THE GIRL WHO LEAPT THROUGH TIME

By: Chris Beveridge
Review Date: Sunday, August 24, 2008

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is an interesting work simply because of its origins alone. Originally titled Toki o Kakeru ShÅjo, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is an adaptation of sorts of the original novel written back in 1965 by Yasutaka Tsutsui. In the 1970’s, a pair of live action TV series were made about the novel and a live action film was even made in 1983. It was remade again back in 1997 as a live action film and the story elements and themes were also part of a live action TV series done in 2002 which included a member from Morning Musume in it. Live action wasn’t all it got however as there was a pair of manga series done in the last few years.

What sets this one apart is two-fold. The first is that it isn’t exactly an adaptation of the original work but rather a continuation of the original work set forward in time some twenty years or so. Not only does it go forward, but the original author has even gone so far as to call it a true second generation adaptation of the original work. This gives it a different kind of blessing than some of the other adaptations that have been done over the years but it’s also something that frees it from trying to directly adapt and please fans of the original work as well as those who enjoyed the various interpretations over the years. Even better is that you don’t need to know anything of the other works in order to enjoy the film in the slightest.

The ninety minute feature revolves around a trio of friends at a Tokyo senior high school who have been having a rather strong bonding time together. The trio is made up of the fun and outgoing Makoto, the serious studious and athletic Kosuke and the more free wheeling Chiaki. The three of them spend a good bit of their free time together doing things, be it karaoke or playing baseball. The baseball aspect is the strongest part of the bond as they play together regularly after school and joke that if only two of them participated it would just be tossing around the ball. The youthful view of life is very evident here as they talk in ways that indicate that they feel this life can go on forever. Naturally, that can’t actually be true and something happens that changes everything.

That something is Makoto accidentally stumbling upon something, quite literally, that causes her to leap through time. It’s shocking at first and she’s uncertain she really did it, but she gets the idea about it from her aunt who talks about doing the same thing when she was younger. Makoto goes into the time leaps with wild abandon for awhile to much amusement. Her use of the power is simplistic at best as she does things to make sure she gets to school on time, does better on tests and avoids things that could cause a lot of trouble. What she doesn’t realize is that when she rewrites situations, she ends up setting someone else up for trouble. As the film progresses, this theme is explored more and more as the ramifications of her actions become clearer.

While that is a good part of the theme, the other is that of the relationships of the characters themselves. The trio is certainly a lot of fun to watch but you can tell that there are some confused feelings between some of them. With her ability to jump back in time, Makoto is able to try and fix things when they go terribly awry – in her opinion. When she finds out that someone has an interest in Kosuke, she does her best – repeatedly – to set things up so that Kosuke gets the clue and works down that particular path. But her actions change other things as she sometimes jumps back further than she has before and that alters events that she had dealt with previously. As it all comes together, it gets somewhat complicated but the narrative is still clear enough as we follow Makoto’s journey.

And even though there is a good core cast of characters, it really is all about Makoto. She’s a positively fun character to watch in this situation as she simply doesn’t think big. Her idea of how to utilize this new power is to sleep in late while not missing any school or making sure she can take care of a test without any problems. She laughs outrageously when she discovers what she can do but she never truly thinks big. The simple fact that she abuses the power in order to participate in a ten hour karaoke session with Kosuke and Chiaki tells you enough about her. But as we learn more about her and she discovers more of the truth about the power and its relation to those around her, she starts to show a greater maturity that is engaging to watch even as she breaks down with pure emotion over the events.

Like many theatrical movies that do deal in the real world for the most part, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is a beautiful piece of work. It’s filled with a lot of detail and the world is one that you can easily imagine stepping into and really finding what you see in these places. It retains a lot of that newness and beauty that you would find through the eyes of kids this age. Experiencing this world with them is very rich and alive, filled with numerous people moving about as opposed to massive empty or still streets that you see in most TV series. The animation is very fluid and it has a wonderful vibrant quality to it in many scenes, which is important both in the Time Sequences as well as some of the spectacular backgrounds of the city life. The realism that’s brought into the set designs helps make this feature all the more engaging.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time has had a few showings throughout the United States this summer in both subtitled and dubbed form according to reports. The Boston showing we saw was of the subtitled version at the Brattle Theater. Some movies don’t really warrant heading out to the theater to see, and while we can’t speak of the dub version that was overseen by the Ocean Group, I can definitely say that if you like the character driven stories that revolve around high school kids in the anime world without the wild exaggerations, you’ll want to make your way to this. It’s a solid film with great production values that warrants making it out if it comes to your area.