vanfanel
11-10-2006, 05:46 AM
Greetings from Saga, Japan. The local cinema here finally got around to showing the last of the "summer's" big three anime movies (the other two being "Tales From Earthsea" and "Brave Story"), and I finally defeated their evil scheduling that seemed designed to keep me from seeing it (it was part of a fall children's film festival, and therefore shown only early in the day when I'm usually at work).
The story's source material is a young-adult novella from the 1970's by Yasutaka Tsutsui (also the author of Paprika, though this is in a very different vein). The story has been adapted to film a couple of times already, and rather than go down a well-traveled road, this movie was created as a sequel to the original story. Wikipedia's entry reports that Tsutsui was pleased with the result.
The heroine is a girl named Makoto, who is the niece of Kazuko Yoshiyama -- the 'girl who ran through time' in the original story. She likes playing baseball, and her two best friends are a couple of guys with whom she plays catch every day after school. One is the standard "childhood friend"; the other is a guy who transferred to her school later on. Just like her aunt before her, Makoto cleans the chemistry lab one day and knocks over some things in a supply closet, after which she mysteriously gains the ability to timeslip short distances into the past.
The film's funniest sequence involves Makoto's "editing" of a bad day once she figures out what she can do. There's lots of clever details and amusing bits there that I won't spoil. There is no huge plot here, really, but some drama does kick in when one of her her two "guy friends" asks her if she'd like to start dating. Makoto freaks out, tries to fix things via timeslipping, only makes things worse, etc.
I'm not doing a good job of telling you what's so good about this movie. It's got a very laid-back, easygoing atmosphere. The characterization is a lot better than I made it sound above, and there's a bittersweetness to it...a feeling of a triangle coming to an end...the knowledge that no matter what they decide, the "three of us" is something that can't last indefinitely, at least not in its current form.
It's always nice to see Yoshiyuki Sadamoto character designs, and he does a good job here. Not quite Eva, but not quite FLCL, either. Normal, but appealing. The animation is nice for the most part, though there are a few cuts here and there where background characters look only sketched in, and because of these slips, this movie may well look better on home video than it did in the theater. Overall, though, the art is very nice, though.
The one other thing I want to say about this is that I really savored Mamoru Hosoda's direction.
Hosoda was originally set to be the director of "Howl's Moving Castle" at Ghibli, and after seeing this film...well, I find myself wishing I could see Hosoda's version of HMC instead. The atmosphere of "Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo" really felt more like a Ghibli feature than the last couple of Ghibli features have.
Fans of early, easygoing Ghibli will probably find a lot to like here. And, also, I suspect that this will appeal to fans of Kimagure Orange Road as well.
It's just a shame that the best anime movie of 2006 was shown in such a criminally small number of theaters. But I think I read that it's headed overseas before long, so hopefully you all have a nice treat to look forward to.
The story's source material is a young-adult novella from the 1970's by Yasutaka Tsutsui (also the author of Paprika, though this is in a very different vein). The story has been adapted to film a couple of times already, and rather than go down a well-traveled road, this movie was created as a sequel to the original story. Wikipedia's entry reports that Tsutsui was pleased with the result.
The heroine is a girl named Makoto, who is the niece of Kazuko Yoshiyama -- the 'girl who ran through time' in the original story. She likes playing baseball, and her two best friends are a couple of guys with whom she plays catch every day after school. One is the standard "childhood friend"; the other is a guy who transferred to her school later on. Just like her aunt before her, Makoto cleans the chemistry lab one day and knocks over some things in a supply closet, after which she mysteriously gains the ability to timeslip short distances into the past.
The film's funniest sequence involves Makoto's "editing" of a bad day once she figures out what she can do. There's lots of clever details and amusing bits there that I won't spoil. There is no huge plot here, really, but some drama does kick in when one of her her two "guy friends" asks her if she'd like to start dating. Makoto freaks out, tries to fix things via timeslipping, only makes things worse, etc.
I'm not doing a good job of telling you what's so good about this movie. It's got a very laid-back, easygoing atmosphere. The characterization is a lot better than I made it sound above, and there's a bittersweetness to it...a feeling of a triangle coming to an end...the knowledge that no matter what they decide, the "three of us" is something that can't last indefinitely, at least not in its current form.
It's always nice to see Yoshiyuki Sadamoto character designs, and he does a good job here. Not quite Eva, but not quite FLCL, either. Normal, but appealing. The animation is nice for the most part, though there are a few cuts here and there where background characters look only sketched in, and because of these slips, this movie may well look better on home video than it did in the theater. Overall, though, the art is very nice, though.
The one other thing I want to say about this is that I really savored Mamoru Hosoda's direction.
Hosoda was originally set to be the director of "Howl's Moving Castle" at Ghibli, and after seeing this film...well, I find myself wishing I could see Hosoda's version of HMC instead. The atmosphere of "Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo" really felt more like a Ghibli feature than the last couple of Ghibli features have.
Fans of early, easygoing Ghibli will probably find a lot to like here. And, also, I suspect that this will appeal to fans of Kimagure Orange Road as well.
It's just a shame that the best anime movie of 2006 was shown in such a criminally small number of theaters. But I think I read that it's headed overseas before long, so hopefully you all have a nice treat to look forward to.