[Toast and Kent love time loop stories. With this "Loopty Loo"
series, T&K explore just what's happening in a film or TV show loop, and
maybe over time, they will deconstruct what it is that makes for a good
time loop]
d. Mamoru Hosoda
But Kent bought the Blu-Ray and watched an anime (Kent doesn't watch anime, generally) so in for a penny...
How did the Loop Begin?
[Kent] Right, so no Loop here. Not exactly. 17-year-old Makoto is cleaning up the science lab when she slips on a walnut and falls on top of it. The walnut appears to have a blinky red light, and it sends her spiraling through a weird CGI maze of gears and stuff representing her movement through time. The mix of traditional cel animation and CGI is both a kind of neat and kind of janky effect. Thankfully it doesn't get overused. But her trip through time winds her back right where she was, on the floor of the science lab. Confused and on her way to deliver some peaches to her aunt (who works at the Tokyo National Museum), she rides her bike down a steep hill, but her breaks fail and she's heading right for the train crossing... and yeah, she gets smushed, except that she opens her eyes and is halfway up the hill, having collided with a very angry woman instead.
So, as we'll see, it's not a Loop as we commonly see them, but Makoto moving through the same day starting at different points in time.
[Toast] Yep, I agree. Most of the traditional concepts of a Loopty Loo are not present here. This is a true resetting of time by active choice. Well, at least it is after the first not-get-smooshed reset. But isn't it all semantics? Aren't Time Loops also just resets, if you change your perspective and take the circular nature out of it?
What was the main character's first reaction to the Loop?
[Kent] It feels redundant at this point because pretty much every character in their first Loop has the same reaction... confusion. They were in one place, usually something bad happens, then suddenly they're in a different spot. That would be disorienting for anyone.
When she gets to the Museum and talks with her "witchy" aunt, telling her about the incident, her aunt explains that she probably leapt through time...that it's something most girls her age do. And then she instructs her on how she can do it again.
Now, had I any familiarity with The Girl Who Leapt Through Time story, or even just read up on this specific adaptation, maybe this bit of dialogue wouldn't have seemed so bizarre. Because "witchy" Aunt Kazuko is the titular leaping girl from the original story.
[Toast] J explained to me that there is a concept amongst young women in Japan where they claim (pretend?) to have special powers, in order to feel more special than they are. Some see ghosts, some can talk to spirits, some have magical powers and ... some can jump in time. Its a common enough happenstance that there is a term for it, not that I can find it on the internet.
While the Aunt is definitely the character from the original novel, she was supposed to have had her memory erased at the end of that story. So, I think she is just humouring her niece, assuming the girl just has a need to feel special.
I do love that the one trope of loopty loo's (the fun montage) is present here. Zip back, eat the originally pilfered pudding, carry on. Zip back, have it again. Don't like what is for supper? Zip back and have teppanyaki again! Want to get really good at karoke? Ziiiiip over and over. She has a (base)ball messing around with her "worst day ever" but soon realizes there are some consequences to deferring or transferring bad luck. Then she gets distracted by high school crushes.
WHY did the main character get put into the Loop? Can someone else be brought into the Loop?
[Kent] Because she fell on a walnut. It's a high tech future time travel walnut, because that makes more sense.
[Toast] Well most time machine control devices are fancy schmany wrist bands. Maybe those are gauche in 2260, so why not walnut? Given that she is brought into the club that can reset/loop time, I guess she could have done it for any of her friends. But she doesn't choose to do so.
How long is this time Loop? What resets it? Can you force the reset?
[Kent] Ostensibly the "Loop" is as long as Makoto wants it to be. She can reset time whenever she feels like it, although it seems with limited control on how far back in time she goes.
To reset time, she has to leap (like the title says). It seems her leaps always involve some form of danger...and perhaps the more speed she brings to her leap, the further back she goes? The rules are not very clearly explained. It even sometimes seems like it's her landing, not the leap which sends her back in time. And I don't know if death resets time, or if it has to be "death... with momentum". Explain it to me Toasty ...
[Toast] Well, considering her first reset was caused by her death, I guess that is assumed. But yeah the rules are entirely fuzzy. For example, her first active test reset (jumping out into the river liked a skipped rock) boomerangs back unintentionally. But yeah, I think that inertia is required for the walnut implanted time reset power to kick in. Well, for her. Chiaki seems to be just wander away... But its his toy so maybe he knows the rules.
How long does the main character stay in the Loop? Does it have any affect on them, their personality, their outlook?
[Kent] So at one point Makoto discovers a sort of tattoo on the back of her arm (tricep area) and it's a number. At the time she discovers it, the number is at 90. By the time she realizes that it's a "use counter" it's at 10. She'd leapt dozens upon dozens of times prior to discovering it said 90. But then many of those uses were to repeat the same 10 minutes (or half hour or whatever) at karaoke for 10 hours, so some of the Loop-backs were very, very short durations.
I can't even hazard a guess as to how many "leaps" she had, and what the total amount of time she spent reliving parts of the day over was. Toast, any guesses?
[Toast] Enough times to get bored with it? And being a high school kid, it really doesn't have any impact on her. Some of the things she experiences, some of the perspectives she is exposed to decidedly change her views, but its not the resets themselves.
What about the other people in the Loop? Are they aware? Can they become aware? Does anything happen if they become aware?
[Kent] So Kazuko becomes Makoto's confidant in all this, where Makoto will often confide in her aunt after doing something she deems great with her new power, or discovering that her mucking with time has done something wrong. So her Aunt seems to be the only one who knows...
But before she started time-travelling Makoto had a particularly disastrous day in cooking class, and so she used the Loop power to switch places with another guy, who winds up getting teased and bullied and very very scarily angry about it all... he sees Makoto and blames her for the accident and his being bullied, and comes after her...almost like he knows.
[Spoiler] And then there's Chiaki, who is one of Makoto's best friends, even though he's kind of a mystery to everyone at school. At one point he expresses that he likes Makoto and asks her out and she keeps resetting the moment hoping he never asks, and eventually just avoids the moment altogether. But also, eventually she realizes she does like him, but too late. Turns out he's a boy from the future, and it was his walnut she fell on, and he knows she's leaping through time. And now that she knows his secret, he must return.
The rules here are not explained, like, what's the deal with the painting (is that something from the original story?) and why does he have to return? (What happens if he doesn't?) This film is awfully vague on a lot of points.
[Toasty] Yeah, open ended ideas is very very VERY common in anime. Leaving something to be explored later on, or for the viewer to fill in themselves, is annoyingly common. I think Chiaki has to return mainly because eventually he will just end up being bored with the current summer days at the end of high school. So, his counter is counting down, as he keeps on messing around with his lives, probably reliving the days he loves best (going to baseball games, playing toss-around with the other two, etc.) and desperately trying to figure out how to see that painting before it disappears from time.
That whole painting does feel like it had to be part of another story, but not one I am aware of. And once she realizes he so badly wants to see it, why not just sneak him upstairs to where her aunt works?
As for bullied kid, I think he gets the full brunt of the class bullies because they see him as the subject of bad luck. He knows he would not have been burned if she hadn't switched with him, so likely has the superstition that she purposely put this on him. And she kind of did, just not in the way he assumes.
What does the main character think about the other people in the Loop? Are they real? Do they matter?
[Kent] Makoto can't seem to get out of the day, but she also doesn't seem to want to. She's a teenager having fun with a new power and using it all the time for almost every trivial situation. Once she realizes that it's finite, it's almost too late. She tries to do some good with it, as her aunt instructed, but of course it's limited to trivial high-school concerns, like getting people to ask other people out on dates and to stop a bullying incident. But, when you're in high school, your world really is so self-centered and small.
[Toasty] Match Making is also very very VERY common in high school based anime. Its almost like the best thing you can do for someone you care for.
Most memorable event in a Loop? Most surprising event during a Loop?
[Kent] I thought Makoto's hope that by continually jumping back in time by like a minute or two when Chiaki asks her out was very very potent. That moment where a friend you don't necessarily like *that way* expresses that they like you *that way* and you just know your friendship is irreparably changed, and you just want to go back and undo it. That resonated with me pretty strongly. I was in that situation so many times as a teen (humblebrag?). They're pretty uncomfortable.
[Toast] Let's talk about my little sister !!!!
Wait, so you were the subject of friendzoning someone? Not friendzone'd yourself? P.S. I loathe that word "friendzone" these days primarily because of the toxic nature in which it is used by incel types who toss it around like an accusation, and with such vitriol.
Personally, the karoke club, rolling into the room to get another round of the time related song in again before their time was up.
"Wait, what the heck were you doing that your just ROLLED IN HERE SO FAST !?!?!?"
#snort
How does this stack up in the subgenre?
[Kent] Again, it's not a standard Time Loop, but since the Looping events all take place within the same day, it still does fit, it's just a drastically different by the sheer fact that Makoto can control the loop and that the loop doesn't always reset to the same point (a very rare thing in the Time Loop stories we've covered so far).
[Toast] I rather like that it undermines the standard tropes yet still also seems to have the heart of these stories. She realizes she has to use this "power" for good but not before she has so much fun wasting it.
I love Chiaki's reaction to finding out this git of a girl got hold of his power instead of someone evil, who could have done SO many things wrong with it.
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