THE GIRL WHO LEAPT THROUGH TIME

Despite the rain we went out to dinner last night. Savage Kitten found out yesterday that she has to fork over a few thousand dollars to the IRS, and consequently she was a little ... peevish.

[Actually, her screams of outrage after the phone conversation with the helpful Christian and righteous loyal Republican civil servant giving so generously of his time to further the morally upstanding cause of good honest government in Baby Jesus' favourite country had been heard by everyone in our building. 'Peevish', you must understand, is a very euphemistic description of her feelings.]

She needed something to cheer her up. Food works wonders.

After dinner, comfortably bloated like happy toads, we settled in the television room and watched a Japanese animated movie.



THE GIRL WHO LEAPT THROUGH TIME


From Wikipedia: "Even though it was not a massive hit at the box office, the film did exceptionally well at the various festivals into which it was entered. The Girl Who Leapt Through Time took home the Gertie Award for the best animated feature film at the thirty-ninth Sitges International Film Festival of Catalonia. It won the Animation Grand Award, given to the year's most entertaining animated film, at the prestigious sixty-first Annual Mainichi Film Awards."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Girl_Who_Leapt_Through_Time

The movie starts a little slow, but proves gripping enough to watch all the way through. The characters are engaging, even multi-dimensional. A very enjoyable tale.

時をかける少女 --- Toki o Kakeru Shoujo

Plusses: No nudity. No visible panties or other fan-service for the perverted teenage male. No ultra-violence. No exaggerated secondary sexual characteristics or tempting shapely thighs. No blatant gender stereotyping, nor any appeals to your sense of cute.

[Minuses: No nudity. No visible panties or other fan-service for the perverted teenage male. No ultra-violence. No exaggerated secondary sexual ... thighs ... etcetera.]

I'll have to keep an eye out for other movies by Madhouse Ltd (株式会社 マッドハウス, Kabushiki-gaisha Maddohausu), particularly if directed by Mamoru Hosoda (細田 守). Unfortunately, his other major film has not been released for the American market yet - Sama Wozu (Summer Wars, サマーウォーズ), which is described as "a film with a story that will be accepted by a wide range of people without reference to age or sex—a film which you can enjoy as an adventure for the whole family [cut] In addition to Hosoda, the team included screenplay writer Satoko Okudera and character designer Yoshiyuki Sadamoto. The three have previously worked together in the 2006 animated film The Girl Who Leapt Through Time. Hiroyuki Aoyama served as the animation director, while action animation direction was handled by Tatsuzo Nishida. Aoyama was an animation director on The Girl Who Leapt Through Time; Nishida was a key animator on that film."
[Cite above from Wikipedia.]

AFTERTHOUGHT: due to the clickable links in wikipedic texts, it is incredibly easy to get lost in Japanese minutae - stuff about Minamoto lineages, the shogunate, and the Meiji restoration, among other things. You might find that enjoyable too.