(L) Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo (The Girl Who Leapt Through Time)

[Ottocycle]

Originally Posted by G. Zeus

For the Tokikake vs. Paprika issue, I think it's like comparing a painting and a novel. One's fancier in terms of visuals while the other does a better job in delivering a story. Awards and nominations aside, it's up to personal preferences when it comes to deciding which is actually "superior" to the other.

Well I'm loving both. Putting them to direct competition is nigh impossible IMO since qualitatively they're actually really close. And whoever does it for their respective stories is going for unfairness and subjectivity.
/me doesn't care anymore...

Originally Posted by wao

AFAIK yesterday and today (well I know for today because I've got the papers with me) they had it not just in Cine, but in Causeway Point and Cathay. Quite a number of screening times too.

Screw the fact that school (+ exams) start tomorrow, I turned 18 today so I'm going to go watch TokiKake at the cinemas! ...2:55 at Cine, in fact. Even though someone bought me the R2 DVD. Will talk about how it was when I come back from it later

Ah now then they update the booking site properly.. I wanted to go to Cathay instead...

I caught it yesterday at Cine as well...well what can I say...awesome. Especially the sound. And the best thing was that the subs weren't butchered!! I wonder how that sounded to people outside SG
Oh and Happy Birthday

[arias]

It's amusing to see you Singaporeans post : ) I would've loved to be able to call you guys out to watch stuff together if I were still there. I don't actually know many people who watch and appreciate these sorts of particular anime.

Anyway, I've just watched it. I've heard of the movie ever since it was being promoted and heard almost nothing but praise for it when it came out. But it didn't impress me all that much. Well, the pacing for the first 2/3 was lackadaisical - and I'm a big fan of slice-of-life works. It simply didn't really work for me. The last 1/3 though, was great.. That was when the plot started becoming meaningful after the extensive staging earlier on. It wasn't too late and saved the film for me Everyone should know about the bittersweet portion of the ending now, although I'm quite suprised no one employed spoiler tags for it at all in this thread. My thoughts on it are that it's very similar to Escaflowne's ending, both for TV series and movie, so I wasn't at all overwhelmed in a positive or negative way. The bittersweet theme is a constant ingredient in more mature Japanese works although I've grown slightly weary of it. My interpretation of the ending was that

Spoiler:

Chiaki's saying "I'll be waiting for you in the future" was more symbolic than literal. Hardcore fans might actually want to watch Escaflowne to understand, as well as listen to Escaflowne movie's ED; Yubiwa by Yoko Kanno & Maaya Sakamoto, which brought me to tears

I think he might very well be referring to Makoto's promise to protect the painting. What he'll be waiting for is "her" through the preservation of the painting. Her efforts, in fact...

In the final scene when Makoto told the other friend Kousuke Tsuda that she knew what she wanted to do, she meant to preserve that painting. Which all links up and makes sense now.. the bittersweet fact is that the two are from a different era and cannot possibly be together. Then, what holds them together is that single painting, which Makoto will protect...

For the more technical aspects of the show though, the voice-acting bothered me at several points in the movie when it didn't synchronize with the character animation -- whatever you might say about its delivery (I did read the first five pages of this thread and I disagreed with just about all the comments). The animation was budgeted without any shading layers but quite effective I was quite fond of the various character designs, although I feel so old because Evangelion and Secret of Blue Water were so long ago...

In all, I felt the show was worth watching. But it wasn't particularly potent for me. During the crucial climatic parts for Makoto, I stiffed in stunned silence because it was so forced; both in the performance of the voice-acting and character animation. I don't think it's because I'm a cold bastard - Toki wo Kakeru Shojo just doesn't feel as emotively organic as say, Ghibli's Whisper of the Heart. By that I don't mean to hold TokiShojo to unrealistic standards; I feel the choice of VA was very poor. It could've been better. On the whole though, if the lot of you are so enthusiastic about it then make sure your friends know I could be the odd bone out; though then again I do like it.

[wao]

Ah, just watched it today. They didn't mercilessly butcher the subs; thankfully it was all in proper English and sounded natural enough - but I felt they left a lot to be desired. The english subs really didn't catch the nuance and the meaning of the sentences, and I'm dead sure they even missed out a few details in teh lines. Not super-crucial details, but the charm of this show to me were the different references to time and details in the script. The translation felt utilitarian at best, and didn't do justice to the show at all IMO. I thought it deserved a little better... :/

The Chinese subs seemed to be much better from what I could understand from it, but I'm in no position to judge because my Chinese is super-sucky (hey, at least I don't have to do it anymore... goddamnit) and I wasn't looking at them most of the time.

I have to say though, the surround sound effects were reeaally nice. I liked how during the scene with the frozen time in the later half of the movie, Chiaki's voice would come from various different directions. Things like Makoto's fall and the clock falling on her head in the beginning were very impactful, you could literally hear people go "ow!" in the theatre. Though I think most people found it a cute and funny film (I swear I kept hearing people going "so cute!" because of the way Makoto talks and moves) I noticed a number of teary eyes just as the film ended.

[hamiko_san]

10 things more, you never know.

[Samatarou]

Originally Posted by arias

Anyway, I've just watched it. I've heard of the movie ever since it was being promoted and heard almost nothing but praise for it when it came out.

I think one of Tokikake's problems is that it's suffered from praise overload, so people go in there with high expectations. When I watched it I knew nothing about it other than it was about a girl who could leap through time, and that it sounded like a pleasant way to while away a couple of hours, only to be totally blown away by it.

the pacing for the first 2/3 was lackadaisical - and I'm a big fan of slice-of-life works. It simply didn't really work for me. The last 1/3 though, was great.. That was when the plot started becoming meaningful after the extensive staging earlier on.

My feeling was that the plot, or more accurately the moral, is centered on the earlier part of the film. To me it's all about the "Time waits for no-one" motif, as Makoto learns the hard way that you should just take life as it comes and seize the moment. The final part is a great twist as we discover the background to it all, but the first part with its endless reworkings of events was very cleverly done and I never found it dragged, in fact if it had gone any faster I don't think I would have been able to follow the chain of events since after a while almost every scene is a rerun of an earlier scene and I started to have difficulty identifying what was a rerun and what was new.

For the more technical aspects of the show though, the voice-acting bothered me at several points in the movie when it didn't synchronize with the character animation ... The animation was budgeted without any shading layers but quite effective

I didn't notice any problems with the voice acting, I felt it was refreshingly naturalistic, the only criticism I have regarding the technical side of the film is that the animation frame rate was too low, several scenes had jerky movement, e.g. the one where Chiaki throws the basketball at Kousuke about 5 mins into the film. Modern anime tend to increase the framerate to the full 24fps at moments where it's needed for smooth motion but this often wasn't being done with Tokikake, the above scene for instance is a mix of 8fps and 12fps animation and gives a low budget ambience to the scene.

[TinyRedLeaf]

Originally Posted by Samatarou

I think one of Tokikake's problems is that it's suffered from praise overload, so people go in there with high expectations. When I watched it I knew nothing about it other than it was about a girl who could leap through time, and that it sounded like a pleasant way to while away a couple of hours, only to be totally blown away by it.

Well then, I'm probably quite lucky to have watched this film with utterly no expectations as well. Caught it at Cathay Cineleisure Orchard (.....oh man, I haven't gone downtown to watch movies for so long that I had no idea what Cathay did with the ninth floor of that building, haha; it's pretty cool, but too bad it seems not to attract enough people -- it was very empty for a Sunday afternoon I thought).

My first surprise comes actually from seeing my fellow viewers in the cinema -- there was a pretty good mix of people in the audience, from teenagers to oldies (like me ). There was even a Western couple, who were probably in their thirties.

More importantly, nary a sight of a sweaty, pimply otaku. So, hmm, it seems that "mainstream" viewers wouldn't mind watching the occasional animated movie. Given a little more marketing, I wonder how many more people TokiKake would have drawn?

Watching an animated movie in a cinema is quite a pleasant experience, I must say. We all laughed and chuckled at the same scenes, and I could hear the occasional sniffing during the emotional scenes too. As for me, I found myself grinning through most of the film. Generally, it's safe to say I enjoyed it so much that I wasn't even bothered about the mechanics of time-travelling, as portrayed in this film.

(Frankly, to me, it's a bit pointless to focus too much on the mechancis time-travelling in the first place. This movie is clearly more about life and teenage romance than it is about time-travel.)

Hmm...as for the ending that so many people have already discussed, well, it didn't occur to me until reading this thread that it would cause such problems in interpretation.

I thought Chiaki's last line was quite appropriate, because it ended the movie on a hopeful note that was free of regret. I would have thought that to be fairly obvious, but it seems that not everyone felt the same way, lol. Ah well, it's not a big deal. Everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion.

What I'd like to know is where I can find more information about the previous incarnations of the story? Just information to read, thank you very much. I'm not asking for stuff that would get you or me banned.

[wao]

Same thing on the seeing-people-you-wouldn't-expect at the theatres. This was definitely something watched by way more than just your usual anime crowd... hell, I went to watch it a second time - again at Cineleisure, this time dragging a friend along because it was after the tests - and at the end of the movie I was nearly scared out of my skin to realise one of my classmates was sitting behind me. And not just that, the first time I went I saw pairs of aunties sitting through the credits, and this time I actually saw a rather old lady slowly getting into one of the chairs - by that I mean the type with the permed white hair and still wearing kinda old-ish clothes. I was really surprised.

(And that ninth floor was really quite strange. One time I went and there were a surprising number of kids from international schools there... as well as 12-13 year olds.)

[arias]

Originally Posted by Samatarou

I think one of Tokikake's problems is that it's suffered from praise overload, so people go in there with high expectations. When I watched it I knew nothing about it other than it was about a girl who could leap through time, and that it sounded like a pleasant way to while away a couple of hours, only to be totally blown away by it.

Well, I'll take it that you're responding directly to me.

I've had plenty of movies that were praised and I just watched them, and felt whatever I felt. I have been intrigued ever since watching the preview of the movie, and its animation quality seemed almost Ghibli-like which drew me to it. It's simply just not that good to me.

My feeling was that the plot, or more accurately the moral, is centered on the earlier part of the film. To me it's all about the "Time waits for no-one" motif, as Makoto learns the hard way that you should just take life as it comes and seize the moment. The final part is a great twist as we discover the background to it all, but the first part with its endless reworkings of events was very cleverly done and I never found it dragged, in fact if it had gone any faster I don't think I would have been able to follow the chain of events since after a while almost every scene is a rerun of an earlier scene and I started to have difficulty identifying what was a rerun and what was new.

I obviously disagree - I don't think that saying it "dragged" is the right word. I've worded my comment on it carefully and your reply is probably unfair to mine.

I didn't notice any problems with the voice acting, I felt it was refreshingly naturalistic, the only criticism I have regarding the technical side of the film is that the animation frame rate was too low, several scenes had jerky movement, e.g. the one where Chiaki throws the basketball at Kousuke about 5 mins into the film. Modern anime tend to increase the framerate to the full 24fps at moments where it's needed for smooth motion but this often wasn't being done with Tokikake, the above scene for instance is a mix of 8fps and 12fps animation and gives a low budget ambience to the scene.

The framerate for me was fine. The animation was good enough to transport the story; as was the case for Honey & Clover. Again, picture-sound synchronization and naturalistic technique of voice-acting delivery are two separate issues you've confused.



As for the people who've continually tried to lay defence by saying that TokiKake is suffering from overpraise, I'll lay the criticism on you folk that you're overprotecting a "smaller" movie and refusing to allow or recognize a variety of opinions, even if well-articulated. Finally, I couldn't help but blink at the comment that one of you watched the movie without a "sweaty, pimply otaku". I hope it's a clever poke at the cultural meme, else it's a disgraceful sentiment.

[KholdStare]

As much as the anime analyzer I am, I found this anime simply stunning. All I can say about this movie is that every internal aspect of the movie is perfect. This means the plot was excellent, the pacing was excellent, the mood was excellent, the voice acting was excellent (it was a little weird at first but I've grown accustomed to the main characters' VA and actually prefer it over the typical Japanese girl VA), and just the right amount of information was released at just the right time, so the audience doesn't feem almost completely lost as in Place Promised but it's not a straight out linear plot either.

What does this mean? I never once paid attention to the animation. I've read what has been said and I'm surprised really. The movie's internal structures absorbed me into it to much that I just keep watching and watching, and all I know was that the animation was good enough--it's not an artistic masterpiece that made me pay special attention to the animation but it wasn't bad enough to distract me in any way. That's really all I can say. It's one of those movies that got me without any explanation at all. It's an arrow that hit the bull's eye of my interests and emotions and gave me a feeling that cannot be articulated into words. It is, to me, a masterpiece that that eludes all forms of reason.

[TinyRedLeaf]

Originally Posted by arias

Finally, I couldn't help but blink at the comment that one of you watched the movie without a "sweaty, pimply otaku". I hope it's a clever poke at the cultural meme, else it's a disgraceful sentiment.

What else could it have been other than an in-joke? I certainly did not intend it to be personal. And, in any case, even if I were serious about it, I'd be insulting myself too...so doesn't that make us all even?

Anyways, sincere apologies to anyone who was offended.

[Sonhex]

Finally watched this and well, I loved it. For Makoto and her misadventures. I wasn't expecting it to be so damn funny. I laughed so hard when she's tumbling into the karaoke room, or to intercept Chiaki's hits or, the best moment of comedy in the film, standing on the hill, arrogantly laughing at the world. I was I tears of laughter at that point.

There's little point extolling the good points about the animation, it's just amazing. Character animation at it's best. This is one of the amazing things about Madhouse's projects I think; the amount of personality given to each and every character is remarkable. The three leads of-course, but Makoto's artisan Aunt was incredibly well rounded. I also liked Kaho's overbearing but supportive friends; they made me laugh every time they're on screen.

As a fable about friendship and living every day as if it was your last, it really is an astonishingly affective. Whisper of the Heart is the only other movie that has done this as affectively, only with a different theme. Generally I find recent anime movies completely hit and miss. Most have budget powered animation, but little to carry away from a viewing. Tokikake is the reverse: while the animation is truely glorious, it is understated (and entirely more effective as a result) but I'll remember it for its characters and those subtle engaging moments. Which served to remind me why I watch anime in the first place...

[Friera]

I just watched the anime, and had some seriously problems understanding the connections between the painting, Chiaki and the girl. May someone feed me with a spoon the ending?

Spoiler:

I didn't quite get why Chiaki was so interested in the painting in the first place? How some he went back in time to save it - fell in love with a girl (Konna) and then promise her to see her in the future? I didn't quite get ut. And her aunt seemed to see her mistakes and was overly calm regarding the time leap when normal people would think Konna is crazy.

Sorry for the questions. This is really bothering me and I can't be at peace not understanding this movie throughoutly.

[Samatarou]

Originally Posted by Friera

I just watched the anime, and had some seriously problems understanding the connections between the painting, Chiaki and the girl. May someone feed me with a spoon the ending?

Spoiler:

I didn't quite get why Chiaki was so interested in the painting in the first place? How some he went back in time to save it - fell in love with a girl (Konna) and then promise her to see her in the future? I didn't quite get ut. And her aunt seemed to see her mistakes and was overly calm regarding the time leap when normal people would think Konna is crazy.

Regarding his motives, you may have noticed that Makoto was equally incredulous that he came all that way just to look at a painting. The way I thought of it was, the future is beyond our comprehension. You just can't conceive of what will matter to someone hundreds of years from now.

However another possibility rests in the fact that this painting is known to bring calm to people and seems to have been made in a time of war for that purpose. The impression I got of the future was that it was a world that had been practically destroyed, probaby by war, note how he's never seen the surface landscape before, never seen so many people before, it sounds like a post-apocalyptic era. I guess he hoped to find solace in that painting, maybe an answer to the troubles of his world.

Meeting again in the future is probably rhetorical, he doesn't actually say they'll meet, just that he'll be waiting — but for her, or for the painting she promised to preserve? Some suggest it's the survival of the painting that will serve as her link to him.

As for her aunt, this is a reference to the original novel & live action film, as a teenager she was the star of the original story, and she herself met a time traveler, that's why she knows about time travel. She does actually say she had time leapt herself, but she makes it sound like she's just joking. Probably she doesn't actually tell Makoto outright because she promised to keep it secret.

[DannyCat]

I wish I would have noticed this movie sooner. After seeing it fansubbed, I looked around to see where in Korea it was still playing. It's still showing in three or four theaters in the country, and the closest was in Daegu, about 90km away. After combined subway+train+subway trip of 2 hours, finally got to see it in a theater. This movie really ought to be seen in a theater with an audience; fansub on a laptop just doesn't provide the proper experience. So, given all the awards it's picked up, is any arthouse-theater-circuit distributor going to pick it up and give it a limited subtitled theatrical release or something? I mean, if Paprika can get into US theaters, why not this?

Also, picked up some of the flyers from the theater and scanned 'em:

[Samatarou]

Originally Posted by DannyCat

I wish I would have noticed this movie sooner. After seeing it fansubbed, I looked around to see where in Korea it was still playing. It's still showing in three or four theaters in the country, and the closest was in Daegu, about 90km away. After combined subway+train+subway trip of 2 hours, finally got to see it in a theater.

Ha, with a journey like that you should have seen 5 Centimetres per second!

As for watching anime on a computer, I find it helps if you plug your soundcard into your hifi system.

[DannyCat]

Originally Posted by Samatarou

As for watching anime on a computer, I find it helps if you plug your soundcard into your hifi system.

Which I don't have, living on campus here. And because there are too many people around in the computer lab here, I can't use speakers anyway and am limited to headphones. Which makes seeing this movie in a theater all the more excellent.

[creamyhorror]

Just replying to say this was one of the absolute best anime movies I've seen, going by sheer emotional impact. I wasn't particularly hit by the animation or artwork, but the screenwriting was fantastic and the soundtrack so suitable in its simplicity. It impressed me far more than Paprika did.

I'd just like to suggest going to the IMDB entry to rate it and give it the position it deserves - it needs at least 1000 votes to appear on the top Animation films list, and its current score of 8.2 would put it at number 3-5, right below Spirited Away. It only has 505 votes at present. So help put it where it deserves to be:

Vote here folks!

[723]

Sorry... I was wondering if anyone can post a link to tje novel on which is based the whole anime and the film. I just want to follow Kagami's path and read it (those who watch Lucky*Star will understand me... X3 ). So, can anyone help me?

[Chihori]

Hey guys~

Sorry if this question has already been answered in previous entries but I was wondering... I'm planning to buy the TokiKake artbook but found out that there are 2 versions available:

http://books.yahoo.co.jp/book_detail/31746575 and
http://books.yahoo.co.jp/book_detail/31932855/

I'm a bit confused as to the difference between the two. The notebook version (link) seems interesting cuz it's a replica of Makoto's notebook. But I just wanna know which one is the best choice for me to buy. I really appreciate the help. Thanks~

[roxfan]

Notebook offers story synopsis with selected frames, director's comments, info and interviews with cast and staff, character and art sketches.
Artbook is comprised mostly from full-page and centerfold shots from the movie, with sometimes comments from the art director on how a particular scene was composed and how digital effects were applied. There are also some interviews.
Other books you might want to buy:
1) Tokikake Storyboard
http://books.yahoo.co.jp/book_detail/31741016
The full movie storyboard complete with Hosoda's scribbles.
http://www.style.fm/as/02_topics/top_060714_a.shtml
http://www.style.fm/as/02_topics/top_060718_a.shtml
2) The original novel, 2006 reissue.
http://books.yahoo.co.jp/book_detail/31699363
3) The anime version novelization.
http://books.yahoo.co.jp/book_detail/31879659