It would be beautiful to have a historical timeline for the graph animation, and to be able to interact with it.
Here’s how I envision it.
When you launch the graph animation mode, you see the timeline at the bottom of the screen, with gradations for days, months and years, with a slider indicating where you currently are.
Above the timeline you have some playback options: Play, Stop, Pause, Rewind Forward/Backward.
You can interact with the slider. You can drag it around, and jump to any point on the timeline at any time.