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Makoto Konno an energetic but clumsy teenage girl enjoying her summer with her two best friends and classmates, Chiaki Mamiya and Kousuke Tsuda. She spends her days studying with them in school and playing what she calls baseball with them out in the field. Chiaki corrects her when he tells her all they're really doing is playing catch. She's always late and always getting into accidents, none more so than an eerie experience in a school science lab that gives her the ability to time travel by physically leaping to her intended destination. To begin with she uses her power to perform well in tests and avoid the accidents that beset her, but when her relationships with her Chiaki and Kousuke begin changing she begins to meddle in a series of well-meaning attempts to maintain their fragile adolescent status quo.
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is the second Yasutaka Tsutsui novel to form the basis of a Madhouse produced animated feature by Madhouse in 2006, the first being the superb, hallucinogenic and rather troubling Paprika (directed by auteur Satoshi Kon). Mamoru Hosada's film is a much gentler prospect than that trip through sexualised and prejudiced dreamscapes, closer in spirit to Studio Ghibli's Whisper of the Heart. It didn't do great at the box office upon it's initial release but quickly picked up steam through word of mouth, critical acclaim and winning several awards (see the Wikipedia entry for references).
It's easy to see why. The movie excels in its characterisation of the three friends, played by relative unknowns Riisa Naka, Mitsutaka Itakura and Sachie Hara respectively. The animation of Yoshiyuki Sadamoto' subtle design work is breathtaking, every aspect of body language a pinpoint accurate observation from life. With character work of this standard it would have been a treat to have just watched ninety minutes of these three chatting while playing catch, watching the differences in their physiologies as they pitch and catch the ball. It's easily on a par with the best work that Ghibli has yet produced, although it is clearly the work of digital animators while theirs is done by much more traditional methods.
It's also an extremely funny film. As her life unravels Makoto scrambles around in increasing desperation to get the results she thinks she wants, frantically trying to hold back any change that will split her little group. Each time she leaps she tumbles and smacks her head, is disoriented and then typically makes a complete mess of what she intended via her own cluelessness about what makes people tick. These days We're all familiar with time travel stories to the point of contempt, and this film makes no attempt to blaze trails. Instead the tone hits the same sweet, sad note as Noein and the aforementioned Whisper of the Heart. It's aiming at being universal, of evoking the bittersweet memories of one's teenage years, and it does this particularly well. Although it's a sequel to the novel The Little Girl Who Conquered Time no information is needed from that earlier work to understand the movie. Everything you'll need from the earlier work is either stated or implied in the film itself, most specifically the sad hints at Makoto's aunt Kazuko Yoshiyama's backstory.
To anyone with any kind of vested interest in sci-fi this inclusiveness may well also be the film's major flaw. It's depiction of time travel is visually bog standard (the inner workings of a watch turning, digial readouts) and in practical terms is more about what the movie needs at any given moment, and as such treats its subject matter in a similar manner to many anime maguffins (mecha, magic, superpowers, drills, etc). By refusing to set parameters or explain the method by which time travel operates it can be used to do a number of things that aren't readily accounted for in the text itself, largely to achieve the narrative or character effects that the writer needs for any given moment. There is one major deus ex machina that I haven't noticed other reviewers comment upon, which leads me to wonder whether it was accounted for in the film but lost in the translation that I saw, or whether I need a rewatch to try to account for it. To anyone who might be put off by this (playing fast and loose with sci-fi concepts gets frowned upon more around these parts than elsewhere) then you can rest assured that the light, ambiguous treatment of the science isn't in service of a trite, happy ending. There may the presence of a deus ex machina, but it doesn't rob the ending of its emotional weight.
[+] [-] Spoiler There are only two major unexplained (or poorly explained) elements. The first is how Makoto knows that Chiaki's last self-sacrificial leap negated and thus restored her last leap if she has been changed along with the timeline. The second is why Chiaki doesn't just get a new time travel walnut and return from the future to see Makoto whenever he likes, which may require a bit of a liberal reading in order to make it work. It seemed to me that he was breaking the law to be there, that he had one shot at seeing the painting and once he was out of leaps he would return to the future and face either arrest or discipline. However, I loved his line to the effect of, "I'm glad time travel fell into the hands of an idiot." Perhaps these perceived faults are my issue as an unattentive viewer, so I'd be interested to hear other people's thoughts.
On more cheeky fanboy note, this film also answers an extremely important question regarding what would happen if Haru from The Cat Returns and Ichigo from Bleach really fancied each other but were too scared to do anything about it.
Trailer here. |
