The Girl Who Leapt Through Time 4K 1983 Ultra HD 2160p

A high-school girl acquires the ability to time travel.

User Review

I love the concept behind *The Girl Who Leapt Through Time*; the 2006 film adaptation is really enjoyable, and Mamoru Hosoda’s work is, in my opinion, on par with Miyazaki’s masterpieces.

I like old dramas, and I love to grumble about how “I’m so sick of these endless live-action anime aimed at giddy seventh-graders.”

That’s why it’s really unpleasant for me to contradict myself and admit that my dreams have come true: I watched an old Japanese melodrama, a film adaptation of a beloved story, professionally shot, without ridiculous grimaces or mind-boggling 25-year-old men sitting at school desks… and I didn’t like it. My God, it was deadly boring! The simple hour-and-a-half-long film dragged on and on, and it seemed like there was no end in sight.

First, the good stuff. It’s shot beautifully, creatively, and professionally. You can tell they set out to make a full-fledged, serious film. Of course, the story is simple—school, relationships—so there isn’t much room to run wild, but the shots of the cityscapes are very poetic and stick in your memory.

Now for the downsides.

It was shot by some old lady. Not literally, of course, but I’m sure that if you gave, say, my grandmother a camera and asked her to film a school romance, it would turn out something like this. With an adjustment for the times, of course. The style of filming youth movies that has been popular since the ’70s—deliberately down-to-earth, like a chronicle of a few ordinary days in ordinary life—hasn’t bypassed this film. And yet, watching the characters sitting side by side under the moon, it’s very easy to imagine that tomorrow they’ll set off to reclaim the virgin lands or something along those lines. Very stiff characters, old-fashioned personalities. “Chemistry”? No, never heard of it.

Along the way, there’s a hint of a love triangle—or more precisely, that the prince in this story isn’t at all who he seems to be at first glance. …But not for long.

The fantasy part is vague and drawn-out. Why did the heroine get so worked up after a couple of bouts of déjà vu? Where did these feelings suddenly come from? And such strong ones at that. Well, I mean, the movie is telling us that the feelings are strong because they transcend time and space. You can’t say anything about the characters, not even remotely. The ending seems like pure fan service and, on top of that, negates every shred of drama that was in this story.

I don’t know how it looked back then, but honestly, it seems to me that it was already outdated even at the development stage.

Info Video

Codec: HEVC / H.265 (73.6 Mb/s)
Resolution: Native 4K (2160p)
HDR: HDR10
Original aspect ratio: 1.37:1, 1.85:1

Info Audio

#Japanese: FLAC 1.0
#Japanese: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
#English: Dolby Digital 2.0 (Commentary by film critic Alex Pratt)

Info Subtitles