112. The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (Movie)

Info:
Movie Title: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (toki wo kakeru shoujou 時をかける少女)
Year: 2006
Runtime: 98 Minutes
Animation Team: MADHOUSE

Review:
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time won the Japanese Academy Award for Best Animation in 2006, the year of such great animations as Blood+, Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu, and the end of year surprise of Code Geass. At first glance, "Time Leap" does not seem to be all that well-animated. The character's faces are rather blank, and their slender build do not add any "realism" if anime could generate them. The sometimes random comical facial expressions of the protagonista (Makoto) makes it look too playful to be taken seriously as a feature film. The animation team makes up for that in the simplicity of repetition in the story telling, as well as in adding a butt-ful of 3-D CG in the transition sequences.

Spoiler Story: (WARNING: THIS MEANS THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH OR SO HAS SPOILERS)

Mokoto is your average, immature, fun-loving high school girl. She rides a bike everyday to school, but because of her clumsiness and childish demeanor she is late for class, fails quiz, burns herself, gets hit by a thrown person, and finally crash into a train and die. Except on this very unlucky day, she acquired the ability to "Time Leap", so she didn't die. She decides to abuse this power and spends 40minutes of the movie revising her very unlucky day by getting to class on time, aces quiz, burns someone else, get someone else hit by a thrown person, and sings karaoke for free. Sounds awesome. Here's the big problem: There is love involved. Makoto's friend, Chiaki, finally gathered the courage to ask her out. She was not prepared for this new relationship with what she thought was a "hang-out" guy buddy. She panicked and leapt in time to change it. In doing so, she almost killed a nervous student (the scapegoat of the burning), tried to hook her other good friend up with a younger girl (the victim of the thrown person), and finally, after using up all her leaps for unimportant things, watches as her good friend and the hurt girl ride her broken (and crash-prone) bicycle toward the railway tracks. She realizes she cannot simply revise her life and make others take her responsibility, and she feels very guilty and cries and falls down a lot. And then time stopped. The tragedy that would have befallen her friend did not happen. Why? The boy who had feelings for her, Chiaki, also could Time Leap, and stopped time temporarily. He explains to Makoto that he cannot go back to his own time, but he really enjoys being around her. Makoto realizes how important Chiaki is to her, and desperately wishes for him to stay. He couldn't, and vanishes. Makoto discovers that she could leap one extra time, and resets the events back to her first day Time Leap-ing. She lets all things resolve naturally, and walks home with Chiaki, explaining to him all that she knew. He says that because she knows, he could not stay, and again goes away to the Future. Before he goes, he tells Makoto he would wait for her. It's a bittersweet ending, kind of. The point of the movie is that she learns to take responsibility for things happening in her life, and to not dismiss a confession of love.

Screencaps:

Feels like Zetsubou Sensei doesn't it?She cries three times in this movie, very annoying moments, but also feels REAL, so it's not bad. This is the 3-D nuts and bolts animation used in Time Leap scenes, gets a bit boring in the end. Can you spot the subtle camera angle change between the last two pictures? That is the best applied CG in the whole film and trunces Kyoto-Ani's work in that year. Okay, remember in the article I said they sometimes use a butt-ful of CG? In the first Time Leap scene, images of running horse and buildings ran through the screen. WTF. So the question is, was the movie good enough to deserve the Japan Academy Award? It depends greatly on the timing of the movie. That year was kind of a void in Japanese animation. 0 Miyazaki-sweeper film, 2 pure-fantasy films, 1 animal film, and 1 detective conan film were the competition. I've seen the animal film, Arashi no Yoru Ni, a film about a goat and a wolf's friendship and betrayal. A kind of a same-sex Romeo&Juliet story, touching, but overly CUTE-fied, so it could not win. Detective Conan gets nominated every year for its content and SOLID CONSISTENT animation, so if it won, it would be like "its best year" or something. The two fantasy stories conflict. All that is left is this semi-real story that is a combination of the teenage love part of Detective Conan and the adventure part of Earthsea. Also, none of the other films used enough fancy CG work to out-perform Leaping-girl, so it works out.

Personally, I liked two things in the film: The first is the feeling of nalstalgia it creates in the beginning and middle of the film. The second is the piano music played in very quirky, awkward scenes. I thought the development of love between Chiaki and Makoto specifically could be hinted at earlier in the movie, instead of showing too much of the three friends together. I felt a bit resigned knowing the conflict has not been fully resolved in the end. However, the movie is not silly, and given the fantasy elements, there is nothing out of place. I enjoyed most of it, so I recommend at least a rental watch.

General Watchability Rating: [8.6/10]
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A review by Q-kun, copyright 2009. No directly copied text whatsoever. All images belong to MADHOUSE and their creators. Research from AnimeNewsNetwork, imDB, and Wikipedia. No infringement intended.

111. My Sketchbook (Special)

Because I am taking visual arts for fun in university, and because it earns me no money whatsoever, here are some Japan-related things from my sketchbook. The references are up to you.

I will update this in the future for more interesting thingies I find on the web.
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-All images copyright 2009 by Q-kun.