Qian Xiao is a young girl from a fishing village and is bored out of her mind. She claims that there’s nothing to do and time crawls at a snail’s pace on the island because of it. The village is visited by supply ships once a year and is Qian Xiao’s only source of entertainment apart from the old man who takes care of her.
The two of them live in a shack on the beach and don’t have much, but the old man used to work in film and still owns a bunch of film stock that he carries around in film cans. The old man and Qian Xiao watch black-and-white films every night with the rest of the village.
One day, after the supply and merchant ships are about to leave for another year, Qian Xiao sneaks onto one of them. She has always dreamed of making it to the big city. But the ship crashes and Qian Xiao falls into the ocean. She accidentally discovers a relic known as the Time Dial and can now control time.
An assassin known as Seventeen works for the Zuo Clan and is trying to get out. He’s on a mission to retrieve the Time Dial as his final mission, but loses it before he’s able to bring it back. He crosses paths with Qian Xiao and agrees with her to bring the Time Dial back to the Zuo Clan after 24 hours.
The Girl Who Stole Time, also known as Endless Journey of Love, is a Chinese computer-animated fantasy film. It begins as this grand adventure and slowly blossoms into a romance. The old man, whom Qian Xiao calls Grandfather, found Qian Xiao on the beach three years prior with no memory. Visually, the film looks a lot like KPop Demon Hunters, where all the characters have really slender designs and the animation is incredibly colorful.
With the 24 hours that Qian Xiao has the Time Dial, she intends to make a movie in the big city. They stumble onto a quirky director named Amu, who has the most ridiculous facial expressions and some of the most inhuman posture and body language that you’ve ever seen. Amu, as well as the Wheel of Time Guardian, are the two main sources of comic relief in the film.
The film takes some unexpected turns in its storytelling. What begins as a young girl being bored, wanting something to do, and a selfish assassin seeing a way out for himself becomes something genuine. The Girl Who Stole Time is rather silly and lighthearted until its second half. The film throws an interstellar-level twist into its finale that packs an emotional wallop. The film’s other title, Endless Journey of Love, reveals a bit more, but the film capitalizes on what a time loop refers to.
The animation in The Girl Who Stole Time is impressive. The film shines whenever Qian Xiao controls time, as these gold swirls, seemingly made of the sands of time, dance around every time control sequence. The slender characters are often rubbery when they’re in motion, like when they run. The choreography is intriguing, too, because the action is so smooth and the fights showcase action in a way that is both easy to digest and entertaining.
The few issues with the film reside in the story and the character development. Qian Xiao is forever bored with everything, no matter the circumstance, and is annoying because of it. Even when she can control time and gets to the big city, she complains about not being satisfied. The relationship between her and Seventeen is odd, too. It begins out of convenience and blossoms into more solely because they’re around each other for a long period.
The Girl Who Stole Time is a magical, creative, and vividly innovative time-traveling adventure. The animation is smoothly satisfying, and the ending circles back in a way that overshadows any flaw the film may have.
