The Kawaii Menace

There’s a fine line between kawaii and kowai

Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo

By Don at 12:17 am on Sunday, May 6, 2007

I need to watch it again to make sure that there aren’t any paradoxes left dangling and that the writers didn’t cheat at the end, but one thing is clear: it is every bit as good as it is said to be. I doubt that I’ll see a better movie this year. The story is interesting and the central characters are three-dimensional. The production may not be as glossy as a Studio Ghibli epic, but it’s more than adequate, and the script and the acting are first-rate. I will be astonished (and appalled) if TokiKake isn’t quickly licensed, and I hope that whoever does bring it over makes an effort to market it to all audiences, not just anime fans.

Wabi Sabi comments on some of the motifs here (spoilers).

Here’s a curiosity I noticed. I wonder if it was intentional.

1815.jpg

Now would someone please translate the book.

*****

It turns out that TokiKake is not an adaptation of the novel by Yasutaka Tsutsui but is a “continuation” of it, set twenty years later. The protagonist of the novel appears in the movie as “Aunt Witch.”

Here’s Yasutaka Tsutsui’s site. It includes a profile that I hope is misleadingly pretentious and English translations of some of his short stories.

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1 Comment »

1

Comment by YIH MonsterID Icon YIH

May 18, 2007 @ 2:47 am

Noting the pic in the post; doesn’t the Apple version of VLC have a ’screenshot’ option? The win version does, and other than the fact that it outputs .png files it works well…

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