well as the voice acting of the English dub, while Vox's Allegra Frank felt that the film presented its message well.

The film was also ranked high in various publications. Entertainment Weekly rated it as Video of the Year in 1998, and in the same year Roger Ebert went on to rank it as one of the best animated films released in the U.S. The film also ranked #12 on Wizard's Anime Magazine's list of the "Top 50 Anime released in North America".