A spirited schoolgirl gains the power of time travel in a whimsical tale of love and friendship…
Mamoru Hosoda is the brilliant mind behind some of the most creative, zany and emotive films rivalling the likes of Hayao Miyazaki and Makoto Shinkai. At easternKicks we’ve covered some of his hits including Summer Wars, Wolf Children and The Boy and the Beast, but we’re now going all the way back to 2006 to a moving and fantastical film called The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. Here Hosoda brings us another tale of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary circumstances, bringing us his signature laughs, a bit of magic and a sentimental look at human relationships.
Makoto (Riisa Naka) is a tomboyish and spirited teenage girl. Exceptionally ordinary with a big heart, she hangs out with her two close male friends, the joker Chiaki (Takuya Ishida) and the responsible Kosuke (Mitsutaka Itakura). One day Makoto unknowingly falls onto a device that allows her to travel through time only when she leaps into the air at great height. At first horrified by this new ability and oblivious to where it came from, Makoto eventually embraces this gift and uses it to her advantage. But as all plots go involving the protagonist gaining a god like power (Bruce Almighty, Click, Groundhog Day), Makoto realises that her tampering with chronology has consequences and struggles to change the past not just for her benefit, but for the benefit of the people she cares about.
Not many people (including myself) were aware the film is a sort of sequel to the 1967 science fiction novel The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. Following a string of adaptions in television and film form Hosoda finally created perhaps the most well-known adaption in this animated film.
As mentioned before the formula is nothing new, it has its predictable moments and ends as you would expect it to, whenever Hollywood uses this premise they tend to make the movie comedic and schmaltzy. Hosoda however opts for a cleverer and toned down approach. We still get the expected slap stick humour but in more creative situations and it balances well with sensitive moments. The pacing is also appropriately fast for a movie about time jumping. Hosoda’s more eclectic movies such as Summer Wars and Digimon: The Movie contain colourful visuals and extraordinary looking characters. TGWLTT departs from this and takes place in a more ordinary setting of an average Japanese city and school. This works however as the setting acts as less of a character and the focus remains on Makoto and the other cast.
Naka carries the movie well as the wild Makoto, her charms and care free attitude make her a sympathetic and relatable heroine thanks to Hosoda’s wild animation and Naka’s able voice acting. It’s also nice to have a tomboyish and smart female protagonist. Ishida and Itakura also add to the film’s charm as Makoto’s loyal friends.
Ultimately the film is not the most exciting in terms of aesthetic and characters, you can’t go into this expecting a fantasy like Spirited Away or a rainbow of craziness like Summer Wars. What makes TGWLTT work is Makoto being an extremely likable and relatable protagonist and the emotional pull of the film. Unlike other films in the time travel genre TGWLTT is more realistic in its execution and focuses more on the relationships between the characters and the impact Makoto’s time travelling ability has on them. It is very much like Wolf Children, Hosoda’s later work, where what drew you to the movie was less the concept of werewolves and more a mother’s struggle and devotion to her children. Even Summer Wars managed to emphasise the bond of family in a computerised world filled with murderous viruses.
This is where Hosoda succeeds and why TGWLTT is one of his best, the unrealism draws you in but the realism keeps you there. It is a charming and feel good film that will move and dazzle you in equal measures.