Catalyst Castle

I recently bought the anime movie The Girl Who Leapt Through Time because I enjoyed it so much. The story is a lighthearted drama about a teenage girl named Makoto who discovers that she has the ability to leap through time. At first it seems great, as she can go back and correct any little mistakes she makes over the course of the day, but eventually she realizes that her good times are causing other people misfortune, and she only has a limited number of time leaps left with which to fix all of the problems she's caused.

I like that this movie shows how an ordinary kid would likely use time travel. She isn't using it to save the world or rewrite history, just to go back and correct little mistakes or avoid slightly embarrassing situations. How many youths haven't wished they could go back and do something over? The story is more about relationships and accepting responsibility for your actions than it actually is about time travel.

The movie features quite a few laughs. Some of this comes from the fact that Makoto must literally leap to travel through time. Because of this she's always crashing through doors and such as she recovers from her leaps, leaving people asking, "What in the world are you doing?" The movie grows more serious though as it progresses, with some very dramatic moments towards the end, and a rather unpredictable plot throughout.

The character designs seem a little bland at first, but they grow on you as it goes, and the backgrounds are very nicely illustrated. The writing is very well thought out and executed. The music score fits the movie nicely, and the theme song is very nice. (The DVD features a music video of the movie's theme song and the singer is really cute in a very nerdy kind of way. ^_^)

By the way, most anime I watch with Japanese audio and English subtitles. I've seen this movie now both that way and with English voice dubs, and I have to say that the English dub was well done.

Roleplaying
Because of my obsession with roleplaying games, I tend to watch most movies and shows with an eye for what I could take from it and apply to gaming. Here are some ideas from The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.

Play Narrativist Games: The theme of taking responsibility and facing the consequences of our actions is strong in this movie. Narrativist play could facilitate roleplaying where your characters are similarly forced to face up to the consequences that they reap from their choices and actions. The key here would be to give players real opportunities to make meaningful choices, and then make sure that they felt the repercussions of those choices for better or worse.

Time Travel as a Rewind Mechanic: Play a game where all of the player characters have the power to leap backwards in time, perhaps a limited number of times per game session. Each time they leap the story is "rewound" a number of scenes and play continues from there again. You could add an element of unpredictability by incorporating a randomizing mechanic to how many scenes back characters jump, representing an imperfect technique and adding an element of risk. Characters might not jump back far enough, or they might go back farther than they planned.