Toki o kakeru shôjo

I like this live action version much more than the anime version. The story is much better and has a strong nostalgic feeling to it. It is also very touching. The music are very good too.

Watched this movie on Netflix streaming a couple of weeks back! fantastic movie!!

The plot is fairly straight-forward - scientist mother invents a liquid that enables time-travel. She has an accident and is in near coma. but she asks the daughter for a favor and the daughter has to go back in time to fix it. Except that the daughter goes back in time to the wrong year.

How the daughter still manages to fix things for her mom is the rest of the story.

I can't really find fault with anything in the movie - except for maybe the overall concept of time travel. It was shot really well and when I connected the dots, it was like "whoa" - that's awesome!

When you start on the foundation of a classic, well-known anime and then fail, that's a double-disappoinment for viewers.

This movie is okay, but underwhelming, with an especially lackluster and anti-climactic ending. Acting by the main character is excellent, but the directing somewhat cliche all the way through. This takes the form of yet another (yawn) time travel movie, without anything exceptional to make it stand out. Thus the 5-star "mediocre" rating.

It is a pretty solid mash of romance and drama with sci-fi. I usually fall asleep in romance movie or find those movies a bit hard to watch with all the lovely-dovely stuff like the Twilight movies. But in this case, I was entertained because this movie actually moves on a brisk pace and kept me in suspense.

The story: Riisa Naka acts as a goofy but cute girl, Akari whose mother had an accident. She is being told to travel to the year 1972 to convey a message to someone her mother likes. Well, the travelling antidote helps her to travel through time. This movie is not supposed to be realistic so suspend your belief because later when the slight twist is revealed as the mystery person whom Akari's mother wants her to tell him a message finally appears, it will become a little far-fetched. Anyway, during the time finding the mystery guy, Akari slowly falls in love with a director, Ryota who helps her and lets her stay in his house. The story is predictable, but the movie moves in such a brisk pace with suspense that I would not mind but to go along with Akari's adventure. Riisa Naka does a pretty good job in acting like goofy but cute girl with some priceless moments. And she has a likable face too. I can't wait to see her in Zebra man 2.

Overall: It is a pretty entertaining Japanese movie. No idea where all the negative critic reviews in Singapore come from but this movie may entertain if you are willing to suspend belief and go along with the adventure. It may be bashed up by blockbusters in Christmas but it should be worth a watch on DVD.

This is the fourth version of Toki o kakeru shojo (Girl who leaped through time) that was made for the big screen, and is truest to being the continuous story to the movie by the same title made in 1983 starring Tomoyo Harada as Kazuko Yoshiyama.

Akari Yoshiyama (Riisa Naka) is the daughter of Kazuko Yoshiyama (Narumi Yasuda). Kazuko is the original girl who've leaped through time 38 years ago in 1972. Although Kazuko's memory was erased about the incident, she still subliminally remembers about Kazuo Fukamachi (Kanji Ishimatsu). One day Kazuko falls victim to an automobile accident, and becomes comatose. Akari decides to leap back to the 1970s to find Fukamachi to help her mother.

Although the story follows the original movie well, the production is rather coarse and details and the visuals of each scenes are crude, lowering the visual experience of the entire movie. Maybe it's because this is the debut feature length movie for director Masaaki Taniguchi. Compared to the original that was directed by the great Nobuhiko Oobayashi, the production falls short in almost all details. I wish the casting was better as well ( except for Riisa Naka). The actors just don't catch the mood of the movie - it's supposed to be a bitter sweet romantic movie, but I just couldn't get any romantic feelings from the actors.

I give this version 4.5/10, and hope that someone will remake this version with quality that matches the original 1983 version.