The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

Movies
1

Just finished watching this tonight. Dubbed I might add as this is my girlfriend’s preferred method, though apart from some crying that felt a little forced I thought the main characters all gave good performances so I have no complaints on that front.

This is one of those beautifully melancholy dramas that I love to see so well done, where teenage years look to stretch on forever in a land of perfect sunshine and friendship, and then some adventure is structured around it and you debate at the end whether the backdrop or the story was the real backdrop.

Oddly feel good and for those who haven’t seen it I heartily recommend it, dubbed or not. This was a rental but I will be buying a copy for sure.

Anyway, I have questions and complaints. Let’s start with a whine.

Dear oriental film makers, please stop feeling that you need to explain every mystery, down to the level where Star Trek TNG would be proud. It simply isn’t necessary to add five to ten minutes of meandering explanation for something that required none. Ground Hog day didn’t need it, neither did this film.

I think I might have preferred the more brutal ending this film could have had, but I do have a thing for endings that smack you in the jaw, and it might have jarred with the tone of the rest of the film. Still, when she was shouting “STOP!” without the power to make things change I could feel tears forming.

The film failed to subtitle two rather important elements:

  1. What does it say under “for” on the blackboard? I think she says her own name at the end, but I wasn’t sure if this is what the text under “for” says. Or perhaps the text had changed and I missed it.

  2. It fails to subtitle the text on the girl’s phone which is a pretty significant plot point, that her friend has taken her bike.

Does she really see someone in the classroom at the beginning? As she doesn’t travel through time at that point it would seem she must have imagined it, but the film doesn’t make it out to be that way. I assume it was the owner of the device who was there and the film just doesn’t handle it very well.

And most of all, WTF was that final conversation? It seemed to be a promise to meet again, but rather than getting a sense of the futility of this promise I found myself annoyed that we were ending with such a ridiculous conversation. I kept analysing it hoping for some deeper meaning, but I can’t find any so it’s just annoying. Of course, this movies has a number of plot holes if you think about it too hard, so perhaps you’re supposed to simply take the comments at face value and move on.

Overall though, loved it.

2

The general consensus is that she ends up taking over her aunt’s duties to keep the painting intact so he can see it again in his own future. So, he’s technically not seeing her in the future in the physical sense, but he’ll see her through the painting. Remember, earlier she decides that she wants to be like her aunt, and take care of those precious works of art for future generations.

It wasn’t so much of a promise, either. It was more like a mutual acknowledgment that she would make sure the painting is there when he gets back to his own time, and he would treasure it as much as he treasured his time with her.

edit: A very important piece of information is that this is really a sequel to the original manga. Her aunt had a similar experience with leaping when she was Makoto’s age, hence the mysterious understanding that she had for Makoto’s various situations.

3

I think they talk about the painting in that very same conversation, which is why the idea of discussing it AGAIN but in a more mysterious way, doesn’t feel like a satisfactory explanation. Were it to emerge as the canon answer, I’d feel the same way though.

I really do think it’s to give a sense of hope at the end, despite the fact that there is none. To keep the mood happy.

4

Well, there’s no official answer. But most people have agreed on the painting = Makoto conclusion.

5

That’s actually a very helpful piece of information. My wife and I were trying to figure out why there were so many parallels between the Aunt and Makoto. We were both expecting that the Aunt actually was her future self, but that just didn’t work in the context of the film. I seem to remember the Aunt has a picture of her younger self on the wall at one point, and we were expecting to see Makoto there (a bit like the Shining), but again that didn’t work out.

Lovely film - highly recommended.

6

Yeah, some tid-bits of info that are helpful: