The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

Mamoru Hosoda’s film is a loose sequel to Yasutaka Tsutsui’s 1967 novel, not a remake. The novel’s heroine, Kazuko Yoshiyama, turns up as Makoto’s aunt and explains what leaping is, so the one laying out the rules lived through it a generation earlier. The counter is visible: Makoto finds a number on her arm showing how many leaps remain, so every correction spent on a test result or a longer karaoke is subtracted on screen. Ghibli announced Hosoda in 2001 as director of Howl’s Moving Castle; he left that project and went back to Toei. It was his first after turning freelance in 2005, written by Satoko Okudera at Madhouse. It opened in 21 cinemas in Japan; word of mouth pushed the distributor past 100 houses and the run reached 40 weeks. It won Animation of the Year at the Japan Academy Prize, the animation grand prize at the 10th Japan Media Arts Festival, the Mainichi animation film award, best animated film at Sitges, and six Tokyo Anime Awards, one for Yoshiyuki Sadamoto’s character designs. A good fit if you want time travel bounded by a counter rather than physics, with leaps spent on homework, lunch and karaoke. Not for you if you want the science fiction up front; the story stays long between the baseball field and the classroom.