Time Waits For No One: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006)

 

Everybody loves a good time travel tale. It’s a staple food of film and books. H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine kicked off this endless trend filled with countless possibilities. The methods, machines, and mechanisms of the sensational feat are different with each variation - a hot tub, DeLorean DMC-12, stationary sitdown machine, Alien DNA in the blood, Memories via a diary, a mailbox, am American phone booth, a British phone booth, etc. Perhaps the simplest device utilized to explore time travel is a sprint into a leap. Tsutsui Yasutaka’s 1967 novel, Toki o Kakeru Shōjo (literal translation - Time-Soaring Girl) strips away the technological aspects for simplicity. The novel had been adapted several times previously. The eighth version brought to the screen is the most famous of them all.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time - Konno Makoto is a normal teen girl near the end of high school. Kousuke and Chiaki are her best friends. They play baseball, sing karaoke, and spend most of their time together. Everything is normal until Makoto gets the ability to leap back in time. A mysterious numbered tattoo shows up on her arm. It becomes zero by the end. She uses it frivolously but it comes at a cost. 

  

Hosoda Mamoru’s take on the source novel looms large. It dwarfs the the seven previous and two that followed (and others that will likely follow). Five years after the release of the novel via youth magazines and later in a single culmination of the segments. It was a pair of TV movies - Time Traveler and Zoku Time Traveler both starring Asano Mayumi. Obayahi Nobuhiko of Hausu made a feature in 1983, it goes by a few titles most famously as The Little Girl Who Conquered Time. Two years after that, it was turned into an episode of Getsuyo Drama. In 1994, a five episode live-action series. The next was the second live-action feature in 1997 with Kadokawa Haruki, of Sailor Suit and Machine Gun and Virus fame, behind the camera. It served as one of the stories chosen the anthology film, Morning Musume: Shinshun! Love Stories, a project starring the J-Pop group Morning Musume. 2010 brought the third live-action film, Time Traveler: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time starring Naka Riisa, who voiced Makoto in the 2006 adaptation. Once again, the property came back to TV in 2016 for another five episode series. Needless to say, this is a beloved novel with lots of potential for several interpretation and reinterpretation.

The 2006 film is by far leaps and bounds the most beloved out of all the adaptations. Not that awards are a sign of quality but they are a sign of cultural significance and what’s connecting to pop culture. At the 2007 Japan Academy Prize awards (through Oscars), it won the Animation of the Year award and swept the 2007 Tokyo Anime Awards - 6 categories in total. In the 2009 Young Artist Awards, the English dub voice actress Emily Hirst won Best Performance in a Voice-Over Role. For the record, I watched the Japanese version not the English dub. 

  

Hosoda Mamoru’s directorial prestige is top notch. His career and reputation were made by The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. Prior to this, the only films he directed were Digimon: The Movie (2000) and One Piece: Baron Omatsuri and the Secret Island (2005). Along with those, there’s a scattered array of TV work mainly directing or as an animator (including the opening of Samurai Champloo). After making a splash with Girl, his directing career exploded and turned into an anime superstar with films like The Boy and the Beast and Wolf Children.

Time feels unlimited and sluggish when you’re young. Money is always never enough. Love is the most powerful feeling. The life of a teenager is a special time that’s unforgettable for both good and bad. Emotions run high and the risk of embarrassment is always on the mind. It's a social death sentence. Throwing time travel into the mix would sound ideal. You could go back and fix every awkward or unwanted situation. Naturally, it backfires but in exponentially drastic ways as Makoto understands her new power. The time travel is handled in a very nonchalant fashion even though it’s the mechanism driving the plot, at least initially. Makoto’s emotional life and relationships with her best friends.

Makoto is the average teen. She lovingly despises her parents and little sister, eats like a monster, gets easily embarrassed, and whose whole life is her best friends Kousuke and Chiaki. In the entirety of the film, her family barely play into the story except her Auntie Witch. The only adult that she can relate too, Witch is the ideal of adulthood to Makoto. Her parents are boring people with boring lives. They work, cook, and clean. Auntie Witch’s life is exciting and interesting. She restores art. She actively listens to Makoto’s problems. She believes in magic. At the same time, her whole purpose is expository voice of reason but it’s not that shallow. Each emotional twist is prompted by her. When Makoto thinks that time leaping doesn’t affect anyone, Witch presents the idea that someone else could be suffering in her place. Which is true, Takase the local target of bullies gets treated even worse as a result. He in turn accidentally injures a bystander. With each conversation, the fallout of abusing her power becomes real. Witch guides her through the film like an old kung fu master in a Shaw Brothers film. She’s gentle but realistic.

Her friendships are central to why this film works as well as it does. All she wants to do is hang out with Kousuke and Chiaki. Her goal at first is only to get the last pudding before her sister, sing her heart out at karaoke, and play baseball with the boys. It’s the end of high school and this might be the last time she gets to see the people she loves. It has good intentions but is very selfish. She has fun and avoids embarrassing moments but at the cost of ignoring everyone else. Her first time leap saved her from hitting killed by a bullet train. Her subsequent leaps are wasted. With an ability this great, spending it on the eating the last pudding to spite her sister is irresponsible. Eventually, she realizes that these are frivolous when Chiaki asks her out. He’s just a friend and keeps asking her out in each scenario from a leap. He’s not just in love with her but he knows her secret. He can leap too. That’s how he ended up in this present. The boundaries of their relationship are tested when he reveals his own secret. The entire reason he’s there at this time was to see a particular painting. In his present all copies of it are destroyed. Once in the past, he discovered baseball and his friends. Makoto has always felt this way too but rejected it. The past is great but he needs to go back to his time. With the eventuality of losing her love and best friend, she can finally confront her feelings but it’s too late for romance. She gives her last leap to him so he can return home. Her bond with him forces her to make a grown up choice. Makoto is ready for adulthood and moving onto whatever her future holds.

Hosoda’s journey through the emotional impact of traveling space and time is a real gut punch by the end. It left me in tears. The scope and presentation of showing a teenager’s feelings in such a frank and honest way is done with the greatest of ease. It’s effortlessly beautiful, touching, and bittersweet. 

The Girl Who Leapt Time is streaming and on DVD and Blu.