You spend the first half watching a girl waste time travel on trivial high school nonsense, and it's so achingly ordinary that you forget what she's actually doing. Then the movie stops letting her get away with it, and every small thing she changed starts coming back as something she can't fix. The whole point is that time travel doesn't matter, what matters is learning to live with your choices instead of erasing them.

Makoto Konno is a 17-year-old in her final year of high school, unsure what to do with her future and spending her days with her two best friends, Chiaki and Kousuke. Her ordinary life shatters the moment she discovers she can leap backward through time. At first, the ability feels like a gift. It saves her life, keeps her from being late, and lets her know the answers to surprise quizzes. But when she starts using it to dodge personal trouble with her friends, things grow complicated and painful, and the power she took for granted becomes a burden.