Toki o kakeru shôjo

This sequel to the terrible 1983 movie The Little Girl Who Conquered Time has many of the flaws of its predecessor. They both look like inexpensive TV movies (although TV movies look better than they did in 1983), and they both have saccharine scores. But while the 1983 movie moved at a crawl and was headache-inducing in its stupidity, this movie has a lively pace and more interesting characters,and is considerably less absurd.

Unlike the 1983 movie or the excellent 2006 animated film that was also a sequel to the original story, Time Traveller does not involve a teenager hopping around through time. Instead, it involves a teenager making one hop, to 1974. The movie has some familiar 70s fashions, but a lot of the 70s details went over my head, I suspect, because I have no idea what Japan looked like back then.

What makes the movie stand out in spite of its poor production values is how the characters' emotional lives were brought out so sharply and affectingly. The movie has likable characters and they have relatable problems.

By most of my criteria for film making, Time Traveller is at best mediocre. But it's one of those B movies that somehow work, creating a better experience than should have been possible. I'm not saying it's a must see, but it is a very likable little film.

I thought the pacing of this movie was a bit slow, but it was still pretty entertaining. It was almost like 3 movies mashed into one, being that there are three main focuses. The young woman who stars as the main character desires to find a mysterious man from her mother's past, find her father, and pursue a romantic interest simultaneously. The thing is, it manages to focus on all of these plot lines succinctly and fully rounds out the characters. The only the thing I would note is the relatively low production quality and often cheesy special effects. I would say it's more of a great work of storytelling rather than a great work of cinematography.

Owning the book and having heard nothing but good things about this 2010 version, I just had to sink my fangs into the movie, so I bought it from Amazon.

And now having seen it, I am somewhat dumbfounded. The movie is long, very, very long and it takes forever to get almost nowhere, and that was a drag. It was a battle to sit through this movie, and I think I dozed off once actually. That being said, then don't get me wrong, the movie is not bad, far from it. The story told in "Time Traveller: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time" was really good, captivating and interesting. The story really swept me up and I got immersed into it right away, it was just a shame that the movie took so long to get almost nowhere.

The cast in "Time Traveller: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time" were good enough, people did good jobs with their given roles, though this is far from the best performances I have seen in Japanese movies.

I sincerely doubt that I will be putting this DVD on a second time, because it was too much of a struggle to get through.

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.

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.