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| Overall | Art | Animation | Character Design | Music | Series Story | Episode Story | Reviewer | |
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| Rent | 7 | 6 | 7 | 6 | 7 | 7 |
 Ggultra2764
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[series:3230#1552] |
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Time Travel Girl functions as both educational adventure and mystery as high schooler Mari finds a pendant and book belonging to her missing father that somehow causes her to travel back in time and encounter several historical inventors famous for their major contributions to scientific and technological advances. Outside of Mari's encounters with famous inventors like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Edison, the series adds to the education theme by having segments at the end of each episode that demonstrate the means by which each of the inventions function. In regards to the historical exploration from Time Travel Girl, the series believably depicts its time periods from the fashions to the societies to how technologies are utilized. The series aims to show the challenges that each inventor had during their time period with getting their work accepted by others, trying to get their invention to work, or working through perseverance to get the results they are seeking. It shows through hard work and perseverance, these famous inventors were able to create their inventions and this gradually led to further advancements with the ideas and concepts discovered through them. Mari serves as a sort of viewer surrogate to learn about these inventors through her time travels and gradually develops an admiration for the hard work they put into contributing their inventions. The experience of viewing this is informational enough as such where even older audiences may learn some new things on inventors they may have forgotten or never learned of in school. Outside of the focus on historical figures, the series also takes the time to focus on other characters within Mari's life. While a bit simple in characterization, they are still mostly likeable and help add some levity to get away from the anime's educational focus. It also adds an element of mystery to the anime as Mari does learn her father has connections to the time travel technology that she uses and tries to figure out what his connection to it is. This said, Time Travel Girl does carry its fair share of issues. Perhaps a big one is that the series does have a fair number of logical holes with how its time travel gimmick is implemented as it disregards any focus on potential ramifications for the future timeline by intervening in historical events and doesn't really get too deep into the particulars of plot elements like how the time machine was created, thus some suspension of disbelief is needed to enjoy the educational value of the series. The show's attempt to add in a villain in the form of businessman Joe Mikage felt out-of-place for the intended focus of the anime. Also, the visuals to the series are nothing impressive as there are a decent number of still shots employed and character designs are on the plain side. Still for edutainment, Time Travel Girl offers solid engagement in its focus on famous Western inventors and showing that history and science can be engaging and beneficial to learn, something that younger and older audiences could appreciate. Last updated Thursday, March 29 2018. Created Thursday, March 29 2018. | ||||||||
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[series:3230#628] | ||||||
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(All episodes watched): I went into this show thinking that it would be hard for any anime that had something to do with time travel to not be interesting. Things are automatically turned upside down when that happens, and surely characters can't just ignore the mind-blowing experience. Unfortunately, while not completely uninteresting, TTS managed to be about as minimally interesting as possible. This is as much a science lesson on electromagnetism and the pioneers who discovered and explained it as it is an adventure. There are basically two plotlines going on, the larger of the two involves learning about how electricity came to be harnessed and the lesser is about how the time machine came about and some bad people who want to misuse it. I had thought that the main thrust of the show would be main character Mari searching for her missing father in the past. She would probably go on a new time leap every other episode or so, and each time pick up a clue about her father's whereabouts plus meet a famous scientist. But I was surprised that Mari manages to briefly catch up to her father relatively early in the series, when I had assumed that this wouldn't happen until near the climax. He seems to be trying to repair some sort of damage to the course of history that somebody has caused, but this plotline is vague and confusing. Still, the show was interesting even if it was largely a science lesson. I had never heard of William Gilbert, an early scientist with an interest in how the compass worked, so that was fairly enlightening. I was intrigued by the explanation of the methods he used to draw his conclusions, and learned a few things that I didn't already know. The little demonstrations at the end of the episodes could be interesting as well. Other episodes were less interesting, however, because several are about famous American inventors and they didn't tell me much that I didn't already know. Not all pioneers of electromagnetism are Americans like Franklin, Bell and Edison, and it's fun to learn a few things about others. For instance, in episode five we learn how the basic electric motor was invented by British scientist Michael Farraday. Maybe there just isn't enough time in a 23-minute episode to tell the story of a major inventor, but the stories still seem to be told in a quick and minimalist manner which is modestly interesting but leaves me feeling that they could have been a good deal more so. It's almost as if this show was designed for schoolchildren (maybe it was), and to an adult it seems simplistic. Maybe it would have been better to focus on one famous scientist (or just two or three), with more room for detail as a result, instead of trying to tell the stories of them all. One problem is that the tone is lightweight and silly. For example, in episode one as Mari makes her first time leap, completely by surprise, the thought that she may never see her home again never occurs to her. Her biggest worry in Gilbert's age is whether she'll be able to breathe while wearing a extremely tight Elizabethan-era corset. And a boy goes into cardiac arrest after being struck in the chest by a baseball? I doubt it. The fight in Italian scientist Volta's lab was extremely implausible as soldiers with muskets in their hands stand around and do nothing so that a scientist can trounce them. The jokes made me smile at best. In general, the show is unambitious; we get few surprises or intriguing moments. When Mari's time travel control device malfunctions and she finds herself left behind in the distant past, you just know that everything will work out fine and nothing is at risk--and that the manner in which things work out fine won't be all that thrilling. Progress towards making sense of this time travel business is slow, and when things do come to a climax, it's hard to get excited. The threat that was posed by this mysterious organization turns out to be pretty underwhelming; I didn't get a sense that all that much was at risk. Nobody is seriously injured in the course of the series. But I did watch it all the way to the end (one of only three anime of the lacklustre Summer 2016 season that can make that claim), because the lessons were modestly informative and I did care what would become of Mari and her companions. It was satisfactory, and that's about the highest praise I can offer. If you're not curious about electricity, you would probably be wise to skip TTS. Last updated Thursday, November 17 2016. Created Monday, July 11 2016. | ||||||||
