Time Traveler: The Girl Who Leapt through Time

Movie Review

Title                        : Time Traveler: The Girl Who Leapt through Time

Genre                     : Adventure, Scientific Fiction

Country of origin   : Japan

Original Story        : Yasutaka Tsutsui

Written by              : Tomoe Kanno

Directed by            : Masaaki Taniguchi

Release Dates        : 13 March 2010

Time Traveler: The Girl Who Leapt through Time is a Japanese movie based on Yasutaka Tsutsui’s novel “Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo” (lit. The Girl Who Runs Through Time). It was released on March 13, 2010. The movie tells a story about a girl who tries to find someone in the past by her mother’s request.

Akari Yoshiyama (played by Riisa Naka) is asked by her mother Kazuko Yoshiyama (played by Narumi Yasuda) to go back to the past using a special formula she made. Because of a car accident, Kazuko enters comatose. When she regains her consciousness, Kazuko asks Akari to find Kazuo Fukumachi (played by Kanji Ishimaru), her first love in year 1972. Akari obediently follow her mother’s request. She uses her mother’s invented a special formula made by her mother.

When Akari arrives at the past, she realized that she has gone into a wrong timeline. She mistakenly travels to 1974, two years late from the intended time. She ends up in an unknown laboratory. In this timeline, she meets Ryota Mizorogi (played by Akiyoshi Nakao). Akari asks Ryota to help her to find Kazuo Fukumachi. Ryota refuses her request at first. However, he changed his mind and helps Akari in the end.

Akari tells Ryota that she comes from the future. She tells him that actually she is from year 2010. Of course Ryota doesn’t believe her. Akari tries to assure him that she isn’t lying. Then, she shows him her modern cell phone that is not supposed to be exist in 1974. In the end, Ryota belives what Akari says. He even lets Akari stays at his apartment until she can find a way to return to her original timeline.

Ryota wants to be a famous director someday. During her visit in 1974 timeline, Akari helps him to film a movie. They grow close to each other through the time that they spend together.

Then, Ryota and Akari tries to find the person named Kazuo Fukumachi. Akari tries to meet her mother in the past in order to get information about Kazuo’s whereabouts. Unfortunately, her mother’s younger self doesn’t know who Kazuo is. Akari then realizes that since she comes back two years earlier in the past, her mother shouldn’t have met Kazuo yet.

Later, Ryota and Akari uses another way to find Kazuo. They decides to use a personal advertisement to find Kazuo to meet them at the laboratory where Akari first appeared in this timeline. Kazuo, being a scientist from the future, can’t allow her existence in the past that may bring disturbance to the timeline. He decides to meet her in order to ask her to get back to her own timeline.

During Akari’s remaining days in 1972, Ryota has to part with Akari because he needs to get back to his hometown to meet his dying father. Akari waits for Kazuo by herself. Kazuo indeed appears at the laboratory. When he meets her, Kazuo tells Akari about the past between him and her mother. Kazuo had met her mother in this lab. Akari’s mother was accidentally inhaling the fumes of Kazuo’s time travelling formula, allowing her to time travel into the future briefly. Then, she meets Kazuo and the two promised to meet again in the future. Since Kazuo can’t allow their meeting to happen again, he erased her memories. He also intends to erase Akari’s memories and returns her to the past.

Before that happens, Akari asks him to let her to say goodbye to Ryota. Not knowing that she will go back to her own timeline, Ryota bids farewell to her in misunderstanding that Akari will stay a little longer and they will be able to meet again. He gives her the movie that they had filmed before.

When Akari is going to prepare herself to return to the future, suddenly she remembers something. Something bad will happen to Ryota and Akari tries to do something for him. However, Kazuo saw through her plan and he tries to hinder her actions because she may create a disturbance in the timeline. However Akari doesn’t give up and tries to push herself to help Ryota. Both she and Kazuo are struggling for something that they should protect.

From watching this movie, the message that can be taken is the past is in the past and it can’t be repaired no matter what we do. Mistakes in the past may bring regrets in the future. Since the past can’t be changed, all we can do is to do things better in the present time so that the mistakes that we did in the past may not happen again in the future. From Akari’s point of view, I can see that we should have treasure our time well because we will never be able to know when our precious time will end.

Overall, Time Traveler: The Girl Who Leapt through Time is a really great movie. It is kind of a tear-jerker, but I like it anyway. It really gives a strong impression to me. I recommend this movie to those who like a movie with a light story line but has a deep meaning in it. I hope everyone who read my review will find this movie interesting just like I do.