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.
** Spoiler Alert!!! click to hide or show**
Makoto discovers that she can only leap through time a limited number of times. However, she ends up using up more of her leaps to recklessly prevent undesirable situations from happening, including a confession of love from her friend Chiaki Mamiya. Unfortunately, in her attempts to make things right for everyone, she ends up impulsively using her final leap to prevent a phone call from Chiaki asking how many times she has leapt through time. As a result, she is unable to prevent her friend Kōsuke Tsuda and his girlfriend from getting killed in an accident that would have originally happened to her (her bicycle's brakes were not working, and thus the bike hits a rail crossing-gate and both people are killed by an oncoming train). Devastated and deeply regretting her actions, time suddenly stops and Chiaki reveals a startling secret.
He is a traveller from the future and leapt through time in order to save a painting being restored by Makoto's aunt since the painting has been destroyed in the future. However, he has used his final leap to prevent Kōsuke's accident and has stopped time only to explain to Makoto what the consequences will be. By revealing to her that he was the one who brought the item that allowed Makoto to leap through time, he must disappear from her life. She finally realizes too late that she loves him as well.
True to his words, Chiaki disappears when time begins again and Makoto is visibly upset. As she tries to come to terms with losing him, she discovers that she can still make one final leap through time. Returning to the day she got her powers, she manages to restore Chiaki to her time frame. However, she reveals everything that he told her in the future concerning who he is, the ability to leap through time, and his intention to remain in her time frame. As a result, Chiaki must leave her time-frame and return the future. They part ways, with Chiaki saying he will wait for her in the future and Makoto saying she will run towards it
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.