The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

Newly remastered in 4K, the 2006 breakthrough film of Mamoru Hosoda (Belle, Mirai) wasn't quite the anime titan's first feature credit as a director – franchise films for Digimon and One Piece precede it. And it also isn't the first film to have some variation on the catchy title The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.

Hosoda’s movie is in fact a fully standalone sequel to Yasutaka Tsutsui’s source novel, which has been adapted before and since 2006, but most notably in 1983 by one of Japan's greatest filmmakers, Nobuhiko Obayashi (House, Labyrinth of Cinema), whose expressionistic films often blurred the lines between live-action and animation in thrilling ways. A tough act to follow, then, but think of Obayashi and Hosoda's films as like Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and its excellent first remake in 1978: Hosoda reaps rewards by doing very different, inspired things with the malleable premise.

If that Body Snatchers comparison makes either Girl Who Leapt film sound like sci-fi tinged with horror, that's certainly not the case. But Hosoda's thoroughly charming, beautifully bittersweet coming-of-age time-travel tale does masterfully tap into fears that plague most of us well beyond the age of its teenage protagonist, Makoto, who discovers she can journey back to her recent past at will after a near-death experience. Among those fears: how our attempts to steer other people's lives, even with good intentions, can have devastating consequences. And if that sounds a little too heavy, rest assured that Makoto also uses her abilities to engineer ten-hour karaoke sessions.