The movie is about a mother and a daughter team going back in a time machine the mother invented to 1990 when Japan was experiencing an economic bubble.
The year is 2007 and Japan's national debt is rising above 8 trillion yen. Isao Shimokawaji (Hiroshi Abe) sees that Japan will be bankrupt in 2 years. He learns that his ex girlfriend Mariko (Hiroko Yakushimaru) has accidentally invented a time machine while designing a front loading washing machine. He asks her to go back to March of 1990 when the Japanese government announced a tightening of real estate transactions (which triggered the collapse of the bubble economy) to stop the passing of this law. She obliges, but has lost contact after she gets there. Shimokawaji then asks Mariko's daughter Mayumi (Ryoko Hirosue) to follow her mother to investigate what happened. Mayumi is sent back to 1990, and contacts Shimokawaji of that era. He of course doesn't know who she is, but together they gradually find out their true relationship, where her mother is, and what was the true intention behind the passing of the law.
There is another famous Japanese time travel movie called "Girl who leaped through time", but this is done with different take on how people react when they become time travelers. Two women are sent back in time, but their reaction to the trip are completely different. Somehow the daughter convinces Shimokawaji to buy into her plan by giving him enough evidence to show that she really is from the future.
While situations are exploited to their max to get the comical effect, the writer of this story was probably seeing a more serious side to his story. This can be seen where Shimokawaji of 1990 express to Mayumi, "Then the people 17 years from now are feeling that Japan is no longer a good country, with no bright prospects for its future." and Mayumi replies "I don't know, but the future you seems to think so.". This probably sums up the feeling of Japanese people in 2007.
The culprit of the economic collapse in this movie was not accidental, but was planned by greedy international bankers, and investment bankers who had deep connections in the Japanese government.
Although there're no proof to this, but it is no secret that one of the first western envoy to Japan, Thomas Grubber was a Freemason, and although they've financed Satsuma, and Choshu clan in the Meiji reform, it failed to have the kind of effect they had in the Russian revolution. It's also no secret that most of the Japanese prime ministers were masons like Shigeru Yoshida who's adopted family was Japanese outpost of the British East India company, and the grandfather of recent prime minister Yukio Hatoyama was a grand mason of the Japanese lodge. Its plausible that such grand scheme is not without its purpose, and complete economic control of the country might indeed have been part of its agenda. Otherwise events like the recent theft of 2.4 trillion yen by Ichiro Ozawa doesn't make much sense. This is way too much money for any one person's need to live well for himself.
So the movie while kept light hearted, has many facets to its story, and is a very entertaining piece.
This is a great movie, and is highly recommended for viewing for all audiences.
