The girl who leapt through time
Dante | 30 Dec 2009Recently I’ve realise that I have a few Anime movies backed up that need watching…hence 5cm Per second and now The girl that leapt through time
Firstly, this was apparently a recommended watch…I’m not sure if sarcasm prompted that recommendation because this was actually bad…like…wow. Somehow its won awards and hearts from here to buggery…but honestly I would prefer to watch an episode of Coronation street than be forced to watch this drivel again.
The premise of the movie is about a girl who suddenly and mysteriously gains the temporary ability to travel through time (the actual reasoning comes in late in the story and is spoileriffic so I wont say how) and from there you can basically substitute Ashton Kutcher in and call it “The butterfly effect”…because thats just what happens. Every time our girl (Makoto Konno btw) decides to time warp she stuffs something up inadvertently and in place the terrible thing that she is trying to avoid is muddled up with other emotions/events. I.e at one point she has something thrown at her, KAPOW! Back through time to dodge it…so it bounces off a wall and nails her friend instead…no matter what she could try, she would fail.
The movie itself is heavily designed purely to announce ethical and moral behaviour…its clear right from that outset that its a story about humanity and why it simply wouldn’t be able to cope with something as advanced as time travel.
And before Affian has a hernia and tears his hair out with rage, yes, time in this particular anime is linear…hence the butterfly effect exists…however if time was non-linear…boy that would be brilliant fun.
Why Dante hates this film:
- The voice acting. Try to sway me as you may, but simply put…it was shoddy. In two scenes Makoto cries and my ears almost bled out from pain…there’s no emotion/experience in any of the voices shown and anime clichés were hurled around for no apparent reason. SERIOUSLY ANNOYING VOICE ACTING.
- The animation. Right…this animation was released some 8 months before 5cm per second (yes I know I shouldn’t reference these two but srsly) and it looks as if it was made in half the time. The animation I saw is what I would expect from some shitty filler episode in some god awful anime. It was not smooth, it was not detailed, everything just reeked of “Oh shit guise! We ran out of time!”. Sure I can’t do better, so what, at least I can see its crap and can admit it.
- The story. ITS SO DAMNED VAGUE! Everything is explained in the end…but all I did was sit around being bored for 30 minutes or so…it was tedious and could have had more impact if more thought went into it.
- The directing. Right…this one pissed me off more than the rest because it encompasses the rest. When you have a 20 second long scene of a girl OPENING A FUCKING DOOR FOR CHRIST SAKES! you come to realise that you must have gone horribly wrong somewhere if you need to drag out scenes that long. The second worst scene is undoubtedly the “running” scene at the end where Makoto races to the baseball field…all we see is a still camera, some blurry background and a girl hyperventilating and sweating…for aaaaaaaaaaaaaages. FFFFFFFFFFFFFFF-
Here are some images…I have captioned them for impact:
OMG ITS A GIRAFFE GET IN THE CAR!
Makoto tries to "commit suicide"...her sister thinks its cause she ate her pudding...wut
Is it a boy? Girl? Who knows, put it down, you dont know where its been.
I disagree. Personally I love this anime, in comparison to everything else that’s out it provides a breath of fresh air.
While the characters aren’t particularly deep, considering it is a 1 1/2 hour anime it does things pretty well in explaining them. The only thing it lacks was more focus on Chiaki as the ending feels mostly rushed since it seemed he deserved more screentime but was cut short.
There isn’t anything particularly wrong with the art style and animation either. There’s nothing wrong with going off from the generic anime look of huge eye’d characters, it makes them seem less absurd. Sure some scenes may be questionable but thats only the fine details, in the end its strung together pretty well. Far better than alot of other shows or movies. (EoE is a trainwreck.)
The story isn’t too bad. It’s not spectacular either but its coherent. Sure some things don’t make much sense at first but everything wraps together nicely at the end. Arguably the main plot is the love story between the two and how she grows up learning to be responsible. (Cue Spider-Man reference).
This is all going by memory though since I haven’t seen this movie for quite a while so I might be wrong at some parts.
You should probably just stay away from genres you don’t like. It’s the same reason why I don’t watch pure slice-of-life and pure harem shows lest I rip my hair out in frustration with either how pointless and stupid they seem to be or just how absurd, idiotic and bland each character is. Examples. K-On! and DearS.
/End
As it turns out…I’m the only person to dislike this animation…ever.
WHY DOES NO ONE AGREE WITH ME?!