Hacker Cinema
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time
時をかける少女
2006 · Film · 98 min
Directed by Mamoru Hosoda
FantasyAnimationDramaScience Fiction
When 17-year-old Makoto Konno gains the ability to 'leap' backwards through time, she immediately sets about improving her grades and preventing personal mishaps. However, she soon realises that changing the past isn't as simple as it seems, and eventually, will have to rely on her new powers to shape the future of herself and her friends.
6 positive1 neutralfrom 7 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
7 comments on Hacker News
I fed the list to GPT and asked which ones the OP liked:
- *Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer (1984)* - Highly recommended, really trippy.
- *Groundhog Day (1993)* - The classic, loved it.
- *Run Lola Run (1998)* - Fun with lots of details on rewatches.
- *The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006)* - Highly acclaimed anime adaptation.
- *Timecrimes (2007)* - Classic, intense, and worth watching.
- *Triangle (2009)* - Really good with unexpected twists.
- *Coherence (2013)* - A standout, very good.
- *The Incident (2014)* - One of his absolute favorites.
- *Edge of Tomorrow (2014)* - Pretty great.
- *Blood Punch (2014)* - Pretty good with unique mechanics.
- *Happy Death Day (2017)* - Very good.
- *The Endless (2017)* - The best of the best, though micro-budget.
- *Palm Springs (2020)* - Highly recommended.
- *Boss Level (2020)* - Action-driven, but worth checking out.
- *Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes (2020)* - Very good.
- *Maanaadu (2021)* - An excellent Bollywood time loop movie.
I was a huge fan of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and Wolf Children, and started watching everything he made, only to find that he was no longer able to produce movies of that quality. The last 3 - The Boy and the Beast, Mirai, and Belle - have been mediocre at best with stories and characters that were very poorly assembled. I continue to have some hope for future films, but frankly my expectations are very low at this point. Not many directors have produced 3 duds in a row in the prime of their career and then recovered with incredible stories later.
Nah.
I'd push things like Spirited Away or Tokyo Godfathers first, as far as anime-movies go actually.
EoE is good for the Evangelion fans. But honestly, Tokyo Godfathers hit me way harder.
EoE probably doesn't even hit my top 5 list of anime movies.
#1: Spirited Away
#2: Tokyo Godfathers
#3: Girl who Leapt through Time
#4: Summer Wars
#5: "Voices of a Distant Star" for #5? Hmm, or maybe "Time of Eve" ?? A lot of things I wanna fit in here but not EoE yet.
Not even getting to the "classics" like Akira, Eden of the East, Ghost in a Shell or whatever. These above movies have some mainstream appeal but still manage to hit that thoughtful analysis and depth. I'd still put something like Ghost in a Shell or "Your Name" above EoE...
There are also 'kid anime movies' like Patema Inverted that really were excellent and deserve recognition.
EoE is niche and fine for Evangelion fans though. Absolutely beautiful, and some of the best fight scenes I've ever seen. But you gotta see some of the __good anime movies__ out there. They all stand above EoE IMO.
Anything by Satoshi Kon is great, and in line with what you've been watching. If I had to pick, Perfect Blue for movies and Paranoia Agent for series.
In the lighter more children spectrum, Mamoru Hosoda does beautiful things like Summer Wars or The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.
The Tatami Galaxy is another great one
I think it depends on the show in anime. SPOILERS FOLLOW. Erased is not a parallel world, but someone trying to change their past. Madoka finds Homura repeatedly doing whatever is possible to save Madoka. Steins:Gate is timelines and parallel worlds (think of how many times Okabe again and again tries to save Mayuri). Girl who Leapt Through Time is the Groundhog Day story, same day over and again; bit like Tatami Galaxy. No idea where something like Haruhi Suzumiya might fall where time is played with in many different ways.
Meanwhile Evangelion (the later films) and Attack on Titan both seem to be veering towards some kind of inability to stop the same grand narrative cycle repeating again and again...
> I've never really developed a taste for Japanese animation, and went in with no expectations.
To be fair, the vast majority of it is crap. (In much the same way the majority of American entertainment content is also crap)
But there's also fantastic stuff out there, like Miyazaki films.
Makoto Shinkai has some excellent films.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makoto_Shinkai
Garden of Words, 5 Centimeters Per Second, Children Who Chase Lost Voices, The Place Promised in our Early Days, and Voices of a Distant Star are all excellent.
Mamoru Hosoda's recent works have all been quite good as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamoru_Hosoda
I'm not really a fan of his earlier works, but everything he's done since The Girl Who Leapt Through Time has been very high caliber.
I wouldn't say either is quite at the level of Miyazaki and Ghibli, but they're both quite good, and some of the better examples of the medium at it's best.
The problem with forums about anime or manga is that they self-select for people who have been rejected from every other community. A solid science-fiction or horror story can find discussion in the appropriate forums, but nobody normal is interested in some high-school student's harem of magical girls.
Here are some manga / anime recommendations. Some have not been licensed for distribution in the US, or have been only partially released here, so you will need to hunt a bit for fansubs. I watch only the animated adaptations, as they're easier to hide, but feel free to order the original manga versions if you don't feel ashamed about reading comic books. Not all are adaptations -- the movies, and a few television series, are original animations.
- Monster < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_%28manga%29 >
- Planetes < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetes >
- Mushishi < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushishi >
- Mononoke < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mononoke_%28TV_series%29 >
- Tokyo Godfathers < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_Godfathers >
If you're willing to relax your standards a bit, there are many outstanding series aimed at younger viewers.
- Denno Coil < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denn%C5%8D_Coil >
- Yokohama Shopping Trip < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yokohama_Kaidashi_Kik%C5%8D >
- Kino's Journey < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kino%27s_Journey >
- Cromartie High School < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cromartie_High_School >
- My Neighbor Totoro < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Neighbor_Totoro > , or almost anything else by Studio Ghibli < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studio_Ghibli >
- The Girl Who Leapt Through Time < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Girl_Who_Leapt_Through_Time >
- Yotsuba&! < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yotsuba&! >