Welcome
to the second part of my new three post a week initiative. Animation
Deviation will be a series of rambling semi-professional reviews or
observations of animated films I'm just now getting around to seeing. This was supposed to go out Wednesday afternoon but I've just accepted the role of Reviews Editor at The Game Fanatics so a bit of my day got eaten up.
For the first installment, I say we give a certain Japanese darling a certain amount of love with Mamoru Hosoda's The Girl Who Leapt Through
Time.
The
plot is an admittedly novel twist on a personal slice of life drama.
The protagonist is Makoto, a 17-year old tomboyish young woman who is
dealing with the standard high school problems. She flakes on tests,
has trouble with classwork, and her plans for the future outside of
playing baseball with her friends are basically zilch.
But
after an odd incident, Makoto discovers she can travel through time.
Specifically, given enough height she can jump a certain amount of
hours or minutes in time. It's not the most ridiculous means of
breaking the fourth dimension out there, and admittedly it's quite
novel.
From
here the film becomes something I thought was impossible: a sci-fi
movie that glosses over the implications of its central conceit to
focus on character drama; all while not feeling like a large waste of
time.
The
very first thing Makoto does when she realizes she has this power is
to use it in the most mundane ways imaginable. She flunks a test? She
rewinds and re-takes it. Dinner night isn't the dish she's craving
right now? She jumps back to three days ago when the family had
Korean Barbecue. She uses up all of her change at the arcade? A quick
leap to half an hour ago should fix that. By her own admission it's a
certain level of bliss being able to relive the best parts of her
life and get a mulligan on whatever doesn't go exactly right.
Anything that starts giving her trouble is just a literal hop, skip,
and retcon away.
And
it is in that amusing, mundane use of the fantastic that The Girl Who
Leapt Through Time actually brings a central theme rarely seen in
such time travel stories. Not necessarily revolutionizing the
original concept that H.G. Wells penned so long ago, nor is there any
real major comedic angle explored like Robert Zemeckis' Back to the
Future, but from the perspective of someone who actively fears the
future, both emotionally and physically. When the movie begins,
Makoto has a sense of stability with a routine: go to school, play
baseball, chill out with her guy friends, go home, stress over
homework, repeat. But once she has control over time things become
complicated fast. Friends reveal they want to study overseas, maybe
even move. Classmates at her school start resenting her for being
Miss Perfect, leading to another student having a nervous breakdown
from pressure (Japanese school systems are notoriously soul-crushing
with their expectations). There's a particular scene where a
classmate attempts to ask Makoto out on a date and it turns into a
prolonged sequence of multiple time jumps where wants to avoid the
question, inadvertently sending the wrong message.
It's
that bit of selfishness that helps sour what is otherwise really
sweet grapes. The entire first half of the movie does such a great
job of getting you to enjoy Makoto's joyous time leaps, complete with some light-hearted levity and some silly recurring jokes. Mamoru Hosoda
has always been really good at animating truly emotive characters
both in big and small ways, and when the slow realization comes that
Makoto is doing certain levels of harm with her actions it becomes
the stuff of great drama.
There
are two elements of the movie that don't entirely work. The first is
a subplot involving Makoto visiting her Aunt and talking about her
time jumps. It's strange because the first time it happens, the Aunt
just off-handedly mentions time jumps like it's a whimsical part of
every young woman's life where they feel like they can turn back
time. It's voiced as a handwave of the chuunibyo phenomenon: a point
in mature development where people on the cusp of adulthood still
hold on to childish fantasies of importance or empowerment. A
sixteen-year old who still sort of thinks he can read people's minds
for example. But then before the third act rolls around there's an
entire scene dedicated to the Aunt opening up to Makoto about meeting
another person in her youth through unusual means. It's a strange
addition because without this entire section running through the
movie it could be all too easy to chalk up Makoto's antics to just a
daydream, but at the same time it feels like it's being used as a
mouthpiece. A last minute attempt to beat the message of the movie
into your head so when the denouement rolls around everyone is on the
same page and crying.
The
second element that doesn't entirely work is the movie's climax.
There's a slow realization as to how Makoto got the ability to travel
through time, which turns what is an otherwise mellow and easygoing
film into an intense dramatic race to save lives. I will not spoil
the climax but it leads to a lot of quick explanations about how the
time travel works, how Makoto got them and what the price of that
power ultimately is.
The
problem with the climax isn't that it's bad at all in concept, it's
that it goes by way too fast. When I first watched this movie with a
buddy, he scratched his head trying to figure out the logic behind
the multiple time jumps and quantum mechanics at play and ultimately
lost where the movie was going. The emotional highs are solid, this
is a movie that understands and expresses this kind of human drama
really well, but when it comes to cold hard explanation it can go by
a little too fast.
On
the bright side, the resolution before the credits roll is absolutely
beautiful. Mea culpa, I am usually not one to watch dramas, romantic
or otherwise. There's always some element about the characters I
cannot stand and turns me off of the whole thing, no matter how much
chemistry there is. But when it comes to the end of The Girl Who
Leapt Through Time I was legitimately moved. I actually caught myself
saying with absolute sincerity....
If
there is a good reason why this movie isn't the most discussed in
Hosoda's filmography I say it's due to how comparatively mundane it
is. Hosoda's work spans from some animated shorts he did for Digimon
and his talent comes from making endearing creature and monster
designs interact believably alongside humans. His fluid animation
style is still present here but a lot of what would be considered his
signature flourishes, anthropomorphic animal designs, huge idea concepts being central rather than set dressing, etc., have yet to fully materialize here.
Personally,
I find that to be a darn shame. The Girl Who Leapt Through Time might
not be as easily marketable or as eye-catching as Hosoda's future
films (I'll get to them later!) but it's an utterly sweet movie that I
hope more people find the time to see.
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