時をかける少女

A classic teen novel about time travel

時をかける少女 is a short sci-fi novel about a middle school student who accidentally becomes able to jump through time and space, and ends up living the same day over again. It was originally serialized in young adult magazines in the 1960s, and has been adapted many times for TV and film, most notably as an anime film in 2006.

It's not too difficult for a language learner, but I would say it's too tough for someone at an N5 or N4 level. The green 角川つばさ文庫 edition has full furigana. The chapters are easily digestible at only 5 pages each. There are a couple of chapters near the end that dump a lot of new vocab on you, because it's explaining the sci-fi shenanigans that have been going on, but if you brace yourself and keep a dictionary handy you'll get through it. I found some sentences a bit tough to grok at first glance, typically due to a grammar point I didn't immediately identify, so checking the WaniKani book club threads was very useful and highly recommended.

The story isn't bad, but if you go in with high expectations you're bound to be disappointed. It's more of a mystery than a thriller, it's too short to have much room for character development, and the denouement is somewhat underwhelming; despite that, I really like the last chapter. It's a popular story not because it's the greatest book written, but because it has a fundamentally interesting premise that is easily adapted to other media, and has been widely influential on the genre over the past 50+ years (in Japan, at least).

Even though I liked it well enough and don't regret reading it, I'm not sure who I would recommend this book to. It's not quite easy enough for me to recommend it to absolute beginners, and it's not compelling enough to recommend to most other readers, unless you're super into time travel stories I suppose.

If you're reading the green 角川つばさ文庫 version, the book includes three extra short stories by the author, which I enjoyed and think are worth reading. They are:

• 時の女神
• 姉弟
• きつね