We Need Time ... For Some Things to Happen!

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2008)

Rating ... A- (88)

The second funniest factual serve I've encountered on Wikipedia is called the euphemism treadmill. Essentially the manner by which euphemisms replace supposedly pejorative terms of original definition before being declared pejorative themselves and receiving the boot for new, less offensive euphemisms, the best example is probably that given, where folks pointlessly reclassified the nomenclature of permanent injury from "lame" to "crippled" to "handicapped" and so forth, up through "differently abled" and the unlisted "handicapable," which doesn't sound like the brand name of your extra-helpful tool kit.

As misfortune would have it, the American public's response to animation is undergoing a similar process of changing connotation. Walt's domain materially christened the filmmaking style with tales steeped in wonderment and unconventionality (e.g. Pinocchio, Fantasia) but since then the domestic role of animation has been gradually reinterpreted from its more mystical roots. Wikipedia might plot the trajectory as so:

Magical => Fanciful => Unrealistic => Immature => Cartoonish

No offense to cartoons, the best of which prove to be incisive commentary on human behavior, but the proclivity of today's post-Shrek fare to cater to the brood de soccer mom crowd with cartoonish exaggeration, easy humor, and underdeveloped pathos marks an all-time low in American animation. There exist some superlatives - non-Pixar even - but only as statistical outliers. Of course, you can hardly blame the purveyors of modern American animation for completely nailing the hierarchy of tastes and preferences within their geographical market, even if it does create one heck of a feedback loop between mediocre filmmaking and undemanding consumers. After all, animation in the states has never had the same privilege as Japan where demand for manga adaptations has cultivated the medium into an industry leader, which is a shame because other than the Lasseter/Disney-backed, hugely deserving Hayao Miyazaki Japanese animation has never achieved any degree of critical or box-office renown.

Thus arises a sort of cross-cultural irony considering this needle-in-a-haystack release in America was actually received as more of a chick-flick in Japan. Far as I can tell the meaning isn't necessarily analogous to our definition; it could just be code that you won't find any giant robots or samurai during the film. In fact, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is more indebted to the style of Miyazaki, beginning with the point-of-view of the YFP (young female protagonist) about the town and/or daily living ... who in this case discovers the amazing ability to traverse backwards through her own chronology when she undertakes foolhardy physical jumps in the present - needless to say this feat comes in pretty handy navigating high school's various social conundrums. As you've probably surmised this retracing of time (Makato can't leap forward - it's always a way to revise past events) is a pretty intoxicating maneuver, but director Mamoru Hosoda has his sights set higher than wrist-slapping agents of power. When The Girl Who Leapt Through Time examines life at public school, Makato's ability is used to demonstrate social complexity and her desire to engineer situations to her perception of harmony. When it plays out like a love story, her leap back in time to restore her partner's squandered leap (which he used to rectify one of her many screw-ups) isn't treated like a dramatic device or contrivance but rather a wonderful evocation of the cycle of trangression and restitution within relationships. And when the film finally has its heroine on the brain we're rewarded with sharp moments of characterization such as the instances when she confides with her aunt, whose character is ostensibly a future dimension of the protagonist where passion has worn away into devotion, her profession as an art restorer indicative of the acknowledgement that some feelings are momentary as well as a method of encapsulating them into something permanent. Disappointingly, the ending is a direct nod/steal from Miyazaki's Porco Rosso, though you certainly can't fault the pedigree of the borrowed goods or the earnestness of their implementation. Still, based on our cotton candy rom-com standards and the film's deflating insights on romance and maturity, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is probably the world's most sadistic chick-flick - and that's no euphemism.