Qian Xiao grew up in a quiet fishing village, but she’s never wanted a peaceful life. She wants out, and when she spots a supply boat heading to the mainland, she sneaks aboard without a plan.
Midway through the trip, a freighter slams into the ship, tossing Qian into the sea. Miraculously, she wakes up on the shore of the mainland. She’s wearing a strange pendant, the Time Dial. It lets her stop time, making it look like she is jumping from one spot to the next. She doesn’t understand how it works. She just knows it does. And people want it.
A gang of criminals starts hunting her, and they send Seventeen, a cold, efficient assassin, to take the pendant and clean up the mess. But once Seventeen crosses paths with Qian, things don’t go according to plan, for either of them.
Now Qian’s fighting to stay steps ahead, figure out the full potential of the Dial, and survive long enough to decide what kind of life she wants, if she gets that choice at all.
Scriptwriters Yu Ao and Zhou Tienan make their directorial debut with The Girl Who Stole Time, an animated adventure full of fantasy and, of course, romance. You don’t create a story about a girl who meets a boy and they have an adventure together, and there is no romance. That is just classic storytelling. If there isn't some romance in the mix, you dropped the ball on that one.
With a background in comedy, their movie is funny. It’ll make you laugh, but it also poses a significant risk of making you cry at the end. Not going to lie, we were welling up at the end, darned their emotional script. The script has a lot of fun with the premise of stopping time. As a friendship develops between Qian and Seventeen (following the rules of animated fantasy and adventure stories, we’re not giving away anything you won’t have already presumed yourself was going to happen), any and all threats just bring them closer together.
Considerable dramatic developments late in the story are where this film begins its tug-of-war with your heartstrings. By then, you’re all in, you’re fully committed to finding out what happens between these two. What a skillfully laid trap these two writers/directors have made. Apart from that, what a joy it was to watch this story unfold before our eyes.
On the technical side, The Girl Who Stole Time is a marvel. The animation is top level stuff, incredible really, when you reflect on it. The character animation can feel a bit stiff during expressive movements, but the action is so dynamic, the camera has no choice but to be a part of the action, zooming in and out, swinging to and fro, all with breakneck speed. At times, it can be dizzying and delirious, but this film is not short of energy, that is for sure. The action with the camera in this movie is wildly impressive.
Supporting characters are where a considerable effort is made in their design, which helps your main characters stand out in their normal appearance. Supporting characters are usually where the humor and the threats come from, so a hermit at the top of a mountain who guards the Time Dial is short, stubby with wild hair, while goons from the gang of criminals stand tall or have the body type like that of train freight cars.
The action on screen is fantastic, switching from car chases, foot races, and punching faces. All this action, combined with those wild camera actions described earlier, makes these set pieces more thrilling to watch. The team makes full use of the endless digital space and near lack of physical boundaries, doing things you simply cannot do in real life.
This story about a girl and a boy and the discovery that there is never enough time, despite being able to control it on a whim, is joyous and heartbreaking. It is not hard to see, and feel, why The Girl Who Stole Time won the Satoshi Kon for Excellence in Animation Competition 2025 at this year’s festival.