Title: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time
Run time: 98 minutes
Released: 2006
Director: Mamoru Hosoda
Studio: Madhouse
I picked The Girl Who Leapt Through Time as the first movie we’d discuss for Hosoda because the two films he directed prior to it were entries in larger franchises (Digimon and One Piece). I did not know that The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is a loose sequel to a novel of the same name by Yasutaka Tsutsui (you don’t need to read the novel to enjoy the movie).
The novel was initially serialized in secondary school magazines in 1965 and 1966 before being published together as a novel in 1967. It received multiple film and TV adaptations before Hosoda’s sequel in 2006. It as also the first of two of Tsutsui’s novels to be adapted into an anime film in 2006, the second being Paprika.
Hosoda’s The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and Kon’s Paprika are works from different galaxies though Tsutsui seems to be pleased with them both. The Girl Who Leapt Through Time centers on Makoto Konno, an older high school student on the cusp of summer break.
Makoto gains the ability to leap backwards in time, and complications ensue. I won’t spoil the plot because I can talk about pretty much everything I need to without doing so.
The major themes that Hosoda normally builds on in his work are, for the most part, absent in The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. Most Hosoda flicks tend to focus on family in some way, but that’s not really central to the narrative here. Hosoda weaves somee family moments in along the way nonetheless. Makoto feuds with her sister over pudding. Family dinners are a recurring scene. Makoto also goes to her Auntie Witch (the protagonist of the original story) for advice several times.
At its heart, this is a movie about learning to appreciate the time we have and the people around us, living in the present. We reach this lesson through a layer cake of chaos (sometimes humorous and sometimes tragic) brought about by a time traveling teenage girl.
There are also no anthropomorphized animal characters in this one, a mainstay of just about everything else Hosoda has done. This isn’t really a shocker given the premise, but if The Girl Who Leapt Through Time isn’t your first Hosoda movie, it’s a mild surprise. However, since this is his first film not based on an existing anime franchise, we do get to see the beginnings of many of his other aesthetic choices.
Hosoda’s backgrounds here aren’t quite as lovingly crafted as Shinkai’s. His characters aren’t quite as expressive as Miyazaki’s. But there’s something colorful, light and lively to this movie (and his other works) that endears it to me.
If you’ve watched a fair amount of anime before, you’ll notice some hallmark budget-cutting techniques at play. There are reused animations and plenty of still shots. Hosoda and his team obviously worked hard to blend these into the pace and humor of the story, but once you know to look for that sort of thing, it’s hard to miss.
My next post is going to be on Hosoda’s Summer Wars, my introduction to his work and still my favorite of his movies. Until tomorrow!
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