The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006) English
-
I've actually grown to believe in time-travelers. Sometimes I wonder If I died somehow and someone came back and saved me lmao xDDD· 3 -
The aunt said that her life never returned... But she also said that the main character isn't like her at all, that she would look for him if he didn't come back- also... He said that HE would WAIT for HER.Fascinating this time travelling about the different time zone/generations(?!) in the SAME time then! like the Aunt is meeting her niece/the young girl who is she when she was in the past. But then, it would be the Aunt and the girl are the same person.
to save us before we die, and thus are still alive.
It is just that others ran short of time and could not see what they did,
but some knows for they believed, even though they time leapt not ;)
kiss ;)
..............
A great explanation given by a fan,
though i do not feel happy with the Aunt part,
i love the soothing explanation : meaning that the ending make COMPLETE sense ! ;)
You got to do some maths and be rational with that movie as much as being TOTAL open-minded lol!
................
re: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time... *spoilers* Explain please?
Just finished watching the Girl Who Leapt Through Time and loved it.
Like a lot of people, I immediately went through a ton of Google
searches to see how everyone explained the ending… and I really couldn't
find one that made sense! So I'm offering my own. Feel free to tear
it apart. But FIRST let's debunk a couple theories:
Theory #1: Makoto's aunt is actually the older version of Makoto. Ok, this is wrong on so many levels. 1) Foremost, the aunt is identified as Kazuko Yoshihara (ok, I confess, I'm relying on wikipedia here), and she is actually the main character of her own time-travel adventures in the original novel series. The entire movie is actually a spin-off from the original plot:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toki_o_Kakeru_Sh%C5%8Djo
2) From a character development point of view, her aunt specifically tells her, "But Makoto, you're different, you're nothing like me, are you?" 3) Makoto has never shown any interest or talent in art 4) Why would she need to go back in time to restore a painting, and why interact with "herself" pretending to be her own aunt? 5) In this universe, when you go back in time, you "become" your old self you don't interact with yourself. In all of Makoto's time jumps, she never "runs" into versions of herself or even sees herself (ala Back to the Future), she actually becomes herself, retaining all of the memories from her future (ala Butterfly Effect, Groundhog Day). If Makoto went back in time to restore the painting, she would find herself in the younger version of her body. 6) How would she "fool" Makoto's mother into thinking they were sisters? (Makoto's mother gives Makoto peaches to give to her aunt and is concerned that she is still unmarried - so either Makoto's mom is "in on the time-travel secret" or Makoto went back in time and lived an entire life pretending to be her mother's sister or Makoto's mother's memory was altered. None of these is plausible, so it makes much more sense that Makot's aunt is really, actually, just her aunt and nothing more)
Theory #2: Chiaki is a con artist who tricks adolescent women with his charms to take up painting restoration as their profession in hopes that his victims will preserve the painting until his timeline. WTF? This is a pretty twisted interpretation. My objections are 1) That's not what happened in the original series (see link above) 2) The aunt is already restoring the painting, why not get her to "preserve" it as well? Why bring in a worthless high school kid to do a job, when you already have a seasoned curator with access and all of the credentials to make sure the painting survives? And if he wants redundancy in the plan, why not manipulate another curator, or security guard, or someone with any actual talent? 3) Giving a girl the ability to travel through time is a piss-poor way of manipulating her into preserving a painting. Chiaki has the power of time travel, why can't he do it himself? And if not himself, why not FIRST manipulate Makoto into preserving the painting, and THEN give her the power of time travel to actually accomplish that goal? 4) If you were seducing a girl to get her to do something, and you wanted a redundancy plan "just in case", would you really go about trying to seduce HER NEICE to do the same job? 5) If all you cared about was a painting, why wouldn't you "stick" around until it was finished, or at least "drop in" from time to time to make sure the aunt hadn't given up? It doesn't make sense for Chiaki to manipulate the aunt when she was in high school, and then never contact her again, and just "hope" that the seeds he planted would result in her going to school for art, devoting her life into art restoration, and then actually devoting years to restoring the very specific painting that he wanted in the first place?
None of these make sense. I'm not saying that the movie is perfect, it definitely could have been done better to make more sense, but technically, I think all the plot-holes can be explained away. So here is my own interpretation. I'm definitely making up a lot of stuff, but I think it actually does make sense and fits in with the "spirit" of the movie…
Chiaki is just a kid from the future, growing up during a time of desolation and hopelessness. Somehow, he hears of a beautiful and magical painting that was created in the past during a similarly desolate and hopeless time, but the painting has been lost. So, he believes that if only he could see that painting for himself, it would bring him the hope and inspiration he needs to live his life in that desolate hopeless time. So he uses the time-walnut to "time-jump" and he probably makes a lot of mistakes along the way, until he finally finds the time period he is looking for, but he only has one last "jump". He does have an extra time-walnut, but he probably decides to use it only in an emergency. When he finally gets to the museum, the painting is, unfortunately, being restored. The jumps are difficult to judge (especially jumping to a time period outside of his lifetime and experience), and it took almost the entire walnut just to get to this time period, so he decides to just "live" in this time, until the painting is restored, rather than wasting his "jumps" trying to find the painting. But while he is living in this time, he makes friends with Kosuke and falls in love with Makoto. All the while, however, he is checking the museum every day to see whether the painting is finished (every time Makoto goes to the museum, you see this guy in the background looking at the exhibit… and he vaguely resembles Chiaki). He probably would have "frozen" time and snuck into the museum to see the painting half-restored, except he didn't know Makoto's aunt was restoring the painting on the premises, and just assumed it was being restored at some unknown place. Better to just wait for the painting, and plus, the "waiting" ended up being pretty fun, in of itself.
Ok, so then the whole movie takes place from here. In explaining the ending, I'll refer to these important moments in the timeline:
A) Makoto falls on the time-walnut in the science room and gets 90+ time jumps
B) Makoto uses her "#02" time jump (next to last time jump) to setup Kosuke with the shy girl by arranging the wrestling guys to push Kosuke into the shy girl. This results in Kosuke borrowing Makoto's bike and he sends Makoto a text.
C) Makoto races to the train tracks to prevent the impending disaster, and gets to the train crossing with one last jump, only to see the train pass harmlessly by without any incident.
D) Makoto walks away from the tracks and talks to Chiaki on the phone, when Chiaki figures out Makoto is time leaping and asks her.
E) Makoto freaks out and uses her "#01" time jump to negate the conversation.
F) Kosuke & girl crashes into the train, and Makoto does not have any more time jumps to prevent the accident.
As Makoto is running after Kosuke, she trips and rolls downhill screaming (you can see all the cuts and bruises that she sustains as she is screaming for Kosuke), when all of a sudden, she opens her eyes and there are NO cuts and bruises on her face, everything is frozen, and Chiaki explains that he used his last time jump to prevent the incident. At this point, Makoto believes that Chiaki rolled back time to right before point F). But really, Chiaki had used his time jump to go right after point B) above. Presumably, after Kosuke sent the text to Makoto, Chiaki steals Makoto's bike before Kosuke can get to it. Then Chiaki rides Makoto's bike to intercept Makoto at point C). At this point, Chiaki needs to come clean with Makoto, because 1) she needs to know 2) he loves her 3) Makoto will probably figure it out anyways. However, in doing so, he violates the "Time Law", whose punishment is ceasing to exist. While time is frozen, he lingers long enough to bare his true self to Makoto, before resuming time and fading into oblivion.
Now, because Chiaki had rolled back time to point B) and not point F), the conversation between Makoto and Chiaki never occurred (though curiously, she remembers it occurring) and Makoto never used her last time-jump. When she realizes this, she uses her last time jump, to "Super-Jump" all the way back to the beginning of the movie at point A). She confronts Chiaki with the truth and time-walnut. She tells Chiaki that she can't time-jump anymore (having used her last time-jump to get her here). HOWEVER, she gives Chiaki a used-up time-walnut! This means that Chiaki must actually still have 90+ time jumps. She never used any of them because she time-jumped back to a moment before she had used any time-jumps! The movie has already established that it is possible to "take back" your time jumps by jumping to a time period before you used your time jumps. You could argue that you need someone else to time-jump you, and you can't "time-jump yourself" to get your time-jumps back, but the movie doesn't definitively support one argument over the other since it only tracked Makoto's time jump at 90, 50, and 1. Anyways, even though Makoto "knows" about time-jumps, in this new reality, Chiaki is "safe" from the law, because he technically never "told" her about it yet. You can't fault a guy for doing something he hasn't done yet, right? Now at the end of the movie, I think that Chiaki then realizes that Makoto still has 90+ time jumps, so he's telling her that he's waiting for her to jump into his time.
Ok, I know my explanation isn't perfect, but I think it makes more sense then Theory #1 and Theory #2. Here's my lame rationalizing to several possible objections….
Chiaki waited months for the painting, why didn't he wait a couple more days to see it? Chiaki never meant to stay more than a day and realized how precarious it was to only have one more time-jump. Plus, under Makoto's assurances, the second he returned, he would see it. But most importantly, I think the painting was no longer his inspiration to live. That inspiration was now Makoto, herself.
Why didn't she just text back/call back, "Careful, Kosuke, my brake's broken." Maybe she did (off camera) and got no response, so was actually worried that Kosuke didn't receive the message (which he didn't).
Why was Chiaki in the science room after he just said he wasn't interested in helping Makoto with her chores? Chiaki was being a creepy stalker, and was secretly spying on Makoto.
If you know you're going to crash in the train on a bike without brakes, why not just jump off the bike? People don't think properly in the heat of the moment.
Chiaki had 1 last time jump and a full time-walnut. Why didn't he just "charge" himself earlier? Every time-jump is precious, so he was waiting to use his last time jump before recharging, because maybe he would "lose" that time jump.
OK, curious what people think. Don't hold back, haha. Begin criticism….
PS
Ok, finally, I'd like to ask my own question. Is the painting real and is it in the Tokyo Museum of Art? One of these days, I'm planning a trip to Studio Ghlibli in Tokyo, and if the painting is really in the Tokyo Museum of Art, I'd now like to see that too.
Theory #1: Makoto's aunt is actually the older version of Makoto. Ok, this is wrong on so many levels. 1) Foremost, the aunt is identified as Kazuko Yoshihara (ok, I confess, I'm relying on wikipedia here), and she is actually the main character of her own time-travel adventures in the original novel series. The entire movie is actually a spin-off from the original plot:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toki_o_Kakeru_Sh%C5%8Djo
2) From a character development point of view, her aunt specifically tells her, "But Makoto, you're different, you're nothing like me, are you?" 3) Makoto has never shown any interest or talent in art 4) Why would she need to go back in time to restore a painting, and why interact with "herself" pretending to be her own aunt? 5) In this universe, when you go back in time, you "become" your old self you don't interact with yourself. In all of Makoto's time jumps, she never "runs" into versions of herself or even sees herself (ala Back to the Future), she actually becomes herself, retaining all of the memories from her future (ala Butterfly Effect, Groundhog Day). If Makoto went back in time to restore the painting, she would find herself in the younger version of her body. 6) How would she "fool" Makoto's mother into thinking they were sisters? (Makoto's mother gives Makoto peaches to give to her aunt and is concerned that she is still unmarried - so either Makoto's mom is "in on the time-travel secret" or Makoto went back in time and lived an entire life pretending to be her mother's sister or Makoto's mother's memory was altered. None of these is plausible, so it makes much more sense that Makot's aunt is really, actually, just her aunt and nothing more)
Theory #2: Chiaki is a con artist who tricks adolescent women with his charms to take up painting restoration as their profession in hopes that his victims will preserve the painting until his timeline. WTF? This is a pretty twisted interpretation. My objections are 1) That's not what happened in the original series (see link above) 2) The aunt is already restoring the painting, why not get her to "preserve" it as well? Why bring in a worthless high school kid to do a job, when you already have a seasoned curator with access and all of the credentials to make sure the painting survives? And if he wants redundancy in the plan, why not manipulate another curator, or security guard, or someone with any actual talent? 3) Giving a girl the ability to travel through time is a piss-poor way of manipulating her into preserving a painting. Chiaki has the power of time travel, why can't he do it himself? And if not himself, why not FIRST manipulate Makoto into preserving the painting, and THEN give her the power of time travel to actually accomplish that goal? 4) If you were seducing a girl to get her to do something, and you wanted a redundancy plan "just in case", would you really go about trying to seduce HER NEICE to do the same job? 5) If all you cared about was a painting, why wouldn't you "stick" around until it was finished, or at least "drop in" from time to time to make sure the aunt hadn't given up? It doesn't make sense for Chiaki to manipulate the aunt when she was in high school, and then never contact her again, and just "hope" that the seeds he planted would result in her going to school for art, devoting her life into art restoration, and then actually devoting years to restoring the very specific painting that he wanted in the first place?
None of these make sense. I'm not saying that the movie is perfect, it definitely could have been done better to make more sense, but technically, I think all the plot-holes can be explained away. So here is my own interpretation. I'm definitely making up a lot of stuff, but I think it actually does make sense and fits in with the "spirit" of the movie…
Chiaki is just a kid from the future, growing up during a time of desolation and hopelessness. Somehow, he hears of a beautiful and magical painting that was created in the past during a similarly desolate and hopeless time, but the painting has been lost. So, he believes that if only he could see that painting for himself, it would bring him the hope and inspiration he needs to live his life in that desolate hopeless time. So he uses the time-walnut to "time-jump" and he probably makes a lot of mistakes along the way, until he finally finds the time period he is looking for, but he only has one last "jump". He does have an extra time-walnut, but he probably decides to use it only in an emergency. When he finally gets to the museum, the painting is, unfortunately, being restored. The jumps are difficult to judge (especially jumping to a time period outside of his lifetime and experience), and it took almost the entire walnut just to get to this time period, so he decides to just "live" in this time, until the painting is restored, rather than wasting his "jumps" trying to find the painting. But while he is living in this time, he makes friends with Kosuke and falls in love with Makoto. All the while, however, he is checking the museum every day to see whether the painting is finished (every time Makoto goes to the museum, you see this guy in the background looking at the exhibit… and he vaguely resembles Chiaki). He probably would have "frozen" time and snuck into the museum to see the painting half-restored, except he didn't know Makoto's aunt was restoring the painting on the premises, and just assumed it was being restored at some unknown place. Better to just wait for the painting, and plus, the "waiting" ended up being pretty fun, in of itself.
Ok, so then the whole movie takes place from here. In explaining the ending, I'll refer to these important moments in the timeline:
A) Makoto falls on the time-walnut in the science room and gets 90+ time jumps
B) Makoto uses her "#02" time jump (next to last time jump) to setup Kosuke with the shy girl by arranging the wrestling guys to push Kosuke into the shy girl. This results in Kosuke borrowing Makoto's bike and he sends Makoto a text.
C) Makoto races to the train tracks to prevent the impending disaster, and gets to the train crossing with one last jump, only to see the train pass harmlessly by without any incident.
D) Makoto walks away from the tracks and talks to Chiaki on the phone, when Chiaki figures out Makoto is time leaping and asks her.
E) Makoto freaks out and uses her "#01" time jump to negate the conversation.
F) Kosuke & girl crashes into the train, and Makoto does not have any more time jumps to prevent the accident.
As Makoto is running after Kosuke, she trips and rolls downhill screaming (you can see all the cuts and bruises that she sustains as she is screaming for Kosuke), when all of a sudden, she opens her eyes and there are NO cuts and bruises on her face, everything is frozen, and Chiaki explains that he used his last time jump to prevent the incident. At this point, Makoto believes that Chiaki rolled back time to right before point F). But really, Chiaki had used his time jump to go right after point B) above. Presumably, after Kosuke sent the text to Makoto, Chiaki steals Makoto's bike before Kosuke can get to it. Then Chiaki rides Makoto's bike to intercept Makoto at point C). At this point, Chiaki needs to come clean with Makoto, because 1) she needs to know 2) he loves her 3) Makoto will probably figure it out anyways. However, in doing so, he violates the "Time Law", whose punishment is ceasing to exist. While time is frozen, he lingers long enough to bare his true self to Makoto, before resuming time and fading into oblivion.
Now, because Chiaki had rolled back time to point B) and not point F), the conversation between Makoto and Chiaki never occurred (though curiously, she remembers it occurring) and Makoto never used her last time-jump. When she realizes this, she uses her last time jump, to "Super-Jump" all the way back to the beginning of the movie at point A). She confronts Chiaki with the truth and time-walnut. She tells Chiaki that she can't time-jump anymore (having used her last time-jump to get her here). HOWEVER, she gives Chiaki a used-up time-walnut! This means that Chiaki must actually still have 90+ time jumps. She never used any of them because she time-jumped back to a moment before she had used any time-jumps! The movie has already established that it is possible to "take back" your time jumps by jumping to a time period before you used your time jumps. You could argue that you need someone else to time-jump you, and you can't "time-jump yourself" to get your time-jumps back, but the movie doesn't definitively support one argument over the other since it only tracked Makoto's time jump at 90, 50, and 1. Anyways, even though Makoto "knows" about time-jumps, in this new reality, Chiaki is "safe" from the law, because he technically never "told" her about it yet. You can't fault a guy for doing something he hasn't done yet, right? Now at the end of the movie, I think that Chiaki then realizes that Makoto still has 90+ time jumps, so he's telling her that he's waiting for her to jump into his time.
Ok, I know my explanation isn't perfect, but I think it makes more sense then Theory #1 and Theory #2. Here's my lame rationalizing to several possible objections….
Chiaki waited months for the painting, why didn't he wait a couple more days to see it? Chiaki never meant to stay more than a day and realized how precarious it was to only have one more time-jump. Plus, under Makoto's assurances, the second he returned, he would see it. But most importantly, I think the painting was no longer his inspiration to live. That inspiration was now Makoto, herself.
Why didn't she just text back/call back, "Careful, Kosuke, my brake's broken." Maybe she did (off camera) and got no response, so was actually worried that Kosuke didn't receive the message (which he didn't).
Why was Chiaki in the science room after he just said he wasn't interested in helping Makoto with her chores? Chiaki was being a creepy stalker, and was secretly spying on Makoto.
If you know you're going to crash in the train on a bike without brakes, why not just jump off the bike? People don't think properly in the heat of the moment.
Chiaki had 1 last time jump and a full time-walnut. Why didn't he just "charge" himself earlier? Every time-jump is precious, so he was waiting to use his last time jump before recharging, because maybe he would "lose" that time jump.
OK, curious what people think. Don't hold back, haha. Begin criticism….
PS
Ok, finally, I'd like to ask my own question. Is the painting real and is it in the Tokyo Museum of Art? One of these days, I'm planning a trip to Studio Ghlibli in Tokyo, and if the painting is really in the Tokyo Museum of Art, I'd now like to see that too.
source : http://www.neoseeker.com/forums/42/t1611144-girl-who-leapt-through-time-spoilers-explain-please/
