Mamoru Hosoda s The Girl Who Leapt Through Time Anime Movie Review

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is the 2006 anime film by Momoro Hosoda, and we looked at other Hosoda films before, notably Wolf Children, which our review got taken down, Mirai, and Summer Wars. Now this film I was saving as the last installment of my anime chapter, as it were, for the time being, because it really was the first anime film that I was curious about back when it first appeared on Netflix, and then it subsequently disappeared before I could see it. But somehow I thought it would be the best of the lot, whether that's due to reputation or marketing, I don't know. The thing that I notice about Hosoda now is that he's really ambitious as a storyteller, but he's got sort of one foot in that teen drama coming-of-age world sometimes that's both good and bad. He's equally likely to transform the young adult genre, though, as he is to get stuck in it. But the story here is also almost a classic at this point. It's one that's been adapted into several projects, films and TV shows, so obviously it has a lot of mainstream appeal. And by all accounts, this particular interpretation of this by now well-trod story, and this is the original author saying this about the film, transformed the work into something new and sort of brilliant, and I agree with that. Seventeen-year-old Makoto is a regular high school student who is sort of floating through life thus far. We see that she neither excels nor fails more often than the general student population. She hasn't yet come of age, though, or started thinking about herself in a greater context than school, and now it's in many ways that classic last summer, and she's still a bit on the immature side. Contrast this with her friend Kosuke, who, when asked about his summer plans, well, he has one. He's hitting the books with an eye toward his future, and her other friend Chiaki is a little more laid-back and a little more like her, perhaps, and at the outset we get various hints that maybe there's a possibility for romance between Makoto and one of these other two friends, with little moments of jealousy and rivalry coming out here and there. All of it pretty normal for a trio of friends at this age. Now, which, if any, path will Makoto take as she nears the end of school? Her initial answer is pretty childish. When pressed, she says she wants to be a tycoon. But behind it all, partly due to the film's narration by Makoto, we get a sense that she's becoming more and more concerned about her future and about her own potential. Until one day, while she and a friend contemplate their upcoming decisions to choose between a path into the arts or the sciences, Makoto encounters a strange object in the lab at the school, which causes her to time leap with brief flashes of mostly abstract imagery, maybe the underpinnings of the birth of time itself, or biology, of history. There's a firestorm at one point that might reference anything from Hiroshima to a volcanic eruption at the beginning of the world. It's a little bit trippy here on the first time journey that she goes on, and it even harkened back a bit, a little bit, for me to a film like Altered States, or maybe even a more intentional version of the family tree journey in Mirai. Okay, on her bike one afternoon, Makoto's brakes fail, sending her sailing into the path of an oncoming commuter train, giving her a quick lesson in using those time jumps more intentionally instead of letting them take over her life, and so she survives this crash. Now hold that thought. She's very worried that the time leaps are maybe some sort of brain event, and she may need to see a neurologist, a doctor, and her friend Kosuke's dad happens to be a doctor, and Kosuke offers to set up an appointment for Makoto, but Makoto declines, and we start to see a pattern here to Makoto's unwillingness to let her attachment to either of her two friends grow into anything else. She wants to keep things to their daily high school routine. Makoto is happy to keep her life just the way it is, and enjoy these idyllic school days of fun, irresponsibility, and just staying unentangled and beholden to no one. She wants to keep her future at arm's length, while at the same time feeling it start to loom closer and closer. But as events unfold, one thought intrudes into her life, and won't be denied, and that's time waits for no one. Things are changing, whether she likes it or not. People don't remain stagnant just because you don't commit to a plan, or to them. They'll just move along with their lives. We see Makoto using her time leaps for frivolous things at first, like extending a karaoke session with her friends multiple times without the afternoon ever really ending. But the only one who gets to enjoy these fun time leaps, these cheats, at first, is Makoto herself. She's the only one who's come unstuck in time, to borrow a phrase from Kurt Vonnegut. Everyone around her is still stuck in it, and when her leaps eventually run out, they'll continue onward along their life paths, and inevitably, maybe away from her. Now, I say it gets bogged down in teen romance a bit, but it's still very heavy stuff for all that, and it gives you a lot to contemplate about life, and choice, and maybe not making a choice. And I think it could resonate with young people, young people like my own daughter, who hasn't tried Hosoda yet, but she's still young, and older people as well. And as a dad, I appreciate the depth Hosoda injects into this story, while keeping it fully grounded in drama, in boys and girls being true to life, sometimes complex, sometimes petty and selfish. And it's this lack of preachiness or pretension that I think defines Hosoda beyond what you might say about, for instance, Miyazaki, who's the boy in the heron, for instance, is also a time-leapy kind of story, centered on a young protagonist coming of age and finding identity, but which has passages that are almost fully symbolic and open to interpretation. Some say impenetrable, which can be a blessing or a curse for your story. And I still believe Miyazaki's density of story is a blessing, but it's hard work, too. And I don't know how many high schoolers or young people were helped by the boy in the heron to take a good look at themselves in the mirror, but I can see that happening here with Hosoda, even though the story is much less cryptic. It's not simpler in a bad way, because the heavy stuff is still there if you want to indulge in it. You could watch this film purely on a young adult romance level and come away completely satisfied at the end, or you could watch it as science fiction rife with heavy allegory and still feel something transcendent and mysterious and beautiful by its conclusion. And I like some of the vagueness here in its conclusion as well, because it's very true to life. Now, here come the spoilers. Mokoto's other friend in this trio, Ochiaki, who we mentioned, who it's rumored only arrived at this school this same year after bouncing around, is a subject of great speculation, and so his past is littered with gossip and mystery. He's sort of a free spirit, a bit of a goof, but with a serious side that we come to enjoy. And one fateful day, it's clear he's looking for more of a connection with Mokoto, a romantic connection, and he asks her out. And that explodes Mokoto's beautiful illusion of complacency, and it forces her to confront the unavoidable evolution in relationships and in the world around her at large. So what does she do? She time jumps back before Chiaki asked her out, and never puts herself in that position to be asked out again. And this is a fateful decision, or non-decision, for her, because it begins to eat up her now limited number of time jumps, and we have a ticking clock in the film, and instead of just confronting Chiaki and giving him an answer and risking a little change in life, the future starts closing in around her. And by the time she realizes that her lack of investment in anyone or anything has real consequences for others, her inaction has instead placed Kosuke and his new girlfriend on that broken bicycle on the very day of the train accident that was originally meant for her. And you can guess what happens to them. But at the last moment, before her friend perishes, there's a revelation by Chiaki that rocks Mokoto's world, and causes her to realize that she has become attached to her friend despite all her efforts, and that it's his untraditional approach to life that actually appeals to her. Chiaki is from the future. He came back in time to see, of all things, a painting that in his future time is destroyed, but in this current time period, is being restored, and will soon be unveiled at the local museum. Now while waiting for this to occur, he befriended Mokoto and fell in love. But moments are fickle, and mayhem ensued, and life, as it turns out, is not a painting. And you can't just grasp it or understand it. It keeps moving. Now that he's blown his cover, Chiaki has to leave. Those are the rules of this world. And having used up his own final time leap to save the young couple, he's now destined to just drift through time in this time period, stranded and alone. But all is not lost. Mokoto soon realizes that by being sent back in time, along with everyone else, by Chiaki's selfless act, she's now living just prior to using up her own final time leap. And basically, she finds a way to gift it to Chiaki so that he can go home again. It's more complicated than that, but that's essentially what happens. And we're left with Mokoto's pronouncement that she's finally considered herself in the grander scheme of things, not stuck in time and no longer complacent in life. She's decided to live more purposefully. She's made a decision about her future, which we never actually learn, and I like that. And presumably it has something to do with meeting up with Chiaki once she's come of age and plans to get closer to him. That's one reading. But maybe also relevant is just Mokoto's decision to have plans now at all, to live more intentionally and explore time the way we all get to do it, as a gift to explore, and not to sit idle in one stagnant state of time, to evolve, to embrace the passing of each of our moments. Guys, this film is deceptively simple and wonderfully complex, and you can take it as you see fit. And I think that's why I enjoy Hosoda the most, that he is so accessible, indulging in everything from slapstick to abstraction to time travel plots that stand up to things like Inception or Primer, and with a style at times as pastoral as a painting, and at other times as dynamic as a movie like Run, Lola, Run, if you remember that film. And never jumping out and saying, this is the story and the theme, and this is what it's about. It's still there in the subtext that's clear and gripping and useful, if you pay attention to that. And he's always giving us something to meditate on, usually pertaining to our human need to evolve in spirit, in our own time, and making for a body of work that's both beautiful at times and useful in coming of age for young people. This might be my favorite Hosoda film, now that I think about it more. It's up there with Mirai, and it's coming back to real theaters in September this year, so just check your local times. It's part of a trio of Hosoda films that they're re-releasing this summer, and that's pretty exciting. You might get to see it. Keep an eye out. Okay, thank you to our supporters, scrolling on the screen right now. I'll see you very soon. I think we'll come back with a new Dad After Dark installment next, maybe a live-action film after all the animation we just watched. Okay, see you soon.