Mamoru Hosada's Toki wo kakeru shojo (The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, 2006) is easily the finest animated feature to come out in recent years (never mind Dreamworks' fitfully amusing if infantile Kung Fu Panda or Pixar's shamelessly Chaplinesque and overly sentimental Wall.E, both released this year). If anything, I'd call the film the best animated feature since Hayao Miyazaki's own anti-war epic Hauru no ugoku shiro (Howl's Moving Castle, 2004) some two years previous (Diana Wynne Jones' novel wasn't so clearly anti-war--but this was just after the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, and the impact of its firebombing scenes in the context of the times (arguably the first great film on the war) is unforgettable).
