The Time Traveler (film)

The Time Traveler (タイムトラベラー, Taimutoraberā) is a 2006 animated romance drama science fiction film based on the 1997 manga series by Ryotaro Sekizawa, who co-produced and co-wrote the movie. It was directed by Gorō Taniguchi and co-written by Zak Penn and Akiva Goldsman. It stars the voices of Michael Angarano, Hilary Duff, Dustin Hoffman, Josh Peck, Evan Rachel Wood, Ron Perlman, Martin Landau, Judy Greer, Simon Pegg and Gary Cole. An international co-production between the United States and Japan, The Time Traveler was produced at Tokyo-based animation studio Sunrise for Warner Bros. Pictures, Legendary Pictures, Atmosphere Entertainment MM and The Donners' Company. The film is about a seventeen year boy named Atsushi Maekawa (Angarano), who one day, meets a girl who appeared in a ball of light named Riko Hattori (Hilary Duff), who was sent from the future to his time period to protect him, for something that happened to him led to a chain of events in the future since, and seemingly a fellow student (Rachel Wood) has something to do with it.

The Time Traveler was released in North American theaters on April 21, 2006 and in Japanese theaters on May 27, 2006. It received positive reviews from critics with praise for it's characters, storyline, animation and faithfulness to the source material, and grossed $136.5 million against a budget of $30 million. It was nominated for the Annie Award for Best Animated Feature and the Saturn Award for Best Animated Film, both losing to Cars.

Plot
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Release
The Time Traveler premiered on April 16, 2006, in Westwood, Los Angeles and was released to theaters in the United States on April 21, 2006. It would then be released to Japan on May 27, 2006, with the local branch of Warner Bros. Pictures handling distribution. The Time Traveler was also digitally re-mastered into IMAX format (IMAX DMR) and released in select IMAX theatres around the world.

Home media
The Time Traveler was released on DVD and HD DVD in both full screen and widescreen on July 25, 2006. The film's DVD release proved to be very successful, selling about 478,362 units by July 30, 2006, making it the third best selling DVD release of the week behind The Benchwarmers and Final Destination 3. The DVD release includes a behind the scenes featurette on the film's production, three deleted scecnes, interviews with the voice actors, a featurette profiling Ryotaro Sekizawa, a music video and the movie's theatrical trailer. Warner Home Video later released the film on Blu-ray on February 13, 2007.