The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2007)

Sadly Over-hyped

How sad is this?

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is not the best animated movie ever made, or even the best time travel movie ever made. But it is amazing, enrapturing, and one of the best animated movies of this century.It centers around a teenage girl named Makoto Konno and her two friends, Kousuke Tsuda and Chiaki Mamiya, the latter of which has a crush of her. The three of them play baseball in the park every day after school. Makoto has had a bad day, making all sorts of stupid mistakes and even falling onto a small walnut-shaped item in her chemistry room. But none of that compares to what happens next: while riding her bike on her way to see her aunt, the train passes through the street. She tries to stop in time to avoid it, but she is hit, dying. But then she wakes up where she was five minutes ago. She has gone back in time.I was immediately drawn in.This films is fascinating on so many levels. It never goes quite where you expect it to go. It is not deliberately subversive, but it is clear that is telling its own story, using tropes and clichés instead of falling back on them. The twist they throw in at the halfway mark is clever and smart, and it really adds to the experience, making the movie as a whole even more rewarding than it otherwise would have been.To call the direction inventive would be an understatement. Every artistic decision is the right one. For example, look back at the title of the film. That is not metaphorical. Makoto literally leaps through time. Her powers activate because she flies through the air upon being hit, and whenever she wants to jump through time, she has to jump from high up. When she arrives at her new temporal destination, she is on the ground, rolling. That is so smart and innovative. Time travel as an idea has been around for hundreds of years, and it has been done to death. To bring something new and different to the equation is difficult, if not impossible. But Hosoda managed to pull it off.This is very much a high school supernatural drama. There is everything from teenage awkwardness to teenage indecisiveness to teenage anxiety. But it is done well. I felt like I was seeing the first teenage drama ever made. There is a sense of energy to every second of the film. Things like seeing someone trip and fall were ten times funnier than they otherwise would be thanks to the time and effort put in my the animation team. Animation allows for more energetic expression, something this movie takes full advantage of without making it seem like too much.Makoto is the highlight of the film. The animation on her is fluid and sharp and hyper, and the English dub voice actor does a great job of matching it. She captures every scene of the film. It's enough to almost make me wish there was no time travel element, and the whole story was just her journey through high school.Hasodo's first major project was directing the first two Digimon movies (or, if you're a Westerner, the first two-thirds of the Digimon movie). I was surprised by this, but it makes sense. Those movies were way better than they should have been thanks to two things: one, its ability to make it's human characters interesting to watch and listen to even when they're not doing much; and two, its ability to make a low budget sing. Those two elements are apparent here. Not a lot of extraordinary, jaw-dropping things happen- except in the middle third- but the feel of the movie, that of a hot, past-its-prime summer day, more than makes up for it.As for the 'low-budget' thing: this film has far more money than any of the Digimon movies, but it did not have enough money to go for the big guns on every shot, like a Miyazaki movie could. There is an almost tangible desire of this film to conserve the money for the spectacular shots. And there are a lot spectacular shots. The animation of her going through time is a showstopper. It's like she's traveling through a giant watch.All in all, it feels somewhat like the animated equivalent of an artsy indie movie. There are all the ingredients: young, brilliant director, low budget, adding new twists to old mechanics. It's a unique experience.But that does not mean it does not remind me of things. The first thing that came to mind was the fantastic episodic video game Life is Strange. Some elements of that were clearly lifted from this and given a hipstery, sepia-toned makeover. But as it war on, it started to remind me of a mix of Inception and Run Lola Run. Obviously, the tone is different, but it has a quality of etherealness and visual inventiveness that reminds me of the former and a quality of experimentation and videogameiness that reminds me of the latter.There are a few things that stop this movie from measuring up to the great Miyazaki films. Though the pacing is almost absurdly good, it still doesn't give off as much narrative heft as it wants to. And while there are no characters I find unbearable, I wish the other characters were as interesting to watch as Makoto. But these are minor gripes. This is the sort of film you feel bad for not giving a perfect score. It's powerful, evocative, and innovative. These are the kind of films we need more of. Hosoda may be no Miyazaki, but with luck, he could usurp Miyazaki's crown. If that happens- and it looks like it is- the future of Japanese animation looks bright.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is the film that put director Mamoru Hosoda on the map and made him a household name in the anime circles. It's a time travel story, but with a very different take on the usual clichés. Here the time jumps are short, almost meaningless, and the traveler is not some young adult with a destiny or a world to save. Instead she's just a teenage girl.But it's that seeming normality of the story that makes it so special. Makoto (Riisa Naka) is an average girl, who likes to hang out with her friends and play baseball. She's not even all that bright. She's actually pretty dim, especially when you compare her to the usual heroines of cinema. So when she suddenly gains the gift to travel through time, you can bet that she's not going to be responsible about it. And that's where the film's charm and humour come from.It's also a good animated film on the technical side of things. Studio Madhouse has a distinct animation style that fits the story extremely well, being both fluid, expressive as well as rather urban, if that makes any sense. The voice acting is also flawless, the colours are bright and summery, the music sounds great and all in all it all simply works.If I had to nitpick, I'd say that the ending was not to my liking. Nothing wrong with it, really, but it shifted the tone rather abruptly, though not as much as to be jarring. Though I did like the explanation for the time travel, even if it seemed to have some plot holes. But then, time travels always have. It's pretty much inevitable.All in all this is a good film to check out for all anime fans. It has personality in spades and has an astonishingly good idea for a captivating story. Personally I do prefer Hosoda's Summer Wars to this, but it's a matter of opinion.

This film is very good don't get me wrong but this film is not in the anime hall of fame as so many say. I've seen so many films better than this one that I find it incredible that so many people value this film so highly. The artwork is great but not nearly as good as underrated films such as Journey to Agartha (Children Who Chase Lost Voices), Patema Inverted, Paprika, and even Coraline. I think this film is way overrated and that ultimately unless you relate to the teenage love story its really just not that great of a film. I love how people compare all other animes to movies like this that aren't twice as good as half the others out there. Basically.....this film is pretty darn good but worse than half the other anime films out there even though it is praised as one of the best. Even Summer Wars is much better than this film. And that film is not nearly as highly reviewed and not that good itself but I watched both back to back. I actually think this film is best skipped if you have a real good anime waiting to be watched. Extremely overrated but still good. Quiet better than anything you will see in American animation half the time.

THE GIRL WHO LEAPT THROUGH TIME is wholeheartedly worth a watch for its beautiful animation and nice character design (this coming from a not-very-into-anime person). It's a very pretty film. And for most of its runtime, there's a great lighthearted tone and polished comic sensibility that make things very enjoyable. But things fall apart in the last 30 minutes or so where the tone drastically shifts and everything loses steam. GIRL works best when it's dabbling in teen movie fare, where it's charms are inherent. I couldn't help but be disappointed by the ending, which feels rather disparate from everything that came before it.6/10