The setting is the present time, or if you prefer, a time in which your life was more eventful. There are, no doubt, a series of recent events that failed to go as you planned. The memory of these failures is fresh in your mind. It so happens that in the space between disasters, you discover that you have the ability to rewind the clock — to roll back the events that now trouble you, and start anew. What would you change first?

I'm stating the obvious, but the kind of thought experiment where one gains the opportunity to fix the mistakes of youth, or even of ten minutes ago, has tremendous appeal. Nathaniel Hawthorne framed it as just that: an experiment, by a Dr. Heidegger on four unsuspecting friends, wherein he feeds them an elixir supposedly from the mystic Fountain of Youth. Hawthorne's take on the subject is that the reckless, hormonal energy (some might say stupidity) of youth is a universal constant — that it's impossible to become youthful again and retain the wisdom of age, and indeed, Heidegger's subjects demonstrate just that. But what of the immediate past? Certainly it should be possible to make a few tweaks to the time line and better position yourself for tomorrow.

Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo (The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, or Tokikake for short) is one of Yasutaka Tsutsui's earliest novels, published in 1967. In its forty-two year existence it spawned no fewer than four movie adaptations, the latest being this animated film, produced at Madhouse and directed by Mamoru Hosoda. The number of adaptations alone says more about the lasting power of this story than I possibly could, so in this space I'm going to focus on Hosoda's treatment of this time-tested wonder.

While Tsutsui is best known for his science fiction, the Tokikake animation aligns better with the magical-girl genre than sci-fi. It's the story of a girl named Makoto Konno, and a day in which everything goes wrong for her — a day so bad as to be laughable, except for the person it's happening to. She wakes up late to find that her sister stole her pudding, makes it to school in the nick of time to get slapped with a pop quiz, starts a fire in Home Ec. with a tempura slip-up, gets flattened in the courtyard by some guys horsing around, gets dogpiled by a stack of books after slipping, and gets killed by a train when the brakes on her bike fail, causing her to fly head-first past the crossing guard.

Except, the last part doesn't happen, because Makoto jumps back in time and avoids the train. At the point in time where her bottom made contact with the floor underneath some books, she also made contact with a small device that sets its user up for time travel.

There is a quiet genius at work in this film, a recognition that no atom in the universe is at rest, and neither can the human heart be. A parade of Van Gogh paintings set into motion heralds the beginning of Makoto's time-leap adventures. The movie also employs photography — a moment in time panned over to give motion to something which lacks it. With these minimal adjustments, a marriage of animation and still life works beautifully. It relies on and accentuates the fact that while an artist's stroke might capture a moment in the life of a bowl of fruit, neither the fruit nor the bowl will escape the effects of time.

Makoto's horrendously bad day draws immediate attention to the things that don't go wrong, like her daily baseball practice with friends Chiaki and Kousuke. In sharp contrast with the day's other events, Makoto is at ease when she's with her friends. That comfort proves to be troublesome when mixed with the convenience of time jumps; she's unprepared for the inevitable changes in that friendship dynamic.

On a chalkboard at Makoto's school we find the text, "Time waits for no one." Makoto acts as if the opposite is true — that she has all the time in the world. The viewer shares in Makoto's fun as she rewrites her bad day to erase all her blunders, and adds some icing in the form of marathon karaoke sessions and overindulgence in favorite meals. Time is the province of Tokikake; it is not only effective at using the time it has, but also sports an impressive coverage of the topic. Time organizes our thoughts. It is given and received, spent and saved, lost and found. It's something we have or don't, and use wisely or waste. All of these ideas treat time as a ration — something finite and precious. In reality, time is infinite and we aren't.

A woman whom Makoto calls "Witch Aunt," who restores paintings for a living, bursts her bubble with the suggestion that her time leaps might have an effect on others' lives. The subsequent discovery that her time leap ability itself is rationed pieces together the lesson for our heroine: she's on borrowed time. Soon, her actions will have weight and permanence. Soon, she will realize what that means. (It's a shame that the aunt doesn't get more screen time. In some ways, she's more interesting than Makoto.)

The film then takes cues from the genre playbook, which I'm forced to note as a weakness. The magical girl genre, being a variation of tragedy that incorporates a safety net, is inherently toothless in what it'll put its heroines through. Sure, they might lose their parents and get cancer, but they won't suffer lasting damage as a result of their own tragic flaws — the genre forbids it. The safety-net theme isn't wholly without merit, and given that Makoto's time leaps offer a lucid depiction of her youthful trials, it's natural to want her to learn and grow and be safe. The unfortunate thing is we know she'll be safe, and this takes away from the impact of the climax, where the air is cleared of both mystery and responsibility.

Evaluated for what it is, however, Tokikake is an endearing, warm movie about a kind-hearted girl who has a little too much fun and learns some important lessons about living. Like Dr. Heidegger's Experiment, Makoto's exercise in second chances reveals her lack of vision and discipline, but in youth, there's still hope. When considered in concert with the astounding visuals and the subtle rhythms of the soundtrack, and the vast appeal of the subject of time travel, it's impossible not to recommend this movie.