I don’t even know what to say…

This movie went so far beyond my expectations that I have a headache just thinking about how I can possibly convey what this movie made me feel in mere words.

Back when the first chapter of Byousoku 5cm was released, I criticized it for belittling the theme of distance. And while I still stand by that assertion when isolating the first chapter, the movie as a whole changed that notion completely. It was VERY well done.

Oukashou

Toono Takaki and Shinohara Akari transferred into elementary school around the same time and shared many things in common. As a result, the two quickly became friends, spending so much time together that the rest of the kids began teasing them for acting like a couple.

Unfortunately, Akari learns that she’ll be moving away after the graduating from elementary. Despite the sadness he could hear in Akari’s voice as she told him this, and his own pain from hearing the news, the harsh reality is that they are both powerless in this situation.

Flash forward to a year later, the two have been keeping in touch by mailing letters back and forth. And since it’s been quite a while, they decide to meet in person. In preparation, Takaki writes a long letter that he thinks conveys all his feelings. However, the journey to meet Akari is disastrous, due to heavy snowfall, train after train is delayed as the time they agreed to meet fades distantly away, and to make things worse, a gust of wind blows away the letter he painstakingly wrote for Akari.

By the time Takaki gets there, it’s 11:15 p.m., way past the 7:00 p.m. time they set. But much to his surprise, Akari is still there in the cold of the train station, waiting for him. The two eat dinner together and go for a walk, stopping under a sakura tree where their feelings are summed up with a kiss. They talk the night away in a small shed before separating once again at the train station, promising to stay in touch with e-mails and phone calls all the while knowing that they may never see each other again with Takaki moving away farther than a train ride could hope to cover. As the train speeds Takaki away, Akari grabs a letter out of her pocket, one that she had written to Takaki, but probably figured it wasn’t needed after what they’ve been through together.

Cosmonaut

Ever since that day that he transferred into her middle school, Sumita Kanae has been in love with Toono Takaki. She studies hard and manages to get accepted into the same high school as Takaki, and enjoys every day she spends with him, even though sometimes it can be a little tough. Despite her friends telling her that he probably has a girlfriend back in Tokyo and she should spend more time thinking about her future, she can’t get Takaki off her mind.

The two of them are actually close friends, Kanae often goes to school early in the morning to greet Takaki in the archery club and waits after class is over to ride home with him after his afternoon practice. Despite their friendship, Kanae can’t bring herself to confess as she always sees him sending e-mails with his cell phone with a nostalgic smile on his face. Seeing this, she can’t help but feel a little saddened that it’s not her that he’s mailing and that her friends might be right, that he has a girlfriend back in Tokyo.

One day, Takaki doesn’t show up after school at his usual time, so Kanae decides to go home alone. On the way there, she notices Takaki’s scooter parked on a hillside and decides to check it out. Sure enough, Takaki is lounging on the hill, cell phone in hand with that same nostalgic smile on his face. When he sees Kanae he invites her over to talk. They end up discussing where they plan to go to university, Takaki having already decided on Tokyo and Kanae still having no idea what she wants to do after high school. But nevertheless she builds up her resolution and vows to do what she can.

Introduced by her sister, Kanae’s hobby is surfing, but she’s not very good at it. One day she manages to successfully ride a wave, something that she’s never been able to before. Taking it as a good omen, she builds up her courage and decides to confess her love to Takaki. On their usual stop at the convenience store, Kanae’s scooter breaks down on her so the two decide to walk the rest of the way home. Despite the ideal chance, Kanae can’t bring herself to confess, and ends up breaking into tears, frustrated. Just as Takaki asks her what’s wrong, their attention is diverted by a shuttle taking off into space.

Seeing the look in Takaki’s eyes, Kanae gives up on her plan to confess to him. She knows it’s true, that Takaki has someone else he loves, the one he’s always mailing. The look in his eyes that very moment and all the times she’s seen him smiling happily at his cell phone is not something that Kanae can compete with, no matter how hard she tries, Takaki will never look at her with those same eyes.

Byousoku 5 Centimeter

Takaki passes a girl on a set of train tracks and mistakes her for Akari, only to have her disappear behind a passing train when he looks back.

The years have flown by and Takaki is a grown man in the working world. After leaving Kanae behind, he went to school in Tokyo and the two drifted apart, he’s also lost contact with Akari, who is now engaged to another man. But even though they are walking different paths in life, the two can’t help but keep each other in the back of their minds.

Most likely in a moment of weakness, Takaki seems to have started dating a woman he met through his work. But he doesn’t really have any feelings for her and soon starts to ignore her calls and e-mails, much to her dismay.

Having found the letter that she meant to give Takaki all those years ago, Akari has a dream of the past on an all too familiar train ride. The dream shows Takaki and Akari in the process of growing up, the excitement of running to the post office to mail each other letters and get them in return. But slowly the letters became more and more scarce and the two drifted apart. Though many times the two thought they may have spotted each other on a train platform or walking down the street, they never met face to face after that one night many years ago.

But life moves on, no matter who you’ve met in the past and the troubles you face in the future, time continues to pass by. As Takaki crosses a familiar looking set of train tracks and sees a cherry blossom tree in full blossom, he remembers the girl he once loved and smiles as he remembers she once told him the speed at which a sakura petal falls is Five Centimeters per Second.

Thoughts

First off, let me say this. Screw you Makoto Shinkai! Screw you and your amazing movie that brought back painful memories that I thought I had let go forever.

I’m sure I’m not the only one, but I had an experience similar to Takaki’s. A long distance relationship that started out great but ended up in failure. Even though we were only hours apart, neither of us had the means to visit each other on a regular basis. So we only managed to meet in person once every few months, and even though the wait made the meetings all the more precious, parting ways knowing it would be a while until the next time we met was a painful experience. We kept in touch through e-mails and msn, but there came a point where we both subconsciously decided it was no longer worth it. As the time passed we started talking less and less and it’s now at the point where it’s a miracle if I hear from her every year.

I knew the movie was going to dig up these emotions after seeing the first chapter, but I was doing well in keeping it together. That is until the final minutes when One More Time, One More Chance exploded into the musical foreground and the montage of their past rolled by. At that point I lost it and broke down like a three year old girl into a fit of tears.

But I digress, this isn’t myspace or livejournal, I’ll cut the story there. I just wanted to mention it as evidence of how powerful this movie was.

My original criticisms of the first chapter were based around the fact that the distance between Akari and Takaki wasn’t very overpowering. A couple hours on a train isn’t such a bother that they should have waited a year to meet up, even if they were only middle schoolers at the time.

But ignoring that small gripe, the rest of the movie was freaking awesome in its story. The idealistic feeling that Akari and Takaki would meet again and pick up where they left off that ends up causing pain to the third party Kanae was wonderfully conveyed. I’m not going to label Takaki as a typical dense male lead in that he wasn’t able to see Kanae’s feelings, he probably knew, but just cared so much for Akari that he shut out all possibility of hurting her.

That having been said, I felt a lot of sympathy for Kanae, who was desperately chasing after Takaki knowing that she would never be in his sights. Not only was going to the same university as him a hopeless endeavor for someone with such little motivation, the look in his eyes when he was mailing Akari was something she was powerless to fight against. It would have been nice to see what became of her after the timeskip though, rather than only seeing her crying as Takaki flew off to Tokyo.

I’m also really happy how they handled the ending. Shinkai is known for his sad, or at best bittersweet, endings, and Byousoku 5cm was no different. His choice to not have a happy ending for the AkariXTakaki couple came off very realistically. With all these melancholic endings, makes you wonder what kind of love life Shinkai had in his own childhood XD

Life is not such a romantic that you’re able to rekindle a relationship after years of the flame weakening. That was perfectly conveyed when everyone became adults, even though they were in a position where they could meet without much problem, and even though they still had lingering feelings for each other, the distance between them has grown so much that they are little more than a memory in the back of each others minds.

The overall message of this movie isn’t your typical “love conquers all”, but rather that there are many encounters to be had in life, and love doesn’t always happen on your first try. But that’s not to say that it’s a pessimistic ending, not at all, a broken heart will heal and the experience will last a life time. What makes all the difference is your ability to accept what has happened, learn from it and move on towards the future.

I don’t think I have to vouch for the technical aspects of Shinkai’s works. Anyone who has seen any of his work will know that everything is painstakingly detailed and smoothly animated. Regardless of how many times I see his work, the backgrounds that Shinkai manages to come up with impress me as much as the first time I laid eyes on them.

The soundtrack is also top notch. The moving piano solos add a great deal of emotion during critical scenes and the diverse range makes them feel uplifting yet sad at the same time. And then there’s One More Time, One More Chance, a song I heard was written in memory of a deceased girlfriend and originally used for a 1996 movie of the same title. This is the song that combined with the montage of the characters’ pasts and the recollection of my own, brought me to tears. An amazing piece.

I don’t think there’s much more I can say about this movie, you have to watch it to truly understand how everything comes together to create such a wonderful experience, even more so if you can identify and sympathize with the characters.

In fact, the only complaints I have with the movie as a whole is the unrealistic portrayal of the cosmos and the nigh impossible trajectory that Kanae’s paper airplane took.

EDIT* Actually, upon a rewatch, I felt that the characters could have used a lot more development. For the simple overlying theme of “moving on”, the character development was adequate. But I couldn’t help but think “This would have been so much more awesome if we had been able to get to know the characters better”. But they got the point across and I guess that’s what counts. Still an amazing work of art.

Side Note: Takaki has the same mouse as I do! The MX Revolution, such a great mouse, especially when you’re using it with Vista. Kind of sucks for gaming though, which is why I keep my mx518 out to swap to when needed. Takaki has a better monitor than I do though, damn 30″ apple display, that thing is beautiful.

~ Shirukii ~