The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

時をかける少女 (Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo)

10.0(1)

OtakuDen

8.1(478,401)

MAL Score

Ranked #618

Popularity #265

Award Winning
Drama
Romance
Sci-Fi
School
Time Travel

Episodes: 1
Duration: 1 hr 38 min
Aired: Jul 15, 2006
Status: Finished Airing

Synopsis

Makoto Konno is finishing her final year of high school, uncertain about what comes next and worn down by teachers’ expectations. Between classes and carefree hours with her closest friends, her ordinary routine is upended when she accidentally discovers she can literally jump backward through time.

Known as *Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo*, the story follows Makoto as she experiments with this unexpected ability, using it to smooth over daily mishaps and steer moments in her favor. Before long, she’s forced to confront a difficult truth: even small changes carry consequences, and the timeline is far more delicate—and complicated—than it first appears.

Otaku Consensus

Mamoru Hosoda’s Madhouse film earns its reputation by making time manipulation serve character rhythm rather than sci-fi clutter: the comic timing stays clean, the school setting feels lived-in, and Makoto’s coming-of-age arc lands with uncommon emotional precision. Its most common limitation is scale; viewers expecting the visual sweep or intricate mechanics of later high-concept anime romances may find its modest, everyday focus deliberately slight.

Why You Should Watch

Watch this if you want a time-travel romance that behaves less like a puzzle box and more like a memory of adolescence: impulsive, funny, embarrassing, and suddenly painful. It scratches the same itch as Your Name for teenage longing and consequence, but without the cosmic grandeur; it is closer to A Silent Voice in how much weight it gives to small social choices. Hosoda’s direction keeps the pacing buoyant, so the film can pivot from baseball-field looseness to emotional reckoning without feeling engineered. Madhouse’s clean visual staging, Yoshiyuki Sadamoto’s expressive character designs, and Hanako Oku’s vocal music make it especially rewarding for viewers who like sci-fi concepts filtered through everyday school-life texture.

Key Characters

M
Makoto Konno(VA: Riisa Naka)
Makoto is remembered as a kinetic tomboy heroine whose slapstick impulsiveness gradually reveals a sharper, more vulnerable portrait of late-adolescent avoidance.
C
Chiaki Mamiya(VA: Takuya Ishida)
Chiaki’s relaxed athletic banter gives the romance its casual texture, making his restraint and timing more memorable than overt melodrama.
K
Kousuke Tsuda(VA: Mitsutaka Itakura)
Kousuke anchors the central friend group as the steadier presence, the kind of pragmatic classmate who makes the film’s school comedy feel socially specific.

What Makes It Stand Out

1
Madhouse’s animation favors clear body language and readable spatial comedy over spectacle, which is why the film’s funniest beats remain easy to follow even when the editing accelerates.
2
Hosoda’s direction keeps the time-travel device narratively legible; critics frequently single out that the leaps never muddle the story, a rare strength for school-set time manipulation anime.
3
Yoshiyuki Sadamoto’s character designs give Makoto a loose, athletic physicality rather than a polished heroine silhouette, supporting the AniList tags that emphasize her tomboy energy and teen-cast realism.
4
Art director Nizou Yamamoto and assistant art director Osamu Masuyama ground the film in ordinary schoolrooms, streets, and baseball spaces, making the sci-fi element feel like an intrusion into a recognizable daily routine.
5
Kiyoshi Yoshida’s music and Hanako Oku’s insert-song work give the film a softer emotional signature than its sci-fi label suggests, with Oku credited for performance, lyrics, and composition.

Fun Facts & Trivia

Fun fact 1: Yasutaka Tsutsui is credited as the original creator, linking the film to the broader Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo lineage rather than positioning it as a purely anime-original premise.
Fun fact 2: The film won Animation of the Year at the 30th Japan Academy Prize, matching its database genre label as an award-winning anime with a major industry honor.
Fun fact 3: Tomohiko Itou served as assistant director here before becoming a major anime director in his own right, making the film part of an unusually notable staff tree.
Fun fact 4: Hanako Oku is credited across multiple musical roles for the film’s insert song: performance, lyrics, and composition, giving that vocal component a unified authorship.
Fun fact 5: Its cross-platform reception remains strong but not identical: MyAnimeList lists it at 8.09 from 478,401 votes, while AniList records a 78/100 score and 3,388 favorites.