tenshi_ippikiookami The live action version of "Toki wo kakeru shoujo" is lots of fun, and it can stand on its own, even if you haven't watched the anime version.The story is simple enough. Akari's mother is doing some secret research. When she has an accident, she tells Akari that it is a time traveling formula, and asks her to go back in time and find a boy she knew from high school. Akari goes to her mother's workplace and drinks the formula, even if she doesn't really believe it will work. But then she finds herself in the past. But things are not as they should be..."Toki wo kakeru shoujo" is a charming movie, that has a not overly complicated plot, but very interesting characters, with whom it is easy to fall in love with and care for. The acting is quite good, and brings the story close to the viewer. You will care for Akari and the people she meets in her time traveling adventures. It is actually difficult to make a story fascinating, but everyone involved in this movie makes it feel easy. It is a little bit slow in some moments, specially close to the end, but that is not much of a problem when you don't want to see those characters leave you.Totally worth watching.

Charles Herold (cherold) This sequel to the terrible 1983 movie The Little Girl Who Conquered Time has many of the flaws of its predecessor. They both look like inexpensive TV movies (although TV movies look better than they did in 1983), and they both have saccharine scores. But while the 1983 movie moved at a crawl and was headache-inducing in its stupidity, this movie has a lively pace and more interesting characters,and is considerably less absurd.Unlike the 1983 movie or the excellent 2006 animated film that was also a sequel to the original story, Time Traveller does not involve a teenager hopping around through time. Instead, it involves a teenager making one hop, to 1974. The movie has some familiar 70s fashions, but a lot of the 70s details went over my head, I suspect, because I have no idea what Japan looked like back then.What makes the movie stand out in spite of its poor production values is how the characters' emotional lives were brought out so sharply and affectingly. The movie has likable characters and they have relatable problems.By most of my criteria for film making, Time Traveller is at best mediocre. But it's one of those B movies that somehow work, creating a better experience than should have been possible. I'm not saying it's a must see, but it is a very likable little film.

Paul Magne Haakonsen Owning the book and having heard nothing but good things about this 2010 version, I just had to sink my fangs into the movie, so I bought it from Amazon.And now having seen it, I am somewhat dumbfounded. The movie is long, very, very long and it takes forever to get almost nowhere, and that was a drag. It was a battle to sit through this movie, and I think I dozed off once actually. That being said, then don't get me wrong, the movie is not bad, far from it. The story told in "Time Traveller: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time" was really good, captivating and interesting. The story really swept me up and I got immersed into it right away, it was just a shame that the movie took so long to get almost nowhere.The cast in "Time Traveller: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time" were good enough, people did good jobs with their given roles, though this is far from the best performances I have seen in Japanese movies.I sincerely doubt that I will be putting this DVD on a second time, because it was too much of a struggle to get through.

DICK STEEL I had enjoyed The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, the 2006 animated version by filmmaker Mamoru Hosada, and no, this is not the live action version of the same story. Instead, this film just continues to expand upon the universe of TGWLTT, making it the third titular character who had done just that. The original novel by Yasutaka Tsutsui had its protagonist Kasuko Yoshiyama going back through time accidentally and the discovery of romance with a time traveller. That version of the story has already been made into a number of films and drama series. Then comes Hosada's animated film version, which has a story centered around Kasuko's niece Makota Konno, who had for the most parts, used her limited powers for very trivial, hilarious reasons.For this year's life action film Time Traveller, with the subtitle The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, the protagonist is Kasuko's own daughter Akari (starring the same actress Riisa Naka who had voiced Makota Konno in the recent animated film), who gets sent on a mission by her mom, now Professor Kasuko (Narumi Yasuda), who had perfected a time travelling liquid to fulfil one last promise, but had met with an accident and fallen into a coma. Akari's mission is to go back to the year 1972 and to look for a certain Kazuo Fukamachi (Kanji Ishimaru), to deliver a message that only he would understand. But in true ditzy fashion, Akari got the year mixed up and arrives in 1974, two years late, and needing the help of filmmaker Ryota (Akiyoshi Nakao) whom she had literally fallen onto, for help.Much of the story then centres on the mystery of how Kazuo doesn't seem to register on the radar of the community and neither on various official records, and worse of all, not even mom Kasuko, a teenager then (played by Anna Ishibashi), can recollect who this person is. Of course for audience in the know of the first story/film/manga, then this will come to no surprise, and part of the fun is to see how Akari can figure this out, and also her predicament of being in the wrong year to begin with, together with comical moments given that she has her handbag of modern day thingamajigs, and at times being particularly cloy in character.Like in true Back to the Future style, the deliberate non-revelation of Akari's father before she jumps through time also provides some narrative tension, as the sweet 18 years old girl inevitably gets attracted to Ryota and perhaps his friend the cameraman Gotetsu (Munetaka Aoki) as well, with feelings suggested to be probably mutual, and hence one heck of a headache if you think about existentialism issues or the paradox of time with any time travel film. It can be a cruel process, and the main narrative arc here that deals with Akari's budding romance, is nothing short of an emotional sledgehammer that highlights the cruelty that is from time travelling, and it's not just plain never seeing the person again at their current age, but rather not being allowed to significantly influence historical events that makes it an extremely bittersweet film by the time the end credits come along. The note is sombre that live carries on, regardless of the many pitfalls that we experience and consider wanting to give up.Unlike the anime, there's only one major leap here and the special effects are quite surprisingly kitsch, and at times raw even. The trick here for time travel is to down a vial of liquid, then wish hard. I suppose the magic with animation is that one can design just about almost anything, but with a film that has to utilize special effects, then there would be some constraints that will naturally be imposed, and the expectations that comes along with the using of SFX. Otherwise, its production values in creating the 70s era is excellent, despite knowing some shots were made relatively tight to avoid backgrounds giving the non-aligned time elements away.Ultimately, I believe this to be a filmmaker's story, since it had the characters involve themselves with film-making, and dealt with how film itself can be an important imprint to lost memories, where images captured on film, if preserved properly, can probably last for posterity. It captures sight and sound forgotten, and helps jog memories of a time bygone, transmitting emotions even through the sheer power of imagery, even though it may be incomprehensible but to some. It has the same spirit as Be Kind Rewind, but done in a more powerful and emotional manner. For this reaffirmation, Time Traveller scores big time, and I wonder if we will have more stories from this TGWLTT universe.