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Review: 5 Centimeters per Second (秒速5センチメートル) (2007)
Oof, okay. I liked this movie. It wasn't a movie strictly about love, but about yearning. I think the movie really came together in the third act; that's when I put the pieces together.
Good movie. Very short, but I see now that it took care in putting its themes together. I'd recommend it for people who like romance :3
Spoilers.
Story
The first part is the story of Takaki and Akari. They grew close due to spending lots of time together and having lots to talk about. Akari moved away and they maintained intermittent correspondences through letters. However, as Takaki was going to move far away, to Kagoshima, he decided to see Akari one last time. He'd written a letter to express his feelings to give to Akari at that time. Due to a huge snowstorm, the trains kept getting delayed and he only met her when it was much later at night, but they did meet. For the two, it was like no time had passed and they spoke and laughed as they always had. As Akari showed Takaki a tree that she often talked about in her letters, they shared a kiss, and then spent the rest of the night huddled together in a shack. Takaki didn't tell Akari that he'd lots the letter written to her, and conversely, we found out that Akari had written a letter to him that she didn't give him either. This is the first instance of withheld love confessions.
My interpretation of the events here was that Takaki's journey through the snow represented what their relationship would be like; they'd always have to make a huge effort just to be together. Here, it's because they're still kids and they have to go where their parents are. So I think Takaki and Akari withheld their love confessions because it just wouldn't be fair, it would be too hard to stay together. That's partially what 5cm/second is supposed to represent, the fact that the trek is so slow.
The second arc of the movie is about Takaki's time in high school, from the point of view of Kanae, a classmate who has a crush on him. She was a obsessed in the sense that she would even pin her future on where Takaki would go, but honestly that is typical teenager behaviour. Kanae built up a lot of courage to confess to Takaki. On the day that would be her confession day, she realized that the reason why Takaki always seemed different from other boys was that his heart was always elsewhere and that his kindness towards her was not the true kindness he wanted to show to a loved one. Kanae went home without confessing her love, and though she understood that Takaki wouldn't like her back, she determined that she'd still love Takaki.
Kanae's crush on Takaki begins to weave the complicated web in this story, where she yearns for Takaki, but later finds out he yearns for someone else. And yet, we find that Takaki isn't actually constantly texting Akari, but no one in particular, so he too is yearning for someone who is not only emotionally but physically far away. However, I think that out of the characters in this movie, Kanae's arc might be the most developmental, in that she understand that she has to go on regardless of unrequited love.
The third arc may be my favourite because of how stark it is and it kind of rounds out the story really well. It featured an adult Takaki and Akari. Takaki was kind of in a rut. He had a job but he wasn't really living. He'd even dated but I think he realized he didn't have feelings for his ex-girlfriend. He was kind of stuck in the past, over that love he never got to see to fruition. For adult Akari, she was engaged to be married to another man. Her thoughts about Takaki were brought up when she found the letter she had written to him all those years ago. Takaki and Akari possibly passed by each other on the train tracks they used to walk across, but while Takaki turned around to look at her, Akari did not.
As you can see, Takaki and Akari are dealing with their feelings very differently. Takaki never let go of them and he's letting them push everything else away from his life. I don't think Akari ever let go of her feelings either, but she's come to accept that some things may never be, and that doesn't mean she should stop her life. I don't think Akari is being cold. I think she was thinking practically. People grow up and grow apart, and she hasn't seen Takaki in forever. They may be strangers. It doesn't mean she doesn't love him anymore, but adult Akari has to deal with different problems from child Akari.
However, I think this is an ambiguous ending. Based on my description above, you may think that Takaki will continue living in his rut (though he did quit his job that he hated) and that Akari will get married and move on with her life. But the movie is called 5 centimeters per second. Maybe, they are still moving slowly towards each other. Maybe Takaki quitting his job and learning to live for himself first is what he needs to get better. Akari may still get married but...we know that not all marriages are completely happy. Maybe some day down the road, middle aged Takaki and middle aged Akari will meet each other again, this time at the right times in their life. I think the title is meant to give us a bit of hope.
Production
My biggest impression of this movie is that it's a quiet one, which I liked. Not a lot of music, a lot of thinking time.
I didn't like the drawing that much. Especially in the child phases of the characters' lives, I felt that the characters' faces were kind of flat and non-three dimensional, if that makes sense. I much preferred the drawings for the adult characters. Their faces felt more..."touchable."
That being said, the animation was still good. The colouring and lighting were good and gave detail to fill the quiet space.
The voice acting was good too. Again, I think the voices chosen accentuated the quiet and calm tone of the movie, even if it's supposed to be heartwrenching.
Characters
Tohno Takaki
Technically I think he's the main character, but I think I'd like to say that this movie had an ensemble cast. But Takaki is the character that weaves the story together.
As a youngster, he fell in love with Akari without knowing it. All they did was talk about books, dinosaurs, random facts, etc. It was wonderful and lovely. And when Akari moved away, a part of his heart had gone away too. And he must have realized this, since he wrote the confession letter to her. Unfortunately, he lost the letter, but even then, he didn't confess to Akari, sensing that it wasn't right to do so after it took such a labourious trek to get to her.
As a teenager, Takaki seemed different to Kanae, and that's what attracted her to him. Of course, he was nice, pleasant, everything you'd hope to see in a guy. However, it's easy to see that his pleasantness is just politeness. Takaki had just grown up and learned how to show a side to him that would help him fit in with society without others getting nosy in his business. I'm not sure what exactly it was that made Kanae realize (after the satellite is shot into space) that Takaki was focused elsewhere, but after she realized that, everything made so much more sense. He was distant because he in fact was always focused elsewhere, and his politeness was just him trying to push others away and to get off his back.
However, when we find out more about Takaki at this age, we see that he isn't quite deeply and madly in love with Akari, but rather, just extremely lonely. We thought he was always texting Akari, but he was just writing texts to himself and then deleting them. Maybe he loved Akari because that was the last time he felt not alone while being himself. As a teenager, people have expectations for love. Kanae wanted to date him, but with dating comes with certain dating rituals that Takaki probably didn't want, not with someone he never really spoke that much with. Compare how quiet he is with Kanae compared to how chatty he always was with Akari. But of course it can be argued that Takaki is just making an effort to be distant. It's a cycle and it's messy. You can't blame one thing or another.
As an adult, Takaki becomes even more of a mess, but he seems more sure about his feelings for Akari. He stops answering the texts from his ex-girlfriend Mizuno, though I think Mizuno doesn't quite realize why it is that Takaki was distant with her. When Takaki passes by the person he thinks is adult Akari on the train tracks, he thinks that she'll turn around and look back at him. When he doesn't, I think that's what makes him decide to quit his job and start fresh. And perhaps that might be what leads him back to Akari, at 5cm/second.
I think Takaki is the story of someone who is deeply in love and lets it ruin him.
Takaki's name has the kanji for tree in it, and I thought of that when Akari showed him the tree that she talked about in her letters. Perhaps Takaki is a tree who is finding it difficult to change his roots.
Shinohara Akari
Akari is the other half of our star-crossed pair. As we saw in the first arc, she had also kept her letter from Takaki, though she had the chance to give it to him. I think perhaps she saw how much work it took for Takaki to come see her, and perhaps she felt that it wouldn't be fair to him to burden him with her feelings if he was going to go even further away.
After Takaki left in the morning, it seemed that they didn't keep in touch. We had thought that Takaki was constantly texting Akari, but he was texting no one. They probably hadn't exchanged letters in their teenage years either.
We only saw Akari again as an adult, engaged to be married. She had found her old letter to Takaki and had also had a dream about him. I think that to some degree, Akari yearned for Takaki because they never really got closure. But I also believe Akari is in love with the man she is to be married. Just because she loved Takaki once upon a time doesn't mean that she can't still live him now, as well as her fiance.
Akari is an example of someone who has gotten over a love for practical reasons. She hadn't kept in touch with Takaki after he moved to Kagoshima and presumably she looked to her nearby connections and that's how she fell in love with her fiance.
I don't think that Akari is necessarily rejecting her love for Takaki. I think she just realized that just because the journey to Takaki is long (and may possibly never end), that she can't get help along the way. She needs to be the best version of herself, and maybe receiving love from others is how she gets there. I also think it's a reasonable interpretation that she is still deeply in love with Takaki and that her fiance is just a replacement, but judging by how good she was at compartmentalizing, I think she's handling this in a healthy way.
Sumida Kanae
Kanae was a classmate who was in love with Takaki. She waited for him every day by the bike rack so that they could go home together. She thought he was kind and gentle, and he was. He was very considerate. Kanae was crazy about Takaki and her friends knew too.
However, her crush on Takaki was kind of a problem because the rest of her life was struggling a bit. She had trouble choosing what to do after high school because she wanted to do what Takaki did. She was a surfer and she was having trouble with surfing because of her life problems.
She spoke with Takaki, who told her that he was just taking life day by day. I think the way we could interpret that from Takaki's side was that he was just trusting that little by little, he'd naturally make his way back to Akari, but it was just a very lonely process to get there. For Kanae, I think she interpreted that message as a sign to take risks, because you never know what could happen, it could be good!
After that talk, Kanae had finally surfed successfully, and she took that as a good sign to confess to Takaki. She was very nervous about it (understandably so), but as she spent more quiet time with him, I think she became more frazzled, as she realized that he probably didn't feel the same way about her. Maybe it was because of how quiet they were, maybe it was because there was just a lack of natural communication between them, compared to what we saw between Takaki and Akari.
It was after the satellite shot into the sky that Kanae realized that Takaki always had a faraway look in his eye. Maybe it was because she only ever saw him focus in that instant, and she realized what his focusing face was like and that she'd never seen it.
Kanae went home without confessing and cried herself to sleep, realizing that she wouldn't have Takaki but that she would still want him. I choose to believe that she was going to move on with her life. There is a bit of finality to her sentiments, and I think that it would work out as long as she didn't let it ruin her, like Takaki let his yearning ruin him.
Mizuno
Mizuno was Takaki's ex-girlfriend as an adult. We only saw her briefly. She'd texted Takaki telling him that she still loved him, but Takaki ignored her. So presumably she couldn't see that Takaki's heart was elsewhere.
Themes
The theme of this movie is yearning. All of our main characters were yearning for something or someone, but they dealt with them differently. Akari still loved Takaki (seeing as how she'd still kept the letter), but she moved on. Takaki yearned for Akari, and he never moved on, hoping that there would be a chance in the future. Kanae yearned for Takaki but knew that she would never have a chance. And Mizuno hasn't gotten to the part where she understands why she doesn't have a chance.
I think Takaki believes in the concept of 5cm/second, that he just has to wait, and that one day he'll make his way back to Akari. But the question is, whether they'll make it back to each other in this lifetime.
And is this hope good or bad? It ruins Takaki in this movie, but we have yet to see how Kanae will handle unrequited love with no hope. As for Akari, she knows that Takaki loves her, but she cannot return it. Is that better?
There are no straight answers to this because everybody handles these challenges differently.
Overall
This was a good movie. For such a short movie, it was able to express a lot to make me think. I would say that the setting is a bit limited, but I think it needs to be that way, otherwise the movie would be too big to express any of the themes that the story wanted to tell.
Good movie. Very short, but I see now that it took care in putting its themes together. I'd recommend it for people who like romance :3
Spoilers.
Story
The first part is the story of Takaki and Akari. They grew close due to spending lots of time together and having lots to talk about. Akari moved away and they maintained intermittent correspondences through letters. However, as Takaki was going to move far away, to Kagoshima, he decided to see Akari one last time. He'd written a letter to express his feelings to give to Akari at that time. Due to a huge snowstorm, the trains kept getting delayed and he only met her when it was much later at night, but they did meet. For the two, it was like no time had passed and they spoke and laughed as they always had. As Akari showed Takaki a tree that she often talked about in her letters, they shared a kiss, and then spent the rest of the night huddled together in a shack. Takaki didn't tell Akari that he'd lots the letter written to her, and conversely, we found out that Akari had written a letter to him that she didn't give him either. This is the first instance of withheld love confessions.
My interpretation of the events here was that Takaki's journey through the snow represented what their relationship would be like; they'd always have to make a huge effort just to be together. Here, it's because they're still kids and they have to go where their parents are. So I think Takaki and Akari withheld their love confessions because it just wouldn't be fair, it would be too hard to stay together. That's partially what 5cm/second is supposed to represent, the fact that the trek is so slow.
The second arc of the movie is about Takaki's time in high school, from the point of view of Kanae, a classmate who has a crush on him. She was a obsessed in the sense that she would even pin her future on where Takaki would go, but honestly that is typical teenager behaviour. Kanae built up a lot of courage to confess to Takaki. On the day that would be her confession day, she realized that the reason why Takaki always seemed different from other boys was that his heart was always elsewhere and that his kindness towards her was not the true kindness he wanted to show to a loved one. Kanae went home without confessing her love, and though she understood that Takaki wouldn't like her back, she determined that she'd still love Takaki.
Kanae's crush on Takaki begins to weave the complicated web in this story, where she yearns for Takaki, but later finds out he yearns for someone else. And yet, we find that Takaki isn't actually constantly texting Akari, but no one in particular, so he too is yearning for someone who is not only emotionally but physically far away. However, I think that out of the characters in this movie, Kanae's arc might be the most developmental, in that she understand that she has to go on regardless of unrequited love.
The third arc may be my favourite because of how stark it is and it kind of rounds out the story really well. It featured an adult Takaki and Akari. Takaki was kind of in a rut. He had a job but he wasn't really living. He'd even dated but I think he realized he didn't have feelings for his ex-girlfriend. He was kind of stuck in the past, over that love he never got to see to fruition. For adult Akari, she was engaged to be married to another man. Her thoughts about Takaki were brought up when she found the letter she had written to him all those years ago. Takaki and Akari possibly passed by each other on the train tracks they used to walk across, but while Takaki turned around to look at her, Akari did not.
As you can see, Takaki and Akari are dealing with their feelings very differently. Takaki never let go of them and he's letting them push everything else away from his life. I don't think Akari ever let go of her feelings either, but she's come to accept that some things may never be, and that doesn't mean she should stop her life. I don't think Akari is being cold. I think she was thinking practically. People grow up and grow apart, and she hasn't seen Takaki in forever. They may be strangers. It doesn't mean she doesn't love him anymore, but adult Akari has to deal with different problems from child Akari.
However, I think this is an ambiguous ending. Based on my description above, you may think that Takaki will continue living in his rut (though he did quit his job that he hated) and that Akari will get married and move on with her life. But the movie is called 5 centimeters per second. Maybe, they are still moving slowly towards each other. Maybe Takaki quitting his job and learning to live for himself first is what he needs to get better. Akari may still get married but...we know that not all marriages are completely happy. Maybe some day down the road, middle aged Takaki and middle aged Akari will meet each other again, this time at the right times in their life. I think the title is meant to give us a bit of hope.
Production
My biggest impression of this movie is that it's a quiet one, which I liked. Not a lot of music, a lot of thinking time.
I didn't like the drawing that much. Especially in the child phases of the characters' lives, I felt that the characters' faces were kind of flat and non-three dimensional, if that makes sense. I much preferred the drawings for the adult characters. Their faces felt more..."touchable."
That being said, the animation was still good. The colouring and lighting were good and gave detail to fill the quiet space.
The voice acting was good too. Again, I think the voices chosen accentuated the quiet and calm tone of the movie, even if it's supposed to be heartwrenching.
Characters
Tohno Takaki
Technically I think he's the main character, but I think I'd like to say that this movie had an ensemble cast. But Takaki is the character that weaves the story together.
As a youngster, he fell in love with Akari without knowing it. All they did was talk about books, dinosaurs, random facts, etc. It was wonderful and lovely. And when Akari moved away, a part of his heart had gone away too. And he must have realized this, since he wrote the confession letter to her. Unfortunately, he lost the letter, but even then, he didn't confess to Akari, sensing that it wasn't right to do so after it took such a labourious trek to get to her.
As a teenager, Takaki seemed different to Kanae, and that's what attracted her to him. Of course, he was nice, pleasant, everything you'd hope to see in a guy. However, it's easy to see that his pleasantness is just politeness. Takaki had just grown up and learned how to show a side to him that would help him fit in with society without others getting nosy in his business. I'm not sure what exactly it was that made Kanae realize (after the satellite is shot into space) that Takaki was focused elsewhere, but after she realized that, everything made so much more sense. He was distant because he in fact was always focused elsewhere, and his politeness was just him trying to push others away and to get off his back.
However, when we find out more about Takaki at this age, we see that he isn't quite deeply and madly in love with Akari, but rather, just extremely lonely. We thought he was always texting Akari, but he was just writing texts to himself and then deleting them. Maybe he loved Akari because that was the last time he felt not alone while being himself. As a teenager, people have expectations for love. Kanae wanted to date him, but with dating comes with certain dating rituals that Takaki probably didn't want, not with someone he never really spoke that much with. Compare how quiet he is with Kanae compared to how chatty he always was with Akari. But of course it can be argued that Takaki is just making an effort to be distant. It's a cycle and it's messy. You can't blame one thing or another.
As an adult, Takaki becomes even more of a mess, but he seems more sure about his feelings for Akari. He stops answering the texts from his ex-girlfriend Mizuno, though I think Mizuno doesn't quite realize why it is that Takaki was distant with her. When Takaki passes by the person he thinks is adult Akari on the train tracks, he thinks that she'll turn around and look back at him. When he doesn't, I think that's what makes him decide to quit his job and start fresh. And perhaps that might be what leads him back to Akari, at 5cm/second.
I think Takaki is the story of someone who is deeply in love and lets it ruin him.
Takaki's name has the kanji for tree in it, and I thought of that when Akari showed him the tree that she talked about in her letters. Perhaps Takaki is a tree who is finding it difficult to change his roots.
Shinohara Akari
Akari is the other half of our star-crossed pair. As we saw in the first arc, she had also kept her letter from Takaki, though she had the chance to give it to him. I think perhaps she saw how much work it took for Takaki to come see her, and perhaps she felt that it wouldn't be fair to him to burden him with her feelings if he was going to go even further away.
After Takaki left in the morning, it seemed that they didn't keep in touch. We had thought that Takaki was constantly texting Akari, but he was texting no one. They probably hadn't exchanged letters in their teenage years either.
We only saw Akari again as an adult, engaged to be married. She had found her old letter to Takaki and had also had a dream about him. I think that to some degree, Akari yearned for Takaki because they never really got closure. But I also believe Akari is in love with the man she is to be married. Just because she loved Takaki once upon a time doesn't mean that she can't still live him now, as well as her fiance.
Akari is an example of someone who has gotten over a love for practical reasons. She hadn't kept in touch with Takaki after he moved to Kagoshima and presumably she looked to her nearby connections and that's how she fell in love with her fiance.
I don't think that Akari is necessarily rejecting her love for Takaki. I think she just realized that just because the journey to Takaki is long (and may possibly never end), that she can't get help along the way. She needs to be the best version of herself, and maybe receiving love from others is how she gets there. I also think it's a reasonable interpretation that she is still deeply in love with Takaki and that her fiance is just a replacement, but judging by how good she was at compartmentalizing, I think she's handling this in a healthy way.
Sumida Kanae
Kanae was a classmate who was in love with Takaki. She waited for him every day by the bike rack so that they could go home together. She thought he was kind and gentle, and he was. He was very considerate. Kanae was crazy about Takaki and her friends knew too.
However, her crush on Takaki was kind of a problem because the rest of her life was struggling a bit. She had trouble choosing what to do after high school because she wanted to do what Takaki did. She was a surfer and she was having trouble with surfing because of her life problems.
She spoke with Takaki, who told her that he was just taking life day by day. I think the way we could interpret that from Takaki's side was that he was just trusting that little by little, he'd naturally make his way back to Akari, but it was just a very lonely process to get there. For Kanae, I think she interpreted that message as a sign to take risks, because you never know what could happen, it could be good!
After that talk, Kanae had finally surfed successfully, and she took that as a good sign to confess to Takaki. She was very nervous about it (understandably so), but as she spent more quiet time with him, I think she became more frazzled, as she realized that he probably didn't feel the same way about her. Maybe it was because of how quiet they were, maybe it was because there was just a lack of natural communication between them, compared to what we saw between Takaki and Akari.
It was after the satellite shot into the sky that Kanae realized that Takaki always had a faraway look in his eye. Maybe it was because she only ever saw him focus in that instant, and she realized what his focusing face was like and that she'd never seen it.
Kanae went home without confessing and cried herself to sleep, realizing that she wouldn't have Takaki but that she would still want him. I choose to believe that she was going to move on with her life. There is a bit of finality to her sentiments, and I think that it would work out as long as she didn't let it ruin her, like Takaki let his yearning ruin him.
Mizuno
Mizuno was Takaki's ex-girlfriend as an adult. We only saw her briefly. She'd texted Takaki telling him that she still loved him, but Takaki ignored her. So presumably she couldn't see that Takaki's heart was elsewhere.
Themes
The theme of this movie is yearning. All of our main characters were yearning for something or someone, but they dealt with them differently. Akari still loved Takaki (seeing as how she'd still kept the letter), but she moved on. Takaki yearned for Akari, and he never moved on, hoping that there would be a chance in the future. Kanae yearned for Takaki but knew that she would never have a chance. And Mizuno hasn't gotten to the part where she understands why she doesn't have a chance.
I think Takaki believes in the concept of 5cm/second, that he just has to wait, and that one day he'll make his way back to Akari. But the question is, whether they'll make it back to each other in this lifetime.
And is this hope good or bad? It ruins Takaki in this movie, but we have yet to see how Kanae will handle unrequited love with no hope. As for Akari, she knows that Takaki loves her, but she cannot return it. Is that better?
There are no straight answers to this because everybody handles these challenges differently.
Overall
This was a good movie. For such a short movie, it was able to express a lot to make me think. I would say that the setting is a bit limited, but I think it needs to be that way, otherwise the movie would be too big to express any of the themes that the story wanted to tell.