Original title: Toki o Kakeru Shōjo

Yasutaka Tsutsui’s novel Toki o Kakeru Shōjo/Girl who Soars Through Time has proved a popular source for film and television since it was first serialised in the teen magazines Chu-3 Course and Kō-1 Course between November 1965 and May 1966. It was turned into two television series in 1972 (Taimu toraberâ/Time Traveller and Zoku taimu toraberâ/Time Traveller Continued), a live-action feature film in 1983, an episode of TV anthology series Getsuyō Drama Land in 1985, another TV series in 1994 and a feature film three years later; it formed the basis of one of the stories in the anthology film Morning Musume: Shinshun! Love Stories (2002), a third live-action film in 2010 and a small screen adaptation in 2016. And that doesn’t account for the theatrical stage play versions, and various print spin-offs and sequels.

One of the most popular adaptations is this animated feature film directed by Mamoru Hosoda which is more of a loose sequel to the book rather a straight adaptation. In Tokyo, 17-year-old Makoto Konno (voiced by Riisa Naka in the Japanese original and Emily Hirst in the English language dub) lives a fairly carefree life with her parents and younger sister, constantly late for everything, including school. One day, she discovers a message written on a blackboard (“time waits for no -one”) along with a walnut-shaped object. On her way to the Tokyo National Museum to meet with her aunt, Kazuko Yoshiyama (Sachie Hara/Saffron Henderson), also referred to as Auntie Witch, she is apparently killed when the brakes on her bicycle fail, and she’s hit by a train at a pedestrian crossing. But seconds later she’s alive, if rather battered a bruised, a few feet away and several seconds in the past. Kazuko somewhat off-handedly explains that Makoto now has the power to literally leap through time and at first a delighted Makoto uses her new found powers for fairly benign purposes, reliving an enjoyable afternoon of karaoke with her friends Chiaki Mamiya (Takuya Ishida/Andrew Francis) and Kōsuke Tsuda (Mitsutaka Itakura/Alex Zahara). She gets the latter together with a new girlfriend Kaho Fujitani (Mitsuki Tanimura/Natalie Walters) and generally improves her timekeeping.

But things start to unravel when she leaps back in time to avoid an awkward declaration of love from Chiaki and fails to save Kōsuke and Kaho who borrow her faulty bike and are killed at the same crossing she (almost) was. Having discovered that the number of time leaps she was able to make was limited and now expired, she can’t go back to save them. But unexpectedly, time freezes across the city, caused by Chiaki who is from the future and has been travelling back in time to see a painting that Kazuko is helping to preserve, and which no longer exists in her future. Makoto realises that she loves him too, but has time run out for both of them?

It’s a complex and involved story, with time constantly looping back on itself (at the end we loop back one last time to a point just before the story began) and requires a certain amount of either paying close attention or just going with the flow for its many intricacies to work. There are odd bits of business that never add up – how does Kazuko know so much about “time-leaping”, what’s the significance of the painting that she’s working on and why is Chiaki so obsessed with it? But these are surprisingly minor irritations in an otherwise very impressive and often very moving film. The animation is a little limited, but the backgrounds are breath-taking in their intricacy and detail. If you’re reminded of the work of Studio Ghibli in this regard, that’s no coincidence – Hosoda had worked for Hayao Miyazaki’s company and was originally earmarked to direct Hauru no Ugoku Shiro/Howl’s Moving Castle in 2004 but left both the project and the company after artistic disagreements with Miyazaki. Produced by Madhouse, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is a notably cheaper film, lacking the fluid movements of the Ghiblis, but each individual scene is as gorgeous looking as you could wish for.

There’s a lot here that’s standard issue shoujo stuff, that brand of manga and anime aimed primarily an adolescent girls and young women, particularly in the first act which is all about Makoto’s school life and her failure to keep her timekeeping in order. But it starts to drift towards darker, more mature and intricate territory as the film goes along. The first half hour or so is unlikely to win over any anime-sceptics but stick with it and the full intellectual and emotional force of the film becomes more apparent. Along the way there are some extraordinary moments, including the surreal visions of Makoto’s time-travelling, and the sequence where she and Chiaki wander around the time frozen city, wandering through perfectly still crowds, is remarkable. That it should venture into more outré territory shouldn’t come as a great surprise – as well as writing The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Tsutsui had also written the challenging techno-thriller Paprika, brought to animated life so well in 2006 by the great Satoshi Kon.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time‘s failings are minor and its triumphs magnificent, a beautiful, complex and thoughtful film that can probably be enjoyed on many layers. Tsutsui himself praised the film, calling it “a true second-generation” of his book and after a small-scale release in Japan, it was given a wider release when audiences starting flocking to it and returning to see it again and again. It was awarded the Best Animated Film award at the 2006 Sitges Film Festival and swept the board at the 2007 Tokyo Anime Awards. It also took home the Animation Grand Award from the prestigious Mainichi Film Awards and was given the Special Distinction for Feature Film at France’s Annecy International Animated Film Festival, thoroughly deserving of all the accolades laid at its beautifully turned out door.