Wow, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. I recently heard of this movie when I was looking through top rated anime, when I passed by the movies. The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is currently the #1 rated movie, and #12 anime altogether. My reaction to this- "WHAT?!?!? A MOVIE HIGHER RATED THAN SPIRITED AWAY!?! NU-UHH! After that, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time went to my plan to watch list INSTANTLY. I finally took the time to watch the movie recently, and I'm happy that I did. And on a note- I watched the movie DUBBED. That's right, the English version done by Bandai Entertainment. If you don't like it, too bad. And the dub was GOOD!
The story is basically about a young high-school girl named Makoto Konno, has been having a tough time lately with school. She has been hurt, low grade scores, cooking accidents, and tardiness. Her best friends, Chiake Mamiya and Kosuke Tsuda have noticed this throughout the day, and talk to her about this when they play baseball. After school heading home, Makoto gets involved with a train accident, ending her life. Bt somehow, she has somehow been given the power to travel through the past, which causes her to live. Shocked about this, she goes to her aunt to talk about this. Her aunt then tells her that she can now do whatever she can and change things that has happened in the past. Following this, Makoto decides to go back to the past to change all the bad occurrences that happened that day. But doing so, this causes problems for other characters, triggering sad events in life. But also, this also causes love confessions from other people. Not happy about how this is turning out, Makoto decides to travel through the past again until it ends up how she wants it. Now this is a definitely a sci-fi movie, if you can't tell with all the time travel. I have had my fair share with sci-fi, seeing how my dad is a Star Wars fan and a Star Trek fan, but have I never watched a movie with such a strong story with such great character development. Not only this, but it also has a Digimon vibe to this, but this is pretty much because the director of the movie directed the Digimon movies. Overall, the story is very strong and very unique.
Now about the art, and I'm not being over dramatic about this, but this is the best art in all the animes I've seen. And trust me, I didn't download this or buy/rent the DVD, I watched it on YouTube (in their new HD quality). Most of the animes on YouTube have crappy quality, but even so, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time had great quality (but probably because I used the HD format). The character quality is phenomenal, and the background to the movie is brilliant as well. Watching the times when Makoto is going through time is a breath of fresh air, and when you're watching The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, there is a part close to the end of the movie when time has stopped, and then the movie is showing shots of time being stopped. That was when I realized how outstanding the animation was.
The voice actors FROM THE DUB fit the characters very well. You get a tomboyish voice fitting great for Makoto, you get a comedic I'm-just-messing-around voice, and you get a deep voice that fits well for Kosuke. And as for the score, it was really well done. The part of the score that shined was when time had stopped. That part of the movie I wanted to download and put on my I-Pod, but no luck torrenting it.
Now here's why I can't give the movie a perfect score, the characters. Now, you have a really good main character, but even so, you can't give something a perfect score over just one character. Chiake in my opinion is also a great character, but I still wanted more story about him. And for Kosuke, I can't really give him an opinion since he isn't involved with the movie as much as Makoto and Chaike are. I still think the characters are good, in fact the movie has a great set of characters, but I wish that there was more story into them.
There are parts of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time that will leave you in shock, in tears, in a smile, and in anger. All of these emotions PROVE how good this movie is. I was left in all of these emotions, and I'm glad that I was left in these emotions, because if I didn't have these emotions during the movie, I would've been bored and not have enjoyed the movie. I'm even glad that I was left in tears and anger because it proves how in depth the dialogue is.
Overall, I think The Girl Who Leapt Through Time was a really good watch, and for people who haven't seen the movie, I am telling you to watch it NOW. Although a lot of people say that it's their favorite anime movie, I can't say it is, seeing how great Spirited Away. If there was a little more depth to the characters, I bet it would be a close race between the two.
