Summer Time Machine Blues

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  • Movie: Summer Time Machine Blues
  • Romaji: Samâ taimumashin burûsu
  • Japanese: サマータイムマシン・ブルース
  • Director: Katsuyuki Motohiro
  • Writer: Makoto Ueda
  • Producer:
  • Cinematographer:
  • Release Date: September 3, 2005
  • Runtime: 107 min.
  • Language: Japanese
  • Country: Japan

Plot

It began as just another hot midsummer day August 19, 2005. Five male members of the Sci-Fi Research Club play baseball on a university campus field in the sweltering heat. They are Shunsuke Koizumi (Daijiro Kawaoka), Takuma Komoto (Eita), Yuu Niimi (Yoshiaki Yoza), Daigo Ishimatsu (Tsuyoshi Muro) and Jun Soga (Munenori Nagano). As they hurl wild pitches at each other, mishandle simple grounders and repeatedly whiff at the ball, Yui Itoh (Yoko Maki) of the photography club tries in vain to capture the boys in Pulitzer Prize-quality action photos. Nearby, stray dog and club mascot, Kecha, pokes around the field looking for something to dig up. When an errant baseball goes sailing into the stone statue of a local pagan deity at the edge of the field, the boys decide to call it quits for fear of angering the gods.

Summer Time Machine Blues
The gang returns to their air-conditioned Sci-Fi Research Club, which serves more as a cluttered graveyard for scrapped toys, games and trinkets than a laboratory for science fiction research. In the back room, another photography club member, Haruka Shibata (Juri Ueno), busily prepares for the club upcoming photo exhibit by developing poorly composed close-up shots of Sci-Fi Research Club faculty advisor and assistant professor, Jose Hozumi (Kuranosuke Sasaki). With wash basins and towels in hand, the five young men head to the local public bath. During the course of their ablutions, one of them, Niimi, notices to his horror that someone has stolen his precious Vidal Sassoon shampoo! When the five boys leave the bath house, Niimi continues to stew about his shampoo while Ishimatsu parts with the rest so he can cycle into town and find more fun clutter for the club house. Komoto, too, runs off to buy two advance movie tickets, which he hopes he can use to entice out Haruka, on whom he has a secret crush. But when he returns to the Lab, he finds everybody waiting for him and expecting him to perform a dance bare naked! Are you really going through with this? one of them asks. This ought to be good! blurts another. Something strange is going on. As an utterly perplexed Komoto tries hard to fathom the situation, Koizumi swings his arms in excitement only to cause someone behind him to spill cola all over the air conditioner remote. The weirdness is only beginning.

A time machine from nowhere!

It just past noon the next day, August 20th, and the sun rays beat mercilessly down on the world below. The boys sit lethargically in a room bereft of air conditioning, languishing in the humidity as cicadas buzz mockingly outside. The only way to turn on the air-conditioner is with the remote, but that is now broken and in the hands of their advisor, Hozumi. Little do the boys know that he has already pulverized the device in a fit of frustration. Meanwhile, Komoto finds a moment of privacy with Haruka and tries to invite her to a movie. But in a reprise of the odd events of yesterday, she reluctantly refuses him for a reason that leaves him completely befuddled. I can't do that to your girlfriend, she responds sadly as she leaves. What girlfriend? Komoto mutters. Everyone returns to the club room to find a strange young man with mushroom haircut standing there. Is this the Sci-Fi Research Club? he asks. Yes who are you? The young man grows panicky and bolts out of the room. Shrugging it off as just another geek interested in joining the club, the boys prepare to go about their ordinary business of goofing off when suddenly they spot a metal object in the corner of the room. Equipped with a chair and various dials, they surmise it a time machine. Someone idea of a joke? Maybe that mushroom-headed geek left it.

Soga gets on the machine and jokingly tries it out. But the split second he lowers the lever, he is bathed in a bright warping light and vanishes into thin air! The rest of the gang stands flabbergasted. As they start a search for their missing colleague, the light returns and a horrified looking Soga re-materializes. Is this today? he screams as he scrambles off the machine. He tells the others that he has just traveled back in time to exactly 24 hours ago where he saw himself and the rest playing baseball outside. His story is then verified by Yui Itoh when she produces a photograph she had taken the day before which captures Soga peering out from the building doorway. That would meanthe time machine is real! The group reexamine the machine and sees that it can only travel forwards or backwards up to a maximum of 99 years. Everyone agrees they don't want to see the future so they decide to test the machine out by traveling back to yesterday, again, with the simple objective of bringing back the not-yet-broken air-conditioner remote. Though only built for one passenger, Niimi, Koizumi and Ishimatsu crowd onto the machine and vanish. Will altering the past destroy the future?

The three boys arrive to see themselves playing baseball the previous day, and begin congratulating each other on their time-traveling success. They spot the remote control unit, still pristine and intact. They grab it and prepare to leave but are gripped by an overwhelming desire to stick around and have some fun. They decide to tail their past selves, unnoticed, to the public bath house. Meanwhile, back in the present, the rest of the group grows worried. What taking them so long? It is then that the stranger with the mushroom haircut returns and introduces himself as Tamura (Chikara Honda), a Sci-Fi Research Club member from 25 years in the future, who also arrived at the building one summer day in 2030 to find the time machine just sitting there. Where is it, by the way? asks Tamura. I should probably be getting back. Komoto and the rest of the gang sheepishly apologize for the machine temporary absence and decide to give their fellow future alum a tour of the town in the meantime. Tamura is surprised to see how little the town will change over 25 years but comments that the local movie theater, which was frequented by his mother - also a graduate of the school - is now a convenience store. When asked if he'd like to see her, Tamura jokes, Better not. It might discourage her from wanting children and alter the future. Everyone has a good laugh until they begin to seriously ponder the ramifications of that observation. Will changing the past change the present and future as well? Overhearing their conversation is their advisor, Hozumi, who after years of specializing in the study of Einstein relativity theory has concluded that time travel is impossible. Even if it were possible, which it isn't, he asserts, altering the past would result in paradoxes causing the destruction of everything. The group rushes back to the club in a panic only to find the time machine waiting for them with a note pinned to it reading: Hurry and join us! Komoto and Soga board the machine with a new mission - to set things back to the way they were before they wipe themselves and everyone out of existence!

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