In recent years, Chinese theatrical animation has been growing in leaps and bounds, not simply in terms of popularity – Ne Zha 2 is the highest-grossing film of the year to date – but also in quality. Tienan Zhou and Ao Yu’s The Girl Who Stole Time is an absolute knock-out of a film, combining action, comedy, and fantasy with a strong set of characters, a confidently clever narrative, and a stunning visual aesthetic. I think it may be the finest Chinese animated film I have seen to date.

Qian Xiao is a young woman scavenging on an island fishing village, who aspires to travel to a nearby city. Once there, misadventure hands her a magical amulet that enables her to stop time from running around her. While she revels in her newfound abilities, it is not long before she is under threat from forces that crave the amulet’s powers for themselves. She appears to receive aid from a man named Seventeen – but he seems to be on the hunt for the so-called “time dial” as well.

There is a painterly quality to The Girl Who Stole Time, despite its CGI trappings, and a visual style that resembles a combination of latter-day Square Enix fantasy games and certain manga like Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. It is a look that finds a distinctiveness of its own, despite its influences, and allows the film to find its own place when so many of its contemporaries feel like sub-standard anime. Animation is, far more than live-action film, a visual medium; the attractiveness counts for a lot.

The central positioning of a driven, smart female protagonist inside a well-realised and consistent world – there is a general 1930s setting, give or take – is inevitably going to draw comparisons to Japan’s Miyazaki Hayao, who typically foregrounds very similar characters in most of his work. While the  comparison can easily be made, I think it undersells all of the filmmakers involved. The Girl Who Stole Time ultimately lacks the intricate attention to detail that separates Miyazaki from the crowd, while the slightly more action-oriented style by Tienan and Ao ensures their film stands up on its own merits.

Tienan and Ao direct a more complex story as well, one that starts feeling straight-forward and simple but then evolves and expands as Qian Xiao’s journey goes on. They shift back and forth in terms of tone as well: originally quite bright and humorous, the film grows surprisingly mature and dark in places, then urgent and intense, and even deeply romantic and soulful.

For me the film’s master stroke is its inclusion of early 20th century film: particularly the technology and techniques of the time. By drawing comparisons between how the time dial affects the flow of time, and how cinema represents and manipulates it, The Girl Who Stole Time achieves a whole extra level of resonance and effect. As the film progresses, it also begins to play with our concepts of time as well. This is genuinely clever stuff, engaging a more mature audience while entertaining an all-ages market with comedy and adventure.

We still have two months to go, and there are many films from earlier in the year with which I need to catch up on, but honestly this is as confident a bid for 2025’s best animated feature than I have seen.