There was a point about halfway through The Girl Who Leapt Through Time where I thought it could rival the works of Makoto Shinkai, who I obviously respect a lot as a writer, where because of her actions, because of her emotional immaturity and inability to face her close friend when he tries to ask her out, Makoto, the eponymous protagonist inadvertently pushes him away, into the arms of her friend, at which point she realises she did actually want to be with him. Of course, since the film’s premise concerns a girl leaping through time, the ability which allowed her to sidestep his advances in the first place, equally allows her to fix her mistakes, otherwise the story might have expanded on the repercussions that avoiding difficult situations can have on the people around you.

(more…)

Hey, can I come in? So you know how your girlfriend just broke up with you? Well I figure you probably got some condoms left over, yeah? Do you think I could nick a couple? Thing is it’s going great with Hannah and me and I’m thinking… y’know, and she doesn’t want to wait for me to run down to the shop, I mean, talk about eager, and I don’t really want to go down anyway at this time just to buy some… you’ve got some, yeah? Ah, cheers mate, I owe you one.

Oh, by the way, you might want to turn your music up for the next hour or so, just saying, you know what I get like, could get a bit loud, y’know, through the wall, what you listening to anyway? Coldplay? Nice one. Well, anyway, cheers again, that’s my night sorted, see you in the morning.

He rides up on a bicycle by the ornamental pond next to which I am sitting; a coffee-skinned man whose young son follows behind on a red bicycle of his own. The child’s bike has stabilisers and so can stand on its own when the son dismounts and while his father props his own bike against the bench opposite my own. Between us is the glassy surface of the pond, reflecting the billowed clouds above. The man calls out, a name I do not quite catch, and a girl appears from behind one of the buildings which surround the nearby bandstand. She is wearing a checkered blue school-dress and does not have a bicycle. Perhaps when the man and the boy picked her up from school she rode on the luggage rack of her father’s bicycle, or on the cross-bar, else she sits on the saddle and holds her father’s waist as he leans forwards to peddle, but in the park she walks a little way behind.

When she catches up to the boys, the father’s sharp face impassive, the brother’s round and excited, the man takes from his bike a net which he had tied there either with elastic bands or string. He also produces a bag of crumbled bread and crusts which I had not noticed until that moment and, these two items in hand, he sits down at the water’s edge and folds his sandled feet in under his knees. The children crouch down either side of him and watch as he drops in a piece of bread, following it with the head of the net. For a few seconds nothing happens, only the clouds move overhead and the boy’s eager face is reflected in the water. His father warns him not to lean out so far and the boy draws back, waiting. I wonder if there is anything alive in the pond, having seen neither fish nor frogs there before, and only occassionally ducks whose scarcity suggests they are not residents of the park and instead are only passing through.

(more…)