Toki o kakeru shôjo

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.

The live action version of "Toki wo kakeru shoujo" is lots of fun, and it can stand on its own, even if you haven't watched the anime version.

The story is simple enough. Akari's mother is doing some secret research. When she has an accident, she tells Akari that it is a time traveling formula, and asks her to go back in time and find a boy she knew from high school. Akari goes to her mother's workplace and drinks the formula, even if she doesn't really believe it will work. But then she finds herself in the past. But things are not as they should be...

"Toki wo kakeru shoujo" is a charming movie, that has a not overly complicated plot, but very interesting characters, with whom it is easy to fall in love with and care for. The acting is quite good, and brings the story close to the viewer. You will care for Akari and the people she meets in her time traveling adventures. It is actually difficult to make a story fascinating, but everyone involved in this movie makes it feel easy. It is a little bit slow in some moments, specially close to the end, but that is not much of a problem when you don't want to see those characters leave you.

Totally worth watching.

I saw this film as part of the "Imagine" film festival 2011 in Amsterdam. It was announced as a (start quote) moving live-action comedy about time travel and impossible loves (end quote). All of those qualifications being true, the overwhelming number of paradoxes, inconsistencies and impossibilities come in the way of fully enjoying the story. Maybe I was prejudiced, having seen the much better film "The Door" (Anno Saul, 2009) that same afternoon, also having time travel as its main ingredient.

The human drama elements compensate a lot of these problems. Those will carry the story for the full two hours that this film takes of your time. It is precisely where the words "moving" and "loves" in the announcement stand for. It will entertain a broad audience.

The net result was that I never got bored. But I had mixed feelings nevertheless, while imagining how a script like this could be turned into something more acceptable in the technical sense. I have no solution handy, however, and maybe we should leave this as an exercise for the reader.

When leaving the theater, I gave a "satisfactory" score for the public prize competition. The SF lover in me was annoyed by the many impossibilities in the story, but the overall result was nevertheless entertaining with several hilarious as well as some moving moments. I'm sure it will attract the average viewer. You can take your complete family with you to enjoy this film, but you should leave your geek nephew at home since he will spoil the afternoon while pointing out at least 30 time travel paradoxes.

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.

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.