Produced by: Madhouse
Awards
- Best Animation Film; 30th Japanese Academy Prize & 61st Mainichi Film Awards
- Special Award; Hochi Film Awards
- Feature Film: Special Edition; International Animation Film Festival (Annecy 2008)
- BeTV Award; Brussels International Animation Festival (Anima 2008)
- Best Animated Feature Film; Sitges - Catalonian International Film Festival
- Animation Of The Year; 6th Tokyo Anime Award
- Best Performance in a Voice-Over Role - Young Actress; Young Artist Award
- Golden Dragon Award; OACC 2008 (china)
- Best Media; 2007 Seiun Award
Instead of the usual manic anime approach, the film is rich and observant in the manner of the great Hayao Miyazaki ("Spirited Away") and his Studio Ghibli colleagues Isao Takahata ("Only Yesterday") and Yoshifumi Kondou ("Whisper of the Heart"). -TY BURR, Boston Globe
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (時をかける少女 Toki o Kakeru Shōjo), the predecessor of the highly acclaimed Summer Wars, made by the same talented madhouse-driven duo who have proven their worth after winning 'Best Animation Feature' at the Sitges - Catalonian International Film Festival and 'Animation Of The Year' at the Tokyo Anime Award, Mainichi Film Awards and the Japanese Academy Prize no-less with both movies. Which makes me wonder if the upcoming summer movie The Wolf Children Ame and Yuki will be the third in a seemingly perfect record of Award nominations .
When assertive high school girl Makoto Konno (Riisa Naka) is thrown off her feet (literally) by a "mysterious man" in her school science room, she discovers she can "time leap" when an unfortunate incident occures that should've been her last bike ride. The story proceed to elaborate on the young girls interest after mastering her sometime clumsy landings in the recent past while re-evaluating the direct and in-direct consequences of her selfish acts. The premise of the movie is great and enchanting, the movie plays itself in a loop of events that goes over a few days of time-leaping without dramatically overreacting consequences made by a young girl in the spur of the moment unlike 'The butterfly effect'. The endless versions of the few scenes that where unimportant gradually elevate to key elements of her excessive time leaping. The simple problems and joys of an innocent teenager are greatly accentuated and pushed forward (which is a little to emotional at times).
Despite the aforementioned story and craftsmanship that was pored into this work, I was slightly disappointing in the visuals of the characters who were poorly drawn which fell flat against the more detailed background and objects unlike its successor which fared much better in that category. It came closer to the Short Film "Naked Youth" by Kojiro Shishido than to a professionally animated feature. The story takes longer than it need to get to the core of the movie, The time leap is mostly a playful feature in the beginning of the movie. I was left wondering multiple times what the true problem was and if the movie had the dept and magic it was praised for. The ending and last 30 minutes where worth most of the preparations and stretched emotional moments. Also; the voice actor's cries were far from being life-like and kind of alienated me in terms of emotional situations.
Rating:
***+ Leap through greatness! While facing obstacles...
The shift between harmless time leaps to chronological importance of the people you harm around you. It is a shame that it took a few empty scenes to fully develop later one (making it lose half a star) which makes me disagree the quoted statement by Ty Bur of the Boston Globe who compared this to the likes of Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away. It might have been as observant but sadly, not as rich as it could have been...
