My Tomorrow, Your Yesterday 2016

On February 15, Takatoshi Minamiyama, a 20-year-old visual arts undergraduate and sharp-witted satirist in Kyoto, experiences love at first sight when he meets Emi Fukuju on a train bound for college. After a somewhat awkward first meeting, the two promise to meet again in the days that follow. With the help of his friend, Masahiro Higashide (the role of Shoichi Ueyama), Takatoshi asks Emi on a date, and by the end of that date, he confesses his love.

Takatoshi grows convinced that Emi is somehow different. She seems to predict events that will happen to him, and she bursts into tears when he does something kind for her. She also avoids spending time with him after midnight. After the two become intimate on March 1, Takatoshi discovers Emi’s journal left deliberately on the table. The pages read as if she is racing through time in reverse: the first page is dated March 16, and the last February 15.

Emi then reveals a startling truth: she is a being from a world where time runs backwards; what humans perceive as the future she has already experienced as her past, and vice versa. She has been watching Takatoshi from afar since he was a child; she was the adult woman who rescued him from drowning when he was five. Because her memories fade as time moves backward, she keeps a journal to remind her of him. She also explains that they can only be together for a month every five years, and because Takatoshi is 20, this month is the last time their ages align for a relationship.

Takatoshi wrestles with the sense that their relationship might be fake, but he is encouraged by his friend to pursue it regardless. On March 16, the final day they can be equals, Takatoshi sketches Emi. The two then wait for the day to pass at the train station where they first met, after which Emi disappears.

Five years later, Takatoshi reencounters a 15-year-old Emi and returns her sketch. A further ten years pass, and Takatoshi comes to rescue 5-year-old Emi from a festival fire. The film closes with a montage presented from Emi’s backward perspective, concluding with the moment they first meet on February 15 and ending on her last day when they can meet as equals.