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Live-Action Girl Who Leapt Through Time Gets DVD Release
posted on by Andrew Osmond
The 2010 live-action film version of The Girl who Leapt Through Time will be released by Manga Entertainment on May 2. Its full title is Time Traveller: The Girl who Leapt Through Time. The RRP will be £17.99.
The story has been adapted for the screen many times over four decades, though the best known version internationally is the anime film, directed by Mamoru Hosoda.
The 2010 live-action film features Riisa Naka as the titular heroine. Naka also voiced the heroine in the anime film.
The first appearance of the story was as a magazine serial in 1965, published in book form two years later. (Alma Books is due to publish a UK translation of the book on May 16.) It was written by Yasutaka Tsutsui, who was also the author of the novel Paprika, filmed by Satoshi Kon.
The first live-action TV version of The Girl who Leapt Through Time was in 1972, followed by numerous other adaptations for TV and cinema, including the 2006 anime film.
Both the anime and the new live-action film are sequels to the Tsutsui novel. In the live-action film, Naka plays the daughter of Tsutsui's time-traveller. When the mother is injured in a car accident, the daughter must travel back in time to Japan in the 1970s. The film also features Yasuda Narumi (as the mother) and Nakao Akiyoshi. The director is first-timer Taniguchi Masaaki.
The anime film had a different storyline, in which Naka voiced the niece of Tsutsui's time-traveller. Manga will reissue this film on March 28 in a double pack with Hosoda's Summer Wars, on DVD and Blu-Ray.
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