Kiki’s Delivery Service and the Jiji Joker Card of 1989

Kiki's Delivery Service Playing Card Joker #2, Animage 1989

What’s on the Card

This is the second joker card (Joker #2) from a 54-card character playing card deck themed around Kiki’s Delivery Service. Standard decks include two jokers, and this is the second of that pair — whether both jokers in this particular set carry the same design or differ from each other is not confirmed by available information.

The card features Jiji, the black cat familiar who accompanies the young witch Kiki throughout the film. Its design follows the bidirectional format traditional to joker cards: a black background with a light blue border and diagonal blue lines, with two images of Jiji arranged so that rotating the card 180 degrees presents the same image upright. The item belongs to a category of Japanese anime merchandise known as a character playing card set — decks built around a specific franchise that serve as both a functional card game and a collectible object.

The Film and the Character

Kiki’s Delivery Service originated as a 1985 children’s novel by Eiko Kadono, published by Fukuinkan Shoten. Studio Ghibli adapted it into a feature film directed by Hayao Miyazaki, which opened in Japanese theaters on July 29, 1989 — following My Neighbor Totoro and Grave of the Fireflies, both released the year before. It became the highest-grossing Japanese film of 1989, earning approximately 2.15 billion yen domestically. The film later reached international audiences through Disney-produced English dubs (1997 and 2003) and is currently available on streaming platforms including Netflix.

Jiji is Kiki’s talking black cat — her companion and comic foil throughout the story. In the original Japanese version, the character was voiced by Chika Sakamoto, the same actress who played Kiki. His design is visually straightforward: all black, with a rounded body and white eyes. That simplicity translates cleanly across almost any merchandise format, which is part of why he appears so consistently in Ghibli product lines from this period onward.

Animage, Tokuma Shoten, and the First Wave of Ghibli Merchandise

Animage is a monthly anime magazine published by Tokuma Shoten, founded in 1978. Its connection to Ghibli’s early years runs deep: the magazine ran Miyazaki’s Nausicaa manga in serialization and served as a primary promotional vehicle for the studio’s films throughout the 1980s. Tokuma Shoten itself was a production partner on Kiki’s Delivery Service, meaning the Animage brand on this merchandise is tied to the film’s own production history, not just its marketing. Whether this card was distributed as a supplement bundled with the magazine or sold as a standalone retail item carrying the Animage name is not definitively known — both arrangements were standard practice for Animage-branded goods at the time.

Character playing card sets occupied a well-established niche in the Japanese anime goods market of the 1980s and 1990s — accessible, functional, and appealing across a wide age range. The joker card is the most design-flexible position in any standard deck, free from suit markings and number designations, which makes it especially well-suited to character illustration. Taken out of the full set, it also reads as a complete, self-contained image rather than a component of a larger game. The 1989 production date places this card among the earliest commercially produced Ghibli merchandise, predating the wide-scale distribution networks and dedicated retail infrastructure that the Ghibli name would eventually support.