The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is a 2006 animated movie directed by Mamoru Hosoda. It is related to the 1967 novel The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, written by Yasutaka Tsutsui.

FULL SUMMARY:

The movie’s protagonist is Makoto, whose two close friends are Kousuke and Chiaki. The story begins on a day when Makoto is running a little late to school, and makes it just in time with Chiaki. However, the teacher announces a test that she is not prepared for, and she does quite poorly. Later in the day, she is doing a cooking project in school and a small fire starts at her work station, causing her some embarrassment. She is also tasked with bringing some material to the science laboratory, but when she does so, she finds a strange object on the ground, and when she accidentally falls on it, she gets strange visions. Brushing the incident aside, she plays baseball after school with her friends, and then leaves on her bike.
As Makoto is biking down a steep slope, the road closes as a train is about to pass. Makoto attempts to stop and wait for the train, but her bike’s breaks don’t work, and she speeds up as she goes downhill. When she reaches the train tracks, she is flung directly into the path of the train, but to her surprise, she finds herself back down the road, in the same place where she was a few minutes ago. She visits her aunt and describes the experience, and her aunt says it is a “time leap,” meaning that she returned to an earlier point in time. Makoto is interested by this and spends time attempting more long and high jumps in an effort to perform another time leap. She is finally successful, and she soon decides to use her new ability to fix the bad day she had. She goes back in time so that she shows up to school punctually, and she does well on the test. When she is cooking, she switches areas with a boy named Takase, allowing her to be far away when the fire begins. After school, she continues to use time leaps, this time to extend the leisure time she has with her friends.

The next time Makoto speaks with her aunt, her aunt cautions her, saying that other people might be paying the price when she uses time leaps for her own convenience. This idea bothers Makoto, but she dismisses it, reassuring herself that no one is being harmed. The next time Makoto is spending time with Kousuke and Chiaki after school, Kousuke receives a love confession from a girl called Kaho. Kousuke rejects her on the basis that he needs to focus on studying. Makoto later reprimands him for this, pointing out how brave Kaho had been to ask him. On her way home, Chiaki offers to give her a ride on his bike, since she didn’t have hers. She agrees, but becomes shocked when Chiaki asks her out during the ride. Unable to give an answer, she time leaps back a few minutes, and then tries to prevent the conversation from reaching that point. Chiaki asks again, though, so Makoto repeatedly uses time leaps, each time trying and failing to steer the conversation away from that topic. Eventually, Makoto gives up and goes back to the moment when Chiaki offered her a ride; she refuses this time, and goes in another direction. When she later discusses what happened with her aunt, her aunt suggests that she might eventually come to love Chiaki, but Makoto doubts it.

However, when Makoto is in school, she and her friend Yuri find that Takase is being bullied for the cooking incident which happened earlier. Chiaki defends Takase, who accuses Makoto of being the cause his troubles, since she switched spots with him before the fire. Chiaki defends Makoto and then tries to strike up a friendly conversation, but Makoto becomes too uncomfortable and leaves. After she does so, Chiaki and Yuri begin talking, and as time passes Makoto notices that the two of them have become much closer. Eventually, Takase tries to take revenge on the bullies, spraying them with a fire extinguisher as the whole school watches. Makoto tells him to stop, but he turns on her, still furious. He throws the fire extinguisher at her, but Chiaki moves to block it. Makoto does not want Chiaki to get hurt, so she uses a time leap to get him out of the way in time. When she does so, the fire extinguisher flies through the air without hitting either of them and smashes into Yuri, who is immediately taken to the nurse’s office. Chiaki visits her while she is recovering, and shortly afterward the two of them start dating. Makoto once again goes to confide in her aunt, and says that she doesn’t want to use her abilities to emotionally harm anyone. Her aunt listens to her, and shows Makoto a painting that she has been spending time restoring, explaining the historical background of the picture and the feelings it invokes.

At school, Makoto has a conversation with Kaho, the girl who confessed to Kousuke. Kaho says that Kousuke rejected her because he felt the need to improve his grades when Makoto aced the earlier test. Makoto decides to fix this problem, and she time leaps several times back to the point when Kaho confessed to Kousuke, each time interjecting with comments that are supposed to encourage Kousuke to say yes. Unfortunately, each attempt has the opposite effect, making it even harder for Kaho to speak to Kousuke. Finally, Makoto decides to tackle the problem at its root, and goes back to make sure that she fails the test, although in the process she finds out that she only has one time leap left. She is relieved to see that Kousuke and Kaho are getting along, but panics when Kousuke sends a message saying he and Kaho are borrowing her bike. Worried that the broken brakes on the bike will get them into the same accident she had, she races to the train tracks, hoping to make it in time. When she gets there, she doesn’t see Kousuke and Kaho, so she is relieved. She gets a call from Chiaki, who says that he has a question for her. He asks if she’s been doing time leaps, and in a panic, Makoto uses her last time leap to go back to stop the conversation. When Chiaki calls this time, she hangs up early, only to see Kousuke and Kaho speed by her on the bike, heading toward the oncoming train. She is unable to reach them in time, but just as the collision happens, time seems to freeze, and Chiaki is there. He reveals that he originally came from the future to see a certain painting, which happens to be the one Makoto’s aunt is fixing. Makoto comes to understand that the object she found in the science laboratory belongs to him, and that its charge was supposed to be used to replenish the number of times one could time leap. Chiaki says that he used his last time leap to save Kousuke and Kaho, but now he cannot return to the future, and since he has revealed his secret, he must go.

Chiaki disappears and things return to normal, but Makoto is very sad about what has happened. However, she realizes that Chiaki’s last time leap had erased hers, giving her back the ability to perform one more time leap. She goes back to the very beginning of the story, resetting the all the damage she had caused. This time, as she heads off to play baseball with Chiaki and Kousuke, she tells Yuri that she loves Chiaki, and Yuri accepts that. Then, Makoto encourages Kousuke to invite Kaho’s group of friends to play baseball with them, which surprises Kousuke, but he does so. Finally, she speaks to Chiaki in private, and tells him about everything that happened. Chiaki makes plans to return to the future, and later, when they’re saying goodbye, Makoto promises to keep the painting ready for him to see in the future.

ANALYSIS OF MELODRAMA:

            This movie appears to be primarily a science fiction story, as the plot is centered around a method of time travel brought from the future. However, the story itself is driven by the melodrama that occurs around the protagonist, who has extreme reactions to any sort of emotional discomfort. In this way, the movie’s focus is not on the potential power of her ability to time leap, but rather on how she chooses to use time leaps and the social problems that arise as a result.

One example of a character following a clear archetype established in melodrama is Takase, the boy who ends up in the cooking accident in Makoto’s place. After the incident, Takase is shown to be bullied and ridiculed by some of the other classmates, causing him to feel intense anger toward Makoto. His speech toward Makoto is aggressive and angry, and makes him start to fit into the stereotype of a villain. Later in the movie, Takase makes a big scene when he retaliates against the bullies. Although his anger has justification, the movie portrays him as merciless toward the bullies, continually spraying them with a fire extinguisher even when they plead for forgiveness. This act of revenge furthers his appearance as a villain. When Makoto tries to step in, he prepares to throw the whole fire extinguisher at her.

However, Takase’s transformation into the archetypal villain is accompanied by Chiaki’s rise as a hero. When Takase first accuses Makoto of being the cause of his suffering, Chiaki firmly steps in to defend Makoto, insisting that none of it was her fault. Similarly, when Takase throws the fire extinguisher at Makoto, Chiaki steps in between them, prepared to take the full blow of the hit. This, coupled with the fact that he has romantic interest toward Makoto, reinforces his role as the typical hero who boldly saves someone they are in love with to reach a happy ending. This development is redirected when Makoto interferes with his plan, time leaping to push him out of the way of the fire extinguisher. Although Chiaki is saved, Yuri gets hit and has to see the nurse. Chiaki goes to visit her, and shortly afterward Yuri and Chiaki begin dating as a result of this interaction. This once again portrays Chiaki as an archetypal hero, although this time to Yuri rather than Makoto.

Makoto herself is portrayed in a relatively melodramatic way, as she avoids pressuring situations to the point where her double-standards are blatant. For example, although her cooking accident does bother her, she does not see any problem when she has Takase deal with the same problem. She even applies double standards to her friends, as she tells Kousuke not to spend much time studying, but she is quite satisfied when her time traveling allows her to get a better grade on the test. Makoto also scolds Kousuke for rejecting Kaho after her brave love confession, but then repeatedly uses time travel to avoid responding to Chiaki when he asks her out. Makoto’s inconsistent attitudes in these situations fuels the melodrama in the story, as her desperate struggle to avoid these problems only complicates the relationships she has with those around her, resulting in issues that are much more serious than what she was originally afraid of.

Makoto’s inability to judge the severity of a problem is further demonstrated as the movie contrasts melodramatic situations of varying degrees of seriousness. For example, when Makoto gets into the accident with her bike, what goes through her mind are the regrets about the inconveniences she had that day. This juxtaposition of a life-or-death situation with Makoto’s melodramatic regret about her day shows how much importance Makoto attached to relatively trivial incidents. This same idea arises when Makoto avoids the cooking accident by switching places with Takase; to Makoto, causing a scene while cooking is the real problem, but she understands how much worse things could get when she later sees Takase being physically bullied by others. Another example of this type of contrast occurs as the movie approaches its climax. Throughout the story, Makoto kept avoiding Chiaki’s confession, and when Chiaki calls her to ask a question, it is expected that he will ask her out again. However, when he suddenly asks her if she’s been time leaping, she is shocked and immediately does a time leap. Chiaki’s breakaway from the anticipated question creates a clear distinction between Makoto’s desire to avoid Chiaki’s confession and the possible implications of Chiaki’s awareness.

The use of time travel to avoid facing responsibility ties into the concepts of giri and ninjou. From the beginning of the movie, it is made clear that Makoto prefers to do what she wants rather than what she should be doing; a primary example of this is how, throughout the movie, she keeps putting off making a decision about her academic future. Once she attains the ability to time leap, she uses this to continue dodging responsibility, and she herself feels that she can do anything with her power. In some ways, this is an extreme example of the contrast between giri and ninjou: Makoto’s use of time travel allows her to completely escape situations associated with giri, while ninjou can be seen as she allows herself to always take the easy way out and have as much fun as she wants. One of the most prominent instances of this in the movie is when Chiaki decides to ask Makoto to go out with him during their bike ride home. Makoto knows she has to give some kind of a response, but since she doesn’t feel comfortable doing so, she uses time leaps to try to prevent the subject from ever coming up. This doesn’t work, so she eventually decides to simply go home in another direction, skipping the bike ride entirely. The choice she makes is emphasized by the sign indicating a fork in the road right where she decides to take another path.

Makoto’s two close friends clearly notice her tendency to seek the most convenient solution without thinking about the future, and toward the end of the movie, after Makoto has resolved the major crises, they both give her advice. Kousuke tells her to keep an eye on where she’s heading, and Chiaki reminds her to not act impulsively without thinking. These are both ways of telling Makoto to do what’s best for her in the future and not just in the moment. At the end of the movie, Makoto’s development in this regard can be seen as she finally makes a decision about her future studies.