Time Traveller (2010) User Reviews

Time Traveller: The girl who leapt through time

[helmutty · 7/10 · 20 December 2010]

It is a pretty solid mash of romance and drama with sci-fi. I usually fall asleep in romance movie or find those movies a bit hard to watch with all the lovely-dovely stuff like the Twilight movies. But in this case, I was entertained because this movie actually moves on a brisk pace and kept me in suspense.

The story: Riisa Naka acts as a goofy but cute girl, Akari whose mother had an accident. She is being told to travel to the year 1972 to convey a message to someone her mother likes. Well, the travelling antidote helps her to travel through time. This movie is not supposed to be realistic so suspend your belief because later when the slight twist is revealed as the mystery person whom Akari's mother wants her to tell him a message finally appears, it will become a little far-fetched. Anyway, during the time finding the mystery guy, Akari slowly falls in love with a director, Ryota who helps her and lets her stay in his house. The story is predictable, but the movie moves in such a brisk pace with suspense that I would not mind but to go along with Akari's adventure. Riisa Naka does a pretty good job in acting like goofy but cute girl with some priceless moments. And she has a likable face too. I can't wait to see her in Zebra man 2.

Overall: It is a pretty entertaining Japanese movie. No idea where all the negative critic reviews in Singapore come from but this movie may entertain if you are willing to suspend belief and go along with the adventure. It may be bashed up by blockbusters in Christmas but it should be worth a watch on DVD.

Surprisingly affecting

[cherold · 7/10 · 10 September 2013]

This sequel to the terrible 1983 movie The Little Girl Who Conquered Time has many of the flaws of its predecessor. They both look like inexpensive TV movies (although TV movies look better than they did in 1983), and they both have saccharine scores. But while the 1983 movie moved at a crawl and was headache-inducing in its stupidity, this movie has a lively pace and more interesting characters,and is considerably less absurd.

Unlike the 1983 movie or the excellent 2006 animated film that was also a sequel to the original story, Time Traveller does not involve a teenager hopping around through time. Instead, it involves a teenager making one hop, to 1974. The movie has some familiar 70s fashions, but a lot of the 70s details went over my head, I suspect, because I have no idea what Japan looked like back then.

What makes the movie stand out in spite of its poor production values is how the characters' emotional lives were brought out so sharply and affectingly. The movie has likable characters and they have relatable problems.

By most of my criteria for film making, Time Traveller is at best mediocre. But it's one of those B movies that somehow work, creating a better experience than should have been possible. I'm not saying it's a must see, but it is a very likable little film.

Pretty good.

[tannerlu · 7/10 · 14 August 2014]

I thought the pacing of this movie was a bit slow, but it was still pretty entertaining. It was almost like 3 movies mashed into one, being that there are three main focuses. The young woman who stars as the main character desires to find a mysterious man from her mother's past, find her father, and pursue a romantic interest simultaneously. The thing is, it manages to focus on all of these plot lines succinctly and fully rounds out the characters. The only the thing I would note is the relatively low production quality and often cheesy special effects. I would say it's more of a great work of storytelling rather than a great work of cinematography.

Nice entertainment for a rainy afternoon. Keep it away from the geek nephew who will spoil your fun with his comments

[JvH48 · 6/10 · 24 April 2011]

I saw this film as part of the "Imagine" film festival 2011 in Amsterdam. It was announced as a (start quote) moving live-action comedy about time travel and impossible loves (end quote). All of those qualifications being true, the overwhelming number of paradoxes, inconsistencies and impossibilities come in the way of fully enjoying the story. Maybe I was prejudiced, having seen the much better film "The Door" (Anno Saul, 2009) that same afternoon, also having time travel as its main ingredient.

The human drama elements compensate a lot of these problems. Those will carry the story for the full two hours that this film takes of your time. It is precisely where the words "moving" and "loves" in the announcement stand for. It will entertain a broad audience.

The net result was that I never got bored. But I had mixed feelings nevertheless, while imagining how a script like this could be turned into something more acceptable in the technical sense. I have no solution handy, however, and maybe we should leave this as an exercise for the reader.

When leaving the theater, I gave a "satisfactory" score for the public prize competition. The SF lover in me was annoyed by the many impossibilities in the story, but the overall result was nevertheless entertaining with several hilarious as well as some moving moments. I'm sure it will attract the average viewer. You can take your complete family with you to enjoy this film, but you should leave your geek nephew at home since he will spoil the afternoon while pointing out at least 30 time travel paradoxes.

Above Average Chick Flick.

[net_orders · 7/10 · 16 November 2016]

Time Traveller / The Time Traveller: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. Viewed on Streaming. Subtitles = eight (8) stars; cinematography = seven (7) stars; CGI/effects = six (6) stars. Director Masaaki Taniguchi's tale is crafted to appeal to a much broader audience than what the usual teenage chick flick targets. Taniguchi cleverly blends romance, science fiction, comedy, heart-rendering emotional drama, and suspense. (Mercifully, there are no scenes of Japanese cuteness!) One of the Director's objectives is to illustrate just how messy time travel can be (except for ants?) due to the creation of alternative time lines, and, especially, when it involves teenagers from different times who happen to meet up and share a romantic adventure. Leading actress Riisa Naka's performance is a Tour De Force of emotional highs and lows. Supporting cast members are also very good with the possible exception of the actor who stiffly plays a memory-wiping, bland character from five hundred years in the future (what ever romantic appeal he might have had as a real/virtual teenager in the 1970s seems to have been lost in time!). Cinematography (semi-wide screen, color) is good but could benefit from a deep-focus process where both background and foreground can be clearly seen simultaneously (the back and forth shift in the camera's focus during close-ups can be distracting and lessen the impact of dialog exchanges). Within and between scene lighting is good. Music is a bit on the heavy side for such a minor picture (it would seem to be more suitable for a larger-scale production?). CGI/effects are modest, but not cheesy. Subtitles strike an excellent balance between literal and literary translations. They are just right in length and screen duration. However, song lyrics are not translated. Recommended. WILLIAM FLANIGAN, PhD.

Taniguchi's "Tokikake" film is yet another great adaptation to a classic love story...

[jmaruyama · 8/10 · 6 November 2010]

Taniguchi Masaaki's "Toki O Kakeru Shojo" (AKA Time Traveler) is an entertaining and enjoyable time-spanning romance that while doesn't particularly differ that greatly from its predecessors in its approach, still manages to be an engaging and not-at-all too redundant film.

"Toki O Kakeru Shojo" (or Tokikake) is probably the most adapted modern short story in Japanese Literature. As of date, there have been eight different versions of the Tsutsui Yasutaka story in both TV and movies -- the NHK drama "Time Traveler ('72) with Shimada Junko; the '83 movie with Harada Tomoyo; the Fuji TV Drama special ('84) with Minamino Yoko; the Fuji TV Drama special ('94) with Uchida Yuki; the '97 movie with Nakamoto Nana; the TBS TV special ('02) with Abe Natsumi, Hosoda Mamoru's fan-favorite anime movie ('06) and most recently Yatate Hajime's anime TV series ('09).

With this many variations, remakes and reiterations of the story, you'd think how much more different could this movie be especially after Hosoda made what seemed like the definitive version. Yet "Time Traveler" successfully distinguishes itself by introducing some clever time-travel twists and using references from the other versions in its story.

Adorably cute Naka Riisa (who voiced Konno Makoto in the "Toki O Kakeru Shojou/The Girl Who Leapt Through Time" anime) portrays Yoshiyama Akari, a bubbly Japanese high school student who has just passed her exams to go to college. Her mother is Kazuko (80s J-Dorama idol Yasuda Narumi) who is a chemist and pharmaceutical researcher who is obsessed with the year 1972(Showa Year 47) and has been working on a time-traveling elixir made from rare Lavender extracts.

When local liquor vendor Asagura Gorou (Tatsumura Masanobu) shows Kazuko an old photo of her with another classmate, a flood of memories comes back to her and in a moment of distraction, she is involved in a traffic accident and is left in a coma. During a brief gain of consciousness, she tells Akari to use her test elixir to go the specific date (4/6/1972), the year she was in Junior High and find Fukamachi Kazuo(Kanji Ishimaru), the classmate in the photo and relate a message to him.

Taking one of the Lavender elixirs, Akari focuses on the date that her mother gave her however, when Akari wakes up she finds herself instead in 2/6/1974 (she had mixed up the date). Frantic, she tries to find the whereabouts of both her mother (now a high student in Yokohama and portrayed by Ishibashi Anna) and get more information from her. With the help of 70s sci-fi movie "Otaku" Fuzoroki Ryota (J-Dorama Rookies' Nakao Akiyoshi) and his hippie cameraman "Gotetsu" AKA Hasegawa Masamichi (Aoki Munetaka), who may or may not be one of Kazuko's high school lovers, Akari tries to contact Fukamachi, who we learn to be a fellow time traveler from the year 2060 who had gotten stuck in the year 1972.

Yet things get complicated when Akari and Ryota begin to fall in love and Akria learns that Ryota is destined to die in a bus accident in the same year.

The strength of the film definitely falls with versatile Naka Riisa, who has made quite a splash since her "Tokikake" Seiyuu/voice work days having starred in a number of TV J-Doramas and films including Tominaga Masanori's "Pandora's Box" and portraying the sexy Lady Gaga-type villain "Zebra Queen" in Miike Takashi's "Zebraman 2: Attack on Zebra City". Naka is very charming on screen and her Akari is such a delightfully sweet and fun character.

Nakao Akiyoshi is also no stranger to remakes having starred in the 2006 TV series adaptation of the 1981 Kadokawa film "Sailor Fuku and Kikanjyu" and here he has a much more substantive role as the likable character of Ryota, an amateur filmmaker whose dream project is a love story set in 2010 and features some of the items that Akari showed him (like a cellphone). There is definitely romantic chemistry between his Ryota and Naka's Akari characters and I liked how director Taniguchi made it very poignant and tender. I like how their romance was mirrored by the time-spanning love between Kazuko and her enigmatic lover Fukamachi.

What I most liked about Taniguchi and screenwriter Kanno Tomoe's adaptation is that they used a lot of references to the other "Tokikake" films (more so than any other version) especially with regards to the titular 1983 Kadokawa version with Harada Tomoyo. We finally get an updated version of that film's title song compliments of hit J-Pop group Ikimonogakari which is just as good (and perhaps even better) than Harada's original. We also get a lot of references to the other film adaptations such as having Akari be a Japanese Archery student (similar to the 1983 version) and the use of the 1972 year reference (which was the year that the first "Tokiokake" film debuted which coincidentally was also titled "Time Traveler"). Even Yasuda Narumi's character Kazuko is alluded to as being possibly the same character as the one Nakamoto Nana portrayed in the 1997 version.

This is Taniguchi's first feature film debut after helping as an assistant director on such films such as "GTO" and "Pachigi! Love & Peace" and he does a great job of creating a surprisingly moving, romantic film. His recreation of Tokyo in the year 1974 is pretty impressive and he definitely captures the look, fashion and atmosphere of that year. While the time-traveling sequence in the beginning is a bit goofy (similar to the 1983 film) it still was a nice bit of SFX (almost "Alice In Wonderland" like).

Although it would have been great to have original "Tokikake" heroine Harada Tomoyo make a cameo appearance in this version, I was quite pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed the film. Hopefully this will be the last of the "Tokikake" films as I'm not sure how much more variance you can put to the story.

Sequel to the '83 version

[ebiros2 · 5/10 · 12 May 2011]

This is the fourth version of Toki o kakeru shojo (Girl who leaped through time) that was made for the big screen, and is truest to being the continuous story to the movie by the same title made in 1983 starring Tomoyo Harada as Kazuko Yoshiyama.

Akari Yoshiyama (Riisa Naka) is the daughter of Kazuko Yoshiyama (Narumi Yasuda). Kazuko is the original girl who've leaped through time 38 years ago in 1972. Although Kazuko's memory was erased about the incident, she still subliminally remembers about Kazuo Fukamachi (Kanji Ishimatsu). One day Kazuko falls victim to an automobile accident, and becomes comatose. Akari decides to leap back to the 1970s to find Fukamachi to help her mother.

Although the story follows the original movie well, the production is rather coarse and details and the visuals of each scenes are crude, lowering the visual experience of the entire movie. Maybe it's because this is the debut feature length movie for director Masaaki Taniguchi. Compared to the original that was directed by the great Nobuhiko Oobayashi, the production falls short in almost all details. I wish the casting was better as well ( except for Riisa Naka). The actors just don't catch the mood of the movie - it's supposed to be a bitter sweet romantic movie, but I just couldn't get any romantic feelings from the actors.

I give this version 4.5/10, and hope that someone will remake this version with quality that matches the original 1983 version.

A Nutshell Review: Time Traveller

[DICK STEEL · 10/10 · 28 March 2010]

I had enjoyed The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, the 2006 animated version by filmmaker Mamoru Hosada, and no, this is not the live action version of the same story. Instead, this film just continues to expand upon the universe of TGWLTT, making it the third titular character who had done just that. The original novel by Yasutaka Tsutsui had its protagonist Kasuko Yoshiyama going back through time accidentally and the discovery of romance with a time traveller. That version of the story has already been made into a number of films and drama series. Then comes Hosada's animated film version, which has a story centered around Kasuko's niece Makota Konno, who had for the most parts, used her limited powers for very trivial, hilarious reasons.

For this year's life action film Time Traveller, with the subtitle The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, the protagonist is Kasuko's own daughter Akari (starring the same actress Riisa Naka who had voiced Makota Konno in the recent animated film), who gets sent on a mission by her mom, now Professor Kasuko (Narumi Yasuda), who had perfected a time travelling liquid to fulfil one last promise, but had met with an accident and fallen into a coma. Akari's mission is to go back to the year 1972 and to look for a certain Kazuo Fukamachi (Kanji Ishimaru), to deliver a message that only he would understand. But in true ditzy fashion, Akari got the year mixed up and arrives in 1974, two years late, and needing the help of filmmaker Ryota (Akiyoshi Nakao) whom she had literally fallen onto, for help.

Much of the story then centres on the mystery of how Kazuo doesn't seem to register on the radar of the community and neither on various official records, and worse of all, not even mom Kasuko, a teenager then (played by Anna Ishibashi), can recollect who this person is. Of course for audience in the know of the first story/film/manga, then this will come to no surprise, and part of the fun is to see how Akari can figure this out, and also her predicament of being in the wrong year to begin with, together with comical moments given that she has her handbag of modern day thingamajigs, and at times being particularly cloy in character.

Like in true Back to the Future style, the deliberate non-revelation of Akari's father before she jumps through time also provides some narrative tension, as the sweet 18 years old girl inevitably gets attracted to Ryota and perhaps his friend the cameraman Gotetsu (Munetaka Aoki) as well, with feelings suggested to be probably mutual, and hence one heck of a headache if you think about existentialism issues or the paradox of time with any time travel film. It can be a cruel process, and the main narrative arc here that deals with Akari's budding romance, is nothing short of an emotional sledgehammer that highlights the cruelty that is from time travelling, and it's not just plain never seeing the person again at their current age, but rather not being allowed to significantly influence historical events that makes it an extremely bittersweet film by the time the end credits come along. The note is sombre that live carries on, regardless of the many pitfalls that we experience and consider wanting to give up.

Unlike the anime, there's only one major leap here and the special effects are quite surprisingly kitsch, and at times raw even. The trick here for time travel is to down a vial of liquid, then wish hard. I suppose the magic with animation is that one can design just about almost anything, but with a film that has to utilize special effects, then there would be some constraints that will naturally be imposed, and the expectations that comes along with the using of SFX. Otherwise, its production values in creating the 70s era is excellent, despite knowing some shots were made relatively tight to avoid backgrounds giving the non-aligned time elements away.

Ultimately, I believe this to be a filmmaker's story, since it had the characters involve themselves with film-making, and dealt with how film itself can be an important imprint to lost memories, where images captured on film, if preserved properly, can probably last for posterity. It captures sight and sound forgotten, and helps jog memories of a time bygone, transmitting emotions even through the sheer power of imagery, even though it may be incomprehensible but to some. It has the same spirit as Be Kind Rewind, but done in a more powerful and emotional manner. For this reaffirmation, Time Traveller scores big time, and I wonder if we will have more stories from this TGWLTT universe.

It was nice, but...

[paul_haakonsen · 5/10 · 24 February 2012]

Owning the book and having heard nothing but good things about this 2010 version, I just had to sink my fangs into the movie, so I bought it from Amazon.

And now having seen it, I am somewhat dumbfounded. The movie is long, very, very long and it takes forever to get almost nowhere, and that was a drag. It was a battle to sit through this movie, and I think I dozed off once actually. That being said, then don't get me wrong, the movie is not bad, far from it. The story told in "Time Traveller: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time" was really good, captivating and interesting. The story really swept me up and I got immersed into it right away, it was just a shame that the movie took so long to get almost nowhere.

The cast in "Time Traveller: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time" were good enough, people did good jobs with their given roles, though this is far from the best performances I have seen in Japanese movies.

I sincerely doubt that I will be putting this DVD on a second time, because it was too much of a struggle to get through.

Great movie!! Almost perfect.

[vsrinidhi-rao · 8/10 · 6 April 2013]

Watched this movie on Netflix streaming a couple of weeks back! fantastic movie!!

The plot is fairly straight-forward - scientist mother invents a liquid that enables time-travel. She has an accident and is in near coma. but she asks the daughter for a favor and the daughter has to go back in time to fix it. Except that the daughter goes back in time to the wrong year.

How the daughter still manages to fix things for her mom is the rest of the story.

I can't really find fault with anything in the movie - except for maybe the overall concept of time travel. It was shot really well and when I connected the dots, it was like "whoa" - that's awesome!

Slow!

[turbodieseloaner · 3/10 · 28 January 2013]

I know one of the other reviews commented that it moved at a brisk pace but I have to disagree; there are just too many scenes that are dragged out. It's a two hour movie that could have been cut by a half an hour. Plot was nothing to write home about; nothing really happens that wouldn't have happened in a standard romance. There definitely wasn't any mind boggling concepts of time travel. Many missed opportunities that the time travel concept lends itself to. I did like the female lead, she definitely carried the movie; the male lead character was very shy, very common in real life but rather boring in a movie. This movie reminds me of a Saturday afternoon special movie.

If you pass on this movie your life would be no worse off.

Charming movie

[tenshi_ippikiookami · 9/10 · 29 October 2016]

The live action version of "Toki wo kakeru shoujo" is lots of fun, and it can stand on its own, even if you haven't watched the anime version.

The story is simple enough. Akari's mother is doing some secret research. When she has an accident, she tells Akari that it is a time traveling formula, and asks her to go back in time and find a boy she knew from high school. Akari goes to her mother's workplace and drinks the formula, even if she doesn't really believe it will work. But then she finds herself in the past. But things are not as they should be...

"Toki wo kakeru shoujo" is a charming movie, that has a not overly complicated plot, but very interesting characters, with whom it is easy to fall in love with and care for. The acting is quite good, and brings the story close to the viewer. You will care for Akari and the people she meets in her time traveling adventures. It is actually difficult to make a story fascinating, but everyone involved in this movie makes it feel easy. It is a little bit slow in some moments, specially close to the end, but that is not much of a problem when you don't want to see those characters leave you.

Totally worth watching.

Acting Is Fine, But the Plot Is Slow and Unconvincing

[richievee · 4/10 · 20 June 2015]

This came as a disappointment to me. I like time-travel films, as a rule, but TIME TRAVELLER was too kitschy for me to suspend disbelief. The CGI is amateurish, almost as bad as the Ed Woodish movie-within-a-movie depicted in the story line. Riisa Naka is wonderful as the 18-year-old leading character, an adorably buoyant teenager who is also able to register true anguish when the situation demands. Worst of all, for me, was one scene that seemed to be mistakenly edited in from another film entirely. It involves Akira's first meeting of hippie cameraman Hasegawa"Gotetsu" Masamichi (Aoki Munetaka). All of a sudden, this family-friendly movie is discussing a hard-on/boner and using the word sh!t, right in front of sweet Akira. What in the world was the director thinking here? That killed it for me, and I lost all respect for TIME TRAVELLER's endearing sense of innocence. The movie is not disastrous, but neither would I recommend investing more than two slow hours of your lifetime to it.

Very Good

[yiuleungf · 9/10 · 30 May 2021]

I like this live action version much more than the anime version. The story is much better and has a strong nostalgic feeling to it. It is also very touching. The music are very good too.

Not as good as it should have been

[Snootz · 5/10 · 29 May 2019]

When you start on the foundation of a classic, well-known anime and then fail, that's a double-disappoinment for viewers.

This movie is okay, but underwhelming, with an especially lackluster and anti-climactic ending. Acting by the main character is excellent, but the directing somewhat cliche all the way through. This takes the form of yet another (yawn) time travel movie, without anything exceptional to make it stand out. Thus the 5-star "mediocre" rating.

An unexpected surprise

[mchgothmog · 10/10 · 13 October 2021]

I went into this movie with mixed expectations but came out loving it I never saw the anime This was based on but I love this live action adaptation the acting and storyline are great This is not an action movie but an emotional and touching love story with time travel and a little comedy thrown in The ending was bittersweet but I still liked it I'm shocked at the low and mixed reviews on here because this movie deserves a much higher rating

Overall it was definitely worth the watch

Highly recommended.

I ended up really liking this movie

[jen-122-636160 · 8/10 · 2 October 2014]

I watched this mostly to not watch a Hindi movie. I've become obsessed with Hindi movies and I really thought I needed to go watch some other cinema too.

I ended up really liking it.

It started out poorly. I didn't really like the character and the point of it and plot seemed really thin. But I stuck with it and was rewarded with a very satisfying movie.

The movie is well acted. The plot twists - unseen, but then obvious.

It is an odd movie, but it works. It wasn't what I expected, but that's OK. I ended up enjoying it anyway. And it made a nice break from Bollywood and helped to remind me that other countries are also making movies worth watching.

Screenplay by Tomoe Kanno, based on the novel by Yasutaka Tsutsui

[Bernie4444 · 10/10 · 28 April 2024]

I had seen a preview of the movie and had it on the wish list. I finally had some time and decided to watch the movie.

At first, I thought I made a mistake as it started with Japanese racing much faster than the sparse English subtitles. There was background sound that did not match the pictorial scenes. For the first ten minutes or so I was sure I made a mistake. Then the movie and the acting and the story started to show through. I completely forgot that I was reading subtitles. I started kibitzing. Many stories are very transparent and you can anticipate the next step. This one was fresh at every turn.

A woman (Narumi Yasuda) who invents a time travel liquid finds herself in a coma from an accident. She gains consciousness just long enough to send her teenage daughter Akari Yoshiyama (Riisa Naka) on a mission from 2010 to 1972 to hold a chemistry student Masamichi Hasegawa (Munetaka Aoki) to his promise. Through some mishaps and a series of coincidences, we get a much more intricate story than just time traveling. The well-done ending even though surprising could not be any other way.