Summary

There was a celebration yesterday dedicated to the creator of 5 Centimeters Per Second, Makoto Shinkai. “Shinkai Day” was created by fans his works, such as Voices of a Distant Star, She and Her Cat and The Place Promised in our Early Days. A Fansite dedicated to Shinkai’s works, Cherry Blossoms Falling, arranged the event with the help of the streaming anime video service, Crunchy Roll. Shinkai Day is long over, but I manged to check out 5cm per Second just in time to give it a review.

Review

The film is split into 3 episodes of short stories centering around two characters, Takaki and Akari, who were friends from their early childhood, all the way up to when mid-teens when Akari moves away to a rural part of Japan. The first episode shows how they met until the day Akari moves away. The episode focuses on Takaki who reads Akari’s letters from the day she arrives at her new home up to the anniversary of her moving away. A few letters pass, Takaki writes to her that he also plans to move away, but further away from where she resides now.

Takaki decides to visit her before moving, but during a winter storm, which puts a burden on Takaki as every train he took would run into delays. With each passing minute, Takaki blames himself for considering meeting up with her, especially after losing a letter he written just for her waiting on the last train. A little after midnight, Takaki finally arrives at the station and meets Akari for the first time in a year. They spend the little time they have left until the train station closed for the night reminiscing of the times they had together before heading home the next day.

The second episode is another story involving Takaki and a new girl he meets attending Junior High in the town he moved to from the first episode. Kanae is just your average girl who enjoys surfing and riding her sister’s scooter (seems that scooters are all the rage in that part of Japan, hehe~). She attends the same school as Takaki. As they communicate, she falls deeper and deeper in love with him. But she is afraid of showing him her true feelings, and the fact Takaki acts kindly towards her tears her up even more.

The third and final episode shows an older Takaki who is old enough to be compared to an Hikikomori–with a 9-to-5 job. It seems that after all these years, he still keeps in touch with Akari via Text Messaging. One day, he passes by a girl on the railroad tracks that happens to be reminiscent of the time when they were little… Short, but sweet.

Conclusion

When I first heard about 5 Cm Per Second, I figured it would be a short series–OVA short (12-13 episodes). It turns out to be an 62 minute movie, and a good one at that. Back in 2008, ADV released the movie stateside with an English dub. Unfortunately, further releases of the movie was axed along with other anime series ADV discontinued. For Shinkai Day, it has been re-dubbed by Bang Zoom Entertainment, featuring the voice talent of Johnny Yong Bosch (Ichigo Kurosaki of Bleach) as Tono Takaki.

Overall, it was an awesome film! The art animation is incredible, and the story is pretty straight forward, but there were times when it become confusing. like in Episode 2 where Kanae is introduced; it appeared to have taken an alternate universe route for a moment. It’s worth adding to one’s collection–once it’s re-released.

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