Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo - First Impression

July 23, 2006 | 10 Comments

Unlike Honey and Clover movie, I find Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo to match my expectation quite well. The film is nicely directed, appropriately voiced, and contains an interesting storyline. It's kind of strange that this film is not as heavily promoted as Brave Story, which looks kind of childish judging from the promo trailers. I even get the impression that in Tokyo, this film is only screened in one cinema in Shinjuku. I was surprised when I arrived at the cinema and saw different types of audiences waiting for the film from the student types to the family types. I got this really nice-looking card which you can use to get stamps if you watch the film more than once. Once you see the film 3 times, you'll receive a large poster of the film. Unfortunately I don't have that much money to do this so I have to be content with the free mini poster available at the cinema. I did, however, buy the program guide and it contains some nice photographs from the film.

Ticket, Program Guide, Mini Poster, loyalty card
Signed Poster

The film begins by showing a scene where the heroine, Makoto Konno, is in the middle of playing baseball with her two friend, Chiaki Mamiya and Kousuke Tsuda. Makoto tells her friends that she seems to be able to hear 'voices' and later on complains about the fact that her little sister, Miyuki, ate the pudding that was meant to be for her. Makoto then throws a ball to Chiaki and due to the speed in which Makoto throws it, Chiaki ends up hitting it up to the sky. The three think that they've lost the ball but it suddenly comes back from the sky and hits Makoto squarely in the forehead. Makoto screams in pain and she wakes up in her bed and finds out that the thing that hit her head is her alarm clock. She's late to go to school. Makoto turns out to be a reckless bike user. She likes to speed using the vehicle to the point that she becomes a minor nuisance for the people who walk on the street.

At school, Makoto and her classmates are shocked when their teachers tell them that there is a surprise exam. Makoto, who didn't study the night before, is not doing well on the exam. Makoto also messed up badly during the cooking class, when her attempt to fry tempura almost burns the kitchen. That day while carrying a bunch of papers, Makoto hears some kind of a noise coming from the science lab. However, when she enters the room, she can't find anyone there. While looking around, however, she notices a shadow moving in the lab and becomes startled. She ends up falling into the floor and experiences a strange vision whereby she sees a bunch of red counters and then later on some kind of time trippy visions. She is then back inside the lab and finds a chestnut-like object on the floor.

On her way back home, Makoto drives her bike recklessly again and almost hits a woman who's carrying a grocery. All of a sudden, however, the train signal goes off, indicating that a train is coming soon and Makoto's bike is running full speed towards it. Makoto presses the brakes right away but finds out that they are not working anymore. Makoto then tries to stop the bike by using her legs but because she was speeding, she's unable to do so. Her bike immediately hits the safety pole and her body is propelled towards the moving train. Makoto wonders if this is how her life is going to end and all of a sudden, time suddenly reverts back to a couple of minutes prior to the accident. This time, Makoto actually hits the groceries-carrying woman so her bike promptly stops due to the impact. Because of the incident, however, the woman is hurt a little bit so Makoto apologises profusely to her.

Makoto then takes a walk to deliver some peaches to her aunt who works at a museum. When she explains the accident that happened to her, however, her aunt is not surprised and believes that Makoto is a 'time leaper', a person who can go back at a certain point in time. Makoto then returns home feeling disturbed with her almost accident and her aunt's explanation. In order to prove her aunt's point, she tries to jump off the window. Her sister, Miyuki, sees this and immediately assumes that Makoto is frustrated because she ate the pudding. Makoto, however, has other things in her mind than pudding so she takes a walk down to a big river. She then runs from the hill into the river and suddenly she's thrown once more into the past. This time around, she's back in her own house before her sister comes home and eats the pudding. Makoto takes the pudding off the fridge and proceeds to consume it before her sister has the chance to do so.

After realising this capability, Makoto decides to use the power to her advantage. She returns the time back to the day before she woke up late. The next morning, she wakes up early before everyone else and walks to the school instead of using the bike. And because she is aware of the upcoming surprise exam, she actually studied for it the night before and manages to score 100 points. In the cooking class, instead of frying the tempura herself, she asks another guy called Takase to do it for her. As a result, he's the one who almost burn the kitchen down. Meanwhile, a new development happens to Kousuke. A kouhai is attracted to him and tries to confess her feelings towards him. However, because Kousuke was distracted by Makoto and Chiaki asking him to hurry up, Kousuke immediately rejects the girl. After a baseball game, Kousuke goes home on his own while Chiaki offers Makoto a ride on his bike because Chiaki decided to walk to school.

Halfway through the journey, however, the two begin talking about the girl who has a crush on Kousuke. The conversation causes Chiaki to ask Makoto what she thinks about him. Chiaki is freaked out by the sudden turn in the conversation and decides to reverse time so she can go home on her own. She then tells this incident to her aunt who asks her what she actually feels for Chiaki. Makoto is not sure because so far they're just friend so the confession freaked her out. The conversation then turns to the power that Makoto possesses. Her aunt tells her that someone probably gets hurt if Makoto uses the power carelessly. The next day, Makoto's classmate, Yuri tries to tell Makoto that she's interested in Chiaki. Before she can convey this, however, the two realise that a bunch of boys are in the middle of bullying Takase, the guy who almost burned down the kitchen. Before the guys go too far, however, Chiaki comes over and defends Takase.

Chiaki, however, becomes unhappy with Takase when the later blames Makoto for putting him in this predicament. Makoto, on the other hand, is more afraid that Chiaki will try to confess his feeling to her again so she decides to avoid him for the rest of the day. Because of this, she ends up spending her time only with Kousuke and causes Kousuke's kouhai and her friends to think that she's in love with Kousuke. When the three confront her about this, Makoto decides to prove that she has no interest in Kousuke by trying to matchmake Kousuke with the Kouhai. Her attempt eventually becomes a success and Kousuke ends up spending time with the kouhai. During this time, however, Makoto realises that she does have feelings for Chiaki, especially after she sees him getting closer to her classmate, Yuri. To make matters worse, she notices some number on her hands and later on realises that the numbers correspond to the amount of time she can do time leap.

Eventually the number depleted to 01 and right at this point, Makoto finds out that Kousuke and his kouhai has decided to borrow her bike to go home together. Makoto gets a chill because she realises that the brake is not working anymore and therefore, she races back to the train track to ensure that Kousuke and his kouhai do not get hit by the train. Upon getting there, however, Makoto can't find anyone or heard that there was any accident. Because of this, she walks away from the area in relief and receives a phone call from Chiaki who's not happy that no one is not coming to the baseball field. Chiaki, however, has a more shocking thing to say to Makoto when he asks her if she's been time leaping all of these times. Makoto who is horrified to hear this decides to use her last time leap to return to the few minutes before Chiaki asks her the question. This time around Chiaki strangely aborts his call all of a sudden.

Much to Makoto's shock, however, she encounters Kousuke and his kouhai speeding in her bike towards the train track. Makoto tries to stop the two but it's too late because Kousuke and his kouhai have now been propelled towards the moving train. In her desperation, Makoto cries and asks for time to stop right now. Strangely the time does stop even though she no longer has the time leaper ability. As it turns out, it is Chiaki who stopped the time. He explains to her that he actually came from the future to see a painting. However, because he's used up the leaping ability, he can no longer go back to his time. And because he broke the rule about not letting someone from the past to know about the leaping ability, Chiaki will disappear. Later on, however, Makoto realises that Chiaki basically brought her back to the point where she still has 1 time leap ability. She decides to use it to go back to the time when she first saw the walnut-like object. This time around, she decides to obtain said object and give it to Chiaki. The two then say their goodbye to each other and Chiaki returns to the future after telling her that he'll wait for her in the future.

Impression:

The film did good job on almost everything. The animation is smooth and the background looks stunning. Yoshiyuki Sadamoto's character design also works rather well with the background. Makoto, apart from her match-making tendencies is generally quite likeable. Once she found out about her ability, she doesn't hesitate to use it. Despite this, she is still capable of feeling remorse when she realises that her time leaping has brought misfortune to other people. The chemistry between the three lead characters (Makoto, Chiaki, and Kousuke) is top notch and that is why the ending feels quite harrowing. After Chiaki disappears, life will never be the same for both Makoto and Kousuke. The main theme, Garnet perfectly captures the way Makoto probably feels after Chiaki left. I was also surprised to find out that Makoto's aunt turns out to be the original time leaper from the original story. Unfortunately, I haven't read the novel so I have no idea how different her story was from Makoto's.

© memento 2003