The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

This anime is further proof that messing with the timeline is a little... unpredictable.

The ability to mess around with the natural ebb and flow of time has been something that many have dreamed about, and if you can infer anything from the title, you’ll know that this movie deals with just that. Produced by Madhouse (best known for their series Death Note) and released in Japan on July 15th, it’s only just recently been released in the western world for our viewing pleasure.

Through a very strange twist of fate the protagonist, Matoko Konno, accidentally activates a device left in her school’s science lab as she trips over it, granting her power to ‘time-leap’. Unbeknownst to her at the time, she discovers this power when she manages to avoid a potentially fatal and gruesome accident – resetting time back to a previous point in her life.

Naturally, she doesn’t just use this power for helping herself, but eventually uses it to shape and mould her life selfishly without care for the consequences. She continues along her irreverent path, cutting a swathe through the timeline, until she faces problems that changing history just won’t help, and her actions actually make it worse. Beginning to realise that using this power for her personal gain isn’t going to help her friends, she sets about to improve not only her life, but theirs.

Touching on the concepts of unavoidable events (such as love, and certain things that must happen), how to maintain sanity when you’ve rewound a karaoke session so that you’ve been singing for ten hours straight (we’re so not kidding here), and whether or not a rice pudding could be the focal point for the whole movie, it’s very unpredictable. A benefit of that of course is that it doesn’t really get boring, and the action managed to keep us entertained throughout the whole 98 minute viewing time.

The animation in this is great, with bright vivid colours, rich settings and very good movement. Backed up by great writing and an inventive plot, added to by very appropriate and engaging sound, there are many moments that we actually stopped breathing out of shock, laughed from joy, and wondered just what it’d be like to be in Matoko’s position. We’d probably just wind up going back in time and annoying key members of history (nothing more satisfying than slapping Genghis Khan around a bit), but even that wouldn’t be quite as enjoyable as this film. This is a subbed (subtitled) release, and all the dialogue is in Japanese, which is the only real way to watch anime.

It has won awards for best animated film, and animated film of the year – and this is definitely worthy of those titles. If you’re an anime buff, sci-fi geek, or just want something a little unconventional with engaging and interesting concepts, this is a great choice.

Keep your eyes peeled for this when it is released in Australia on the fourth of February, 2009.