Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN) February 3, 1998, Metro Edition SECTION: Variety; Pg. 4E LENGTH: 810 words HEADLINE: Kiki creates anticipation in the land of Japanese anime SOURCE: News Services BODY: There's an air of anticipation in the land of anime, the risque and warlike corner of Japanese animation that has become hugely popular on video in the United States. Amid characters such as the genetically enhanced M.D. (Most Dangerous) Geist, liberator of the devastated planet Jerra, and Doreimon, a scantily clad android from the 22nd century, a youngster named Kiki is about to arrive - representing, of all things, the forces of civic-minded youth. Kiki, the young star of "Kiki's Delivery Service," isn't from Jerra but from a magic kingdom many galaxies removed called the Walt Disney Co. The film, which will be released straight to video later this year, represents Disney's cautious entry into Japanese animation. But don't call the film anime. Disney officials are skirting the term as though it were radioactive. Kiki is a good witch who flies around doing good deeds. "A sweet, sweet story," said Tanya Moloney, a vice president of Buena Vista, Disney's video arm. These days, anime refers strictly to "adult" Japanese animation, aimed primarily at young men. But those films make up only a fraction of the enormous body of work turned out by Japanese animators. Nevertheless, presented with coattails the length of Disney's, the purveyors of anime are hailing any participation by the world's best-known giant of animation as an imprimatur of all things animated emanating from Japan. No skull-faced, spike-limbed, 40-foot brute with rack-and-pinion steering may ever stride around bearing Disney's logo, but that's not the point. By importing samples from the vast selections of child-oriented animation from Japan, Disney might clear shelf space for all kinds of work from Japan. "They'll bring anime into the mainstream," Forster said. But no one from anime's marketing legions can predict the outcome of Disney's tentative interest. Realistically speaking, most Americans probably never will broaden their concept of animation as anything more than children's territory. In Japan, by contrast, the animation industry springs from a long association with the comic book, both for grownups and youngsters. More than half the books published in Japan are comics, and they embrace all adult genres. "America is the only country in the world that has this preconceived notion that comic books are intrinsically for children," said John O'Donnell, managing director of Central Park Media, a New York distributor of anime and one of its leading importers. "In America, cartoons are for kids; in Japan they slice up the market into both sexes and every age group." A typical year in Japanese animation yields 20 to 30 feature films, 300 to 400 direct-to-video titles and 50 TV shows, which run virtually around the clock. Films and shows range from sitcoms and family dramas to noir and the graphically violent and sexual. "In Japan they run everything on TV," O'Donnell said. "If people don't like it, they don't watch it." In this country, of course, animation on television is geared primarily to children. The VCR, however, opened the way for Japanese films with mature themes and made it economically possible for distributors to profit from small markets. Interviewed in Tokyo by phone through an interpreter, Koichi Ohata, the director of the anime film "M.D. Geist II," said that Japanese animators paid no attention to American tastes. They are too busy satisfying their own enormous and varied market. "I have no idea what foreigners want," he said. Vid bits - The 1997 Christmas sales of VHS titles, including Men in Black and The Lost World: Jurassic Park, were down about 18 percent from 1996. Conversely, the sales of movies on the new DVD format have doubled. Scream and Twister were two of the biggest DVD winners over the holiday. - Tenor Andrea Bocelli, a native of rural Tuscany, has released his first video for U.S. consumption, Andrea Bocelli: A Night in Tuscany ($ 25, PolyGram). The cassette includes a concert performance last fall in Pisa's Piazza de Cavalieri, at which he sang solos and was joined for duets by sopranos Nuccia Focile and Sarah Brightman and Italian rock star Zucchero. - Due out today from Universal is the widescreen, director's cut of Steven Spielberg's 1941 ($ 20), as well as a new edition of the 1980 The Blues Brothers ($ 15 for pan-and-scan; $ 20 for widescreen), which includes 20 minutes of additional footage. - The definitive edition of the 1975 Academy Award-winning One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest has been released on laserdisc by Pioneer Special Editions ($ 59.98). It includes a 110-page color-bound jacket that features the entire script, cast and crew biographies and essays, as well as an enormously fascinating 90-minute documentary on the making of the film.