Time Traveller – The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

Masaaki Taniguchi

The story: Scientist Kazuko Yoshiyama falls into a coma after she meets with an accident. She awakes briefly to tell her daughter Akari (Riisa Naka) to travel back in time to send a message to a boy named Kazuo. Akari goes back to 1974 using a potion her mother invented, only to find that no one seems to know who Kazuo is – not even the teenage Kazuko. Meanwhile, a romance begins to blossom between Akari and Ryota (Akiyoshi Nakao), a young man making a low-budget sci-fi film.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time was originally serialised in Japanese magazines in 1965 and 1966. It has since been adapted many times, including into a TV series in 1994 and an award-winning anime film in 2006.

While Kazuko Yoshiyama was the protagonist in the novel, the focus shifted to her niece in the anime film, and to her daughter in this third live-action film adaptation.

For all that pedigree, the latest version is not very satisfying. Riisa Naka, who voiced the heroine in the 2006 anime, and Akiyoshi Nakao, from the 2004 TV series Waterboys 2, are modestly engaging and their burgeoning relationship is rather sweet. But they cannot escape from the clutches of time-travel movie cliches and contradictions.

Anyone who has seen films such as Back To The Future (1985) would know that the No. 1 cardinal rule of time travel is: Thou shalt not change the past. But that rule is constantly being flouted by interactions between time travellers and people of that era because otherwise, there would be no movie.

Also, perhaps because this is director Masaaki Taniguchi’s feature film debut, he cannot quite decide on the tone he wants.

The time-travelling sequence is cheesy fun and even prompts a “What the heck?” from Akari. Then it turns into a mystery flick as she tries to track down the elusive Kazuo. Then it becomes a doomed romance. And in the final half-hour, it goes back to sci-fi territory.

The pacing makes this feel more like The Girl Who Leisurely Strolled Through Time.

Still, given the popularity of time travel and this story, there will certainly be another adaptation of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time somewhere down the road. And you don’t need to leap into the future to know that.

(ST)