Spoiler-free Section

I had the opportunity to watch The Girl Who Stole Time (時間之子) when I took an international flight from Sydney to Taipei, and was genuinely surprised by how much I liked it and how emotionally moving it was.

I walked in without knowing anything about the movie, other than that it reminded me of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time given how similar their English names are.

I had a look afterwards and could not find much mentions about this movie in western social media, other than this reddit post from mid-late 2025.

I would like to note that sections below will contain some spoilers. For those who want the best experience, I would highly recommend those to go watch the movie first before reading further. However, as of early 2026, it is not exactly straightforward to find a way to stream this. Consequently, apologies for the lack of visuals and screenshots in the upcoming sections.

Visuals

Since I was not able to get my hands on a copy of the movie, I have included a copy of the movie trailer below. Generally, the movie has great visuals which reminded me of the Pixar movies which I have seen in the past.

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Sound

There are some rather famous Chinese artists who took part in the songs used, the ones which left an impression on me were:

• (I only hope) 我只願 insert song by 劉宇寧
• (Dreamt of you) 夢見你 main theme song by 周深

Story and Sequencing

I won't go into details for all the plot points, but overall the story revolves around Seventeen (十七) and Qian Xiao (千曉) as they step through a seemingly endless time loop. At the "start" of the time loop sequence, Qian Xiao gains the ability to manipulate time, but at the same time stops her from ageing.

• Through an incident, Qian Xiao forgets about her relationship with Seventeen and her ability of time manipulation.
• In order to protect Qian Xiao, Seventeen (the elderly version of him who has already aged and lived through all the adventures with Qian Xiao) tells her that he found her recently on the island they are living at, and he is her adoptive parent.
• With her amnesia, Qian Xiao begins to crave more adventure and leaves the island to civilisation and meets Seventeen (the young version of him).

When Qian Xiao finds out about the time loop, she attempts to change the past. Based on the epilogue, it seems like Qian Xiao was able to reverse time and save the characters who passed away, at the cost of everyone losing memories of what happened.

The plot points very clearly reminded me of Inception, as well as the recent anime movie Cosmic Princess Kaguya, which all have elements centred around the passage of time and the characters wanting to spend more time with their loved ones.

The sequencing can sometimes feel like it is all over the place, especially with all the fancy time manipulation time-lapses. But despite this, I found the ending segments rather emotionally touching, as they grapple with their options.

Conclusion

We all meet and part within time. Sometimes, we are faced with abrupt goodbyes—no warning, no return.

This was a pleasantly good watch, especially given that there hasn’t been that many Chinese animated movies. I look forward to rewatching this when it is more readily available in the west.