The Girl Who Leapt Through Time
TokiKake (Japanese)
時をかける少女 (Japanese)

TokiKake on Crunchyroll: http://www.crunchyroll.com/showseries?id=3403

Story

Makoto Konno , a girl attending high school in Tokyo's shitamachi, gains the power to go back in time and re-do things (the time-leap) when she gets involved in an accident at a train crossing one day.

A little bewildered with her new powers at first, Makoto uses them extravagantly to avoid being tardy and to get perfect grades on tests. However, things begin to turn bad as she discovers how her actions can adversely affect others. Along the way, Makoto's aunt, Kazuko Yoshiyama, offers some advice to her niece, with the hint that she herself had done something similar in the past; Kazuko is the protagonist of the novel, The Little Girl Who Conquered Time.


Theatrical run

TokiKake was released to a small number of theaters in Japan, taking in approximately 300 million yen (US$~3 million).[5] The film wasn't advertised as frequently as other animation features from 2006 (such as "Tales from Earthsea"), but word of mouth and glowing reviews generated interest. At Theatre Shinjuku for days in a row, filmgoers would fill the theater, some even standing to watch the film. Following this, distribution company Kadokawa Herald Pictures took unprecedented measures to increase the number of theaters showing the film across Japan, and sent the film to several international festivals.

TokiKake, translated as The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, premiered in Canada on November 19, 2006 at the Waterloo Festival for Animated Cinema and went onto premiere in US on March 3, 2007 at the 2007 New York International Children's Film Festival. According to Bandai Entertainment, the movie will receive a limited theatrical run in the USA in 2008.

Awards

Even though it was not a massive hit at the box office, the film did exceptionally well at the various festivals it was entered in. TokiKake took home the Gertie Award for the best animated feature film at the thirty-ninth Sitges International Film Festival of Catalonia. It won the Animation Grand Award, given to the year's most entertaining animated film, at the prestigious sixty-first Annual Mainichi Film Awards. It was also awarded the first annual Animation of the Year prize at the thirtieth Japan Academy Prize. It was nominated for, but did not win, the twenty-seventh Japan SF Grand Prize. It received the Grand Prize in the animation division at the 2006 Japan Media Arts Festival. At the sixth annual Tokyo International Anime Fair, which opened on March 22, 2007, TokiKake was recognized as "Animation of the Year" and won several awards. It won the Special Distinction for Feature Film at France's thirty-first Annecy International Animated Film Festival on June 16, 2007. It played to full-house theatres during a screening in August 2007 at the ninth Cinemanila International Film Festival in Manila, Philippines.