Time Traveller: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time - Movie Review

Title: 時をかける少女 (Toki o Kakeru Shoujo)
Genre: Sci-fi, Drama 
Director: Masaaki Taniguchi
Based on: Novel by Tsutsui Yasutaka 
Release Date: March 13, 2010
Website | Trailer

This story was originally based on a novel written by Yasutaka Tsutsui. There have been many adaptations made under this series from TV dramas to film. The most recent one I've seen is the 2006 animated movie, directed by Mamoru Hosoda. But for this live-action movie, Time Traveller: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, takes a another leap through time.

Fun fact: Riisa Naka also voiced Makoto in the 2006 animated movie.

The story starts off with Kazuko Yoshiyama (Narumi Yasuda), a scientist who was given an old photograph of herself, as a young student, standing next to a boy. Being distracted by the picture, she ends up in accident causing her to go into a coma. Her daughter, Akari (Riisa Naka), visits her mother at the hospital and her mother tells her that she wants to meet the boy in the picture. Kazuko requests her to send him a message. She tells her to drink the liquid formula that she created in her lab. It will take her to the year 1972. Akari is on a mission to find the boy and deliver her mother's message to him, hoping that this will help her to recover from her accident.  

Quick Final Thoughts:This movie was much more slower paced and less action orientated than the animated film. This film had similar themes that were used in the Back to the Future movie. A modern girl having difficulties in adjusting to the lifestyle of the 1970's. She even meets her parents as a younger version of themselves. Also, encountering with one of rules of time traveling that whatever happens in the past, they are meant to happen and can never be changed.

 

This film doesn't focus much on the mechanics of time travel, but instead focuses more on the romance story. As soon as Akari time traveled to the past, she first bumps into Ryota (Nakao Akinobu), an amateur filmmaker, who helps her to deliver the message to the boy in the picture. Slowly, they develop a romantic bond, knowing that someday Akari will have to return to her own time. It did had a charming little romance story which leads to a very bittersweet ending.

Overall, I liked the movie. Although, it wasn't as memorable as the animated film. But this film has its own charms to the story as it did with the animated film.