ABSTRACT
Japanese anime contains a rich time travel tradition, and within the genre are many stories linking the act of time travel to gender and gendering as represented by texts such as The Girl Who Leapt Through Time [Toki wo Kakeru Shōjo] (2006), Puella Magi Madoka Magica [Mahō Shōjo Madoka Magika] (2011), Your Name (2016), and Mirai [Mirai no Mirai] (2018). Each of these texts make explorations of gender and traumatic memory central to journeys through time. In addition, the medium of anime itself serves as its own time machine through structuring elements of editing and cinematography that allow the spectator to travel along the strands of time with characters. In these stories, the gendered body, often in the form of the shōjo, becomes divorced from limited conceptions of binary gender and instead appears as a multiplicity when caught in the act of time travel. This chapter thus aims to investigate how time travel in anime ruptures imagined spaces of stability via gendered bodies and cultural modes of remembering.
