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Kiki's Delivery Service Author Eiko Kadono Inspires Documentary Film

Kadokawa began streaming a trailer in October for Colorful na Majō ~ Kadono Eiko no Monogatari ga Umareru Kurashi ~ (Colorful Witch: Eiko Kadono's Life From Where Stories Are Born), its documentary film about Kiki's Delivery Service author Eiko Kadono.

The documentary follows Kadono's daily life over the course of four years. Marina Miyagawa directed the film, and actress Aoi Miyazaki (live-action NANA, Wolf Children) narrated.

The film will screen at the Kadokawa Cinema Yurakucho on January 26.

The six volumes of Kadono's fantasy novel series Majo no Takkyūbin follow the coming of age of Kiki with her black cat Jiji. Kadono began the main novel series in 1985 and ended it in 2009. Kadono published a side-story centering on the character Osono in 2014. She received the Hans Christian Andersen Award for Writing in children's literature in 2019.

Hayao Miyazaki directed Studio Ghibli's famous 1989 anime film adaptation of the first novel. The late theater director Yukio Ninagawa also directed a stage musical adaptation from 1993 to 1996. The first two novels inspired a live-action film starring Fūka Koshiba in 2014, a stage play at London's West End in 2016, and a new stage musical that ran in Tokyo and Osaka in 2017.

Annick Press published the first novel with an English translation by Lynne E. Riggs in 2003. That same year, Buena Vista Home Entertainment / Disney released Studio Ghibli's film on DVD in North America. Penguin Random House published a new English edition of the first novel with a translation by Emily Balistrieri in 2020.

Source: Kadokawa's YouTube channel, Colorful na Majo movie's Twitter account