Fact Thirty Eight:
At the close of the movie, Kiki writes a letter to her parents, mentioning her friends, or tomodachi 友達 in Japanese. Eagle-eyed viewers note, however, that Kiki has missed a stroke from the second kanji character, 達, which would result in a big fat X in kanji class at school. It’s likely that Miyazaki and his team added this mistake intentionally to show that, although Kiki has matured greatly throughout the course of the film, she is still young and has more to learn. That or she spends too much time texting friends and, like so many kids today, struggles to write kanji by hand…