It has taken a shamefully long time for me to check out the filmography of Mamoru Hosoda. I watched and loved Wolf Children well before I even started this blog, and I only fell deeper in love with it upon a more recent re-watch, but I’ve been dragging my heels on checking out the rest of the director’s work. Well, starting today, it’s time to fix that. I’m going to tear through Hosoda’s critically acclaimed five films (including Wolf Children again, because I can never watch that movie enough times) and finally give this legendary anime director the attention he deserves. Time, after all, waits for no one, and I only do us all a disservice by putting it off any longer. And with that perfect segway, let’s jump right into talking about The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Hosoda’s first film that wasn’t a franchise spinoff. Because if this movie’s anything to go by, I was even dumber than I thought about putting this off for so long. Folks, this is gonna be great.

Our story centers around Makoto Konno, a tomboyish high school girl living a relatively normal life. She’s spunky and energetic, she’s got two great friends in her dude pals Chiaki and Kousuke, and she generally goes through life without too many problems. That all changes when a chance encounter leaves her with a mysterious power: the ability to jump back in time. And when I say jump, I mean literally jump. If she wants to go back through time, she has to take a flying leap off whatever surface is nearest and crash ass-backwards into the past, almost certainly banging her head against the closest concrete wall in the process. It’s a hilarious running gag throughout the film, which keeps finding new and entertaining ways for her to crash-land back through the time stream. In fact, the entire film is infused with that exact kind of loosey-goosey slapstick energy. There is so much life in Hosoda’s direction; characters bounce off each other with glee, quips and snark fly fast and furious as they only can between close friends, and the timing of every last gag is pitch-perfect. I was laughing my ass off throughout the vast majority of this film, it’s so fucking entertaining. This is the kind of breezy, effortlessly delightful teen whimsy that’s right up my alley. Heck, with the time-jumping gimmick, it almost feels like a spiritual prequel to the likes of Your Name; I suspect Shinkai might be a pretty decent fan of this movie.

Speaking off that gimmick, as you might expect, Makoto’s time-leaping powers form the center of the plot and her character arc. At first, she revels in her new powers with reckless abandon, jumping back in time over and over again just to keep hanging out at a karaoke bar or ace a test she previously failed. She’s living on high, and her enthusiasm is utterly infectious. When I talk about how much fun this film is, Makoto’s most of the reason why; the energy, sass and exuberance she carries herself with feels so true to life, as does her friendship with the equally well-realized Chikai and Kousuke, each of whom are their own flavor of dreamily-perfect-yet-still-grounded-in-reality cool dude. We could’ve spent the entire film just basking in their group dynamic and this movie still would’ve been great. But of course, things eventually start getting more complicated, as the consequences of Makoto changing the past start to pile up, people start to get hurt in her wake, and the difficult situations she’s faced with quickly become too emotionally fraught for her to time-leap away from. Suddenly, these powers that gave her so much freedom start feeling like a trap, an escape hatch from facing life’s sometimes-harsh realities that only ensnare her further in a prison of her own making. With everything starting to crash down around her and her happy life threatening to drift away, it’s up to her to take responsibility for her mistakes and accept that she can’t keep running from the future bearing down on her.

Of course, this being a teen coming-of-age flick, all this emotional development is couched in the most suitably melodramatic ways possible. There are romantic entanglements and big emotional outbursts aplenty, and a third-act twist flips the script on just how high the stakes are going to get. The film’s not quite as strong in those moments, mostly because you can see the angst coming from a mile away. But even then, it’s all very well-executed, playing honestly to the characters’ emotions and the stress of the increasingly complicated situations they find themselves in. For all its high-concept ideas and exaggerated hijinks, there’s a real sense of reality to Makoto’s struggle, her shame at her mistakes and her desire to do better. There’s a humanity to The Girl Who Leapt Through time that shines through even in its weaker moments and keeps your heart pounding in your chest as you beg for everything to turn out okay. And it all comes together for a powerful emotional climax that sends you home feeling suitably emotional. I didn’t cry, but I cared about what was going to happen all the way through, and the ending was about as pitch-perfect as I could’ve hoped. That’s more than enough for me to forgive a couple minor flubs here and there.

It also helps that Hosoda is just, like, fucking amazing at character acting. Between this movie and Wolf Children, it’s clear his specialty is animating characters who move with a near-flawless fluidity. Makoto and her friends burst with life and motion, with hyper-detailed gestures and constantly shifting expressions, always changing and adapting to their environments as they traverse the story’s world and undergo its trials. Hosoda effortlessly pulls these characters from laughing to crying and right back to laughing again, animating their subtle shifts and over-the-top expressions with equally impressive verve. Honestly, I don’t know if any other anime director is this good at character animation. The speed at which Hosoda’s characters move through their lives, and the personality he imbues their every last movement with, is second to none. The background art isn’t nearly as impressive, but it doesn’t have to be; not every anime director needs to be a Miyazaki or Shinkai who slaves over every last background brush stroke. Hosoda’s strengths are firmly rooted in depicting the nuances of human motion and emotion, and in that field, he is second to none.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time isn’t the best movie ever, but it’s far and away the most entertaining anime film I’ve watched in quite a while. It’s charming, it’s whimsical, it’s bursting with life and personality, and it’s the perfect popcorn flick to put on when you’re in the need for a shot of positive vibes. If this is what I have to look forward to with Hosoda, I think I’m going to be in very good hands.