'The Girl Who Leapt Through Time' was, without a doubt, one of the most frequently adapted sci-fi romance stories from Japan in Jing Yu's past life.
The original was a novel. It had been turned into TV dramas three or four times, and into films another three or four times. What Jing Yu recreated in this world was the animated version directed by Hosoda Mamoru from his previous life in Japan.
In that version, the heroine, Makoto Konno, is canonically the niece of Kazuko Yoshiyama — the protagonist of the original novel — making this film a sort of second-generation adaptation set in the same universe.
The relationship between the original novel and this adaptation was similar to that of 'Fate/Zero' and 'Fate/Stay Night' — separate, yet deeply connected.
Of course, both the original 'The Girl Who Leapt Through Time' novel and its many live-action adaptations were great in their own right. But for Jing Yu, a Chinese man in his previous life, his first exposure had been the animated version.
And among all the derivative works based on the novel's world, the anime film was one of the few that could stand toe-to-toe with the original.
Naturally, fans in Great Zhou weren't aware of all these intricate connections.
Fang Qing had barely sat in her seat for a few minutes when the theater darkened.
The movie opened with a typical scene — a group of high school boys and girls playing basketball on a court.
The atmosphere was instantly youthful. The bright and energetic heroine, Makoto Konno, quickly made her entrance.
At first, the story felt very ordinary: Makoto's life as a clumsy student, her accomplished and self-disciplined younger sister, a quiet yet happy family, and her habit of hanging out with two boys in her class — Kosuke and Chiaki.
The first ten-plus minutes were mostly spent introducing Makoto's everyday life and social circle.
The camera frequently showed the long, sloping path she traveled on her way to and from school, at the end of which lay the train tracks that ran through the center of the city.
This scene was eerily reminiscent of the train scene from '5 Centimeters per Second'. The moment Fang Qing saw it, that movie came rushing back to her mind.
"Wait… wasn't this supposed to be 'The Girl Who Leapt Through Time'?"
She had been watching for over ten minutes, and it felt like she was just watching the slice-of-life story of an average slacker girl.
Right as she was thinking this, the turning point came.
One day, Makoto accidentally wandered into what looked like an occupied science lab at school. Her eyes were drawn to a small, marble-like metal object on the floor. Just as she bent down to inspect it, a shadowy figure startled her, causing her to fall directly onto the metallic orb.
And the world… changed.
As Goldberg Variations played in the background, it felt like the world was being rebuilt. She seemed to fall into a lake, her body sinking into the depths.
And in the next second—
She crashed back to the ground.
A stream of glowing, fluctuating numbers flashed across the screen, finally locking in place.
This visual implied something.
"Is this… Steins;Gate?"
Someone in the theater couldn't help but blurt it out.
They weren't wrong.
The scene bore a strong resemblance to the world line divergence scenes in 'Steins;Gate'.
In fact, there had been quite a few works in Jing Yu's previous life with similar setups. Recent ones included 'Steins;Gate' and Subaru's "Return by Death" in 'Re:Zero'. Older examples included Diavolo's time loop in 'JoJo's Bizarre Adventure'.
It was fair to say that all these stories had influenced each other in some way.
Makoto, after her strange sensation, believed she had just tripped… but it felt like she had briefly entered some strange space-time distortion before falling back down.
But Jing Yu's fans immediately connected this scene to the idea of world line transitions.
Fang Qing sat up straight in her seat.
For this kind of film, you couldn't watch it with a casual mindset. If you weren't paying full attention, you'd definitely get lost later on.
She still remembered how 'Steins;Gate' had fried her brain the first time she watched it.
And sure enough, the signs of something wrong soon appeared.
That same long slope… because of the steep incline, braking was hard. Her bike had malfunctioned. A train was now coming.
Her bike slammed into the guardrail, and she was launched into the air — right into the train's path.
But there was no blood.
In the next second—
She was back. Rewound. Standing at the top of the hill once again.
She didn't move. She simply stood there, staring down as the train rolled by — dazed and confused.
She told her aunt — who, in the lore, was none other than Kazuko Yoshiyama, the original novel's protagonist — about the strange phenomenon.
Kazuko, who had experienced something similar in her youth but had lost her memories of it due to time travel's side effects, half-joked and half-seriously replied:
"That's time travel!"
If you die, you rewind to the past.
That was Makoto's tentative theory.
As a bold, reckless, and energetic girl, she was determined to test it.
She didn't dare jump off a building — but she did jump into a river.
With a shout, she dove in—
And the next second, she found herself back in her home that morning, sitting on the floor.
Immediately, she ran to the fridge and devoured the pudding she knew would be stolen by her sister later that afternoon.
"Heh, if I eat the pudding now, you can't steal it later, you little brat. Dream on!"
Fang Qing chuckled out loud.
The whole theater was filled with laughter.
"She jumped through time… just to save her pudding?"
"What kind of ridiculous setup is that?!"
"This girl is hilarious!"
"Didn't they say this was a depressing movie?"
"I'm dying — this is so funny!"
But unlike 'Steins;Gate', the film didn't feature complicated timelines. It was simple time travel — jumping backward in time. Though even then, her powers weren't stable. She might travel to yesterday, only to suddenly snap back to today.
In the first half-hour, the film clearly laid out Makoto's abilities.
How she got them was a mystery for later.
But it was made clear that in moments of danger, she could travel back in time.
She even went back two days earlier and, using her memories, aced a pop quiz she had previously bombed.
In home economics class, where she had previously caused a small accident, she swapped seats with a classmate. This time, the accident didn't happen to her — it happened to the other student instead.
The story was filled with joy and light-hearted fun.
But Fang Qing… began to sense that something was off.
Nothing in the school's daily routines had changed.
Sure, the good events remained — but even the bad ones were repeating. For example, in home economics class, the previous accident had happened because Makoto made a mistake. But now, even after switching seats, the classmate who took her spot made the same mistake.
It was as if Zhang San solved a math problem and said 1 + 1 = 3…
Then rewound time, let Li Si answer it instead, and Li Si still got it wrong the same way.
Would that make any sense?
And the consequences of the mistake? Still identical.
Was Jing Yu doing this on purpose? Was it a coincidence?
Or was it… world line convergence?
Having watched 'Steins;Gate', many viewers were ready to overanalyze.
In 'Steins;Gate', world line convergence mainly affected specific characters. But in 'The Girl Who Leapt Through Time', it didn't feel like the convergence applied to people.
It felt like it applied to events.
Someone was going to slip on a banana peel at 2 p.m.
Whether that person was Zhang San or Li Si didn't matter —
Someone was destined to slip.
The convergence wasn't targeting a person. It was targeting the event.
Was she overthinking it?
Fang Qing shook her head — and kept watching.