I made a critical mistake in the order of watching director Mamoru Hosoda’s work. I went with his action-packed, thoughtful blockbuster, SUMMER WARS, before watching his intimate time travel character study – THE GIRL WHO LEAPT THROUGH TIME.
The premise of his 2006 time-travel feature is simple – a high school girl uses her new abilities to travel back in time for various small advantages. That basic mechanism sets up a realistic portrayal of what a teenage girl might do if she could return in time. Want to karaoke longer with friends? Don’t like what your parents made for dinner? Simply leap back in time and reset to the moments you want to relive repeatedly.
I was pleasantly surprised that the story is more of a romantic coming-of-age than a science-fiction thriller. Audiences should swoon for Makoto’s cute baseball love triangle, yet the challenge is that the movie doesn’t really throw any curve balls you won’t see coming. Instead of “running” to watch THE GIRL WHO LEAPT THROUGH TIME, I recommend walking over to Crunchyroll and checking it out. After all, “time waits for no one.”
