REVIEW: DVD Release: 5 Centimeters Per Second























Film: 5 Centimeters Per Second
Release date: 28th March 2011
Certificate: U
Running time: 60 mins
Director: Makoto Shinkai
Starring: Kenji Mizuhashi, Yoshimi Kondou, Satomi Hanamura, Ayaka Onoue
Genre: Manga
Studio: Anime
Format: DVD
Country: Japan

From the director who created the acclaimed Voices Of A Distant Star and The Place Promised In Our Early Days, Makoto Shinkai’s latest work, 5 Centimeters Per Second, is a short film on the lives of three high school teenagers and the hope, desire, pitfalls and woes of everyday life and young love. Split into three episodic segments, we follow the three characters as they grow physically and emotionally from students into adults.

In slightly non-linear fashion, we are introduced to the lives of Takaki and Akari, two close young friends who are often picked on at school by their classmates for the obvious intimacy of their friendship. However, the duo’s lives are altered when Akari’s parents move away from Tokyo far into the countryside, leaving them both isolated in their respective schools.

Set in the early 1990s, the two regularly communicate through letters, narrated by the respective writer for the viewer, until Takaki also comes to learn that his parents will be leaving Tokyo also, but in the other direction from Akari, making it almost impossible for them to ever see each other again.

Takaki, in his last week in Tokyo, decides he will visit Akari, so takes the lengthy journey to visit her via train. However, a severe snowstorm delays his progress, and he ends up losing the letter he wrote for her, which expressed everything that he feels. Arriving at the remote station four hours later than planned, he wonders if Akari is still waiting for him, while we wait to see if they can keep in contact as their lives slowly progress in their new schools...


Makoto Shinaki’s latest creation is an understated and delicate contemplation on not simply young love, but the nature of human relationships as a whole. He is primarily focused with the passage of time; how it can manipulate our views and emotions, and how it can seemingly veer between the languid and the rapid. Five Centimeters Per Second, mentioned in the film’s introductory scene, is the speed at which cherry blossom petals fall towards the ground, and throughout the course of this creation, speed and distance is continually commented on.

The first chapter, 'Cherry Blossom', follows the young teenagers as they come to terms with their increased distance and how they still keep in touch due to their attachment to each other. The petals that fall from the cherry blossom tree that Akari is so enamoured with represents their fledgling partnership; how what once was together ends up being separated and drifting apart. While, when Takaki comes to visit her on the train, the delay, while only being four hours, comparatively feels like an eternity for Takaki. His anxiousness increases and his emotions betray him as he breaks down after losing the letter he wrote for her detailing his feelings. While the delay and passage of time in this sequence may be one of the shortest in the film, it highlights the relative nature of time to his situation where every lost second of time may cost him a moment in life. What is more remarkable is the lack of honorifics used by Takaki and Akari when addressing each other, which is a rarity not often heard in modern day Japan, even by those who are in love. This small but notable detail is used to further hammer home the closeness of the relationship, and how important each is to one another.

The remaining two chapters complete the contrasting ideologies of the characters. Kanae is introduced in the second episode, 'Cosmonaut', as a girl in Takaki’s class who harbours great affection and love for him. Shinkai remarks on the differences of looking toward the future knowingly with a set plan to your actions, and being able to take each day as it comes. Despite a school program to encourage the students to develop ideas as to what they want to be when they grow older, Kanae remains devoid of any future ambition. She wishes to live each day as its own, adapting and acclimatising to the ever-changing circumstances that life has to offer, while Takaki is firm in his desire to return to Tokyo in the future, yet whether or not his ability to look to the future is rooted in his past is questioned.

Makoto Shinkai is often hailed as “the new Miyazaki” by critics, a claim which the director himself disputes, and cites as being an “over exaggeration,” yet his statement that his favourite film is Miyazaki’s own Laputa: Castle In The Sky only continues to pour more fuel onto the fire. However, while to label a director with such a hefty mantle can seem too much of a burden, the title seems misplaced because in many regards Makoto Shinkai has surpassed the master, and warrants recognition of his own. 5 Centimeters Per Second lacks the science fiction and fantasy elements that made his two previous standout films (Voices Of A Distant Star and The Place Promised in Our Early Days) successes, so as a result, it is entirely dependent on the believability of the protagonists’ interactions and emotions. Shinkai is able to create such unrivalled warmth in his characters; his sparse use of dialogue coupled with the real world struggles and concerns allows the viewer to relate their own experiences to the pictures onscreen. If you look at the films Miyazaki has created where he cannot call upon fantastical elements to drive the narrative, such as Whisper Of The Heart, he is unable to convey, with such limited narrative tools, the same heart-melting warmth and gut-wrenching sadness that Shinkai has achieved. Shinkai targets the very essence of human interaction, and is able to pierce our hearts with poignantly deep, detailed and genuine feelings.

Armed with an evocative score by Tenmon that rivals any of Joe Hisashi's works, the animation is nothing short of jaw dropping. The attention to the most minute of details, from coffee stains on paper through to the cherry blossom leaves falling in Japan’s capital, results in drawings that are smooth, soft and superb, mirroring the delicacy and intimacy of the lives of our struggling characters.

5 Centimeters Per Second is a sensitive and tender tale that looks at love from both sides of the coin. From coping with the isolation of existence, and having to traverse life, lonely, desperately seeking that special person, to the life-changing joy and unmitigated wonder it can bring someone; Shinkai’s latest creation is one of the most personable anime one could ever hope to watch.


With a universal topic that everyone can relate to, 5 Centimeters Per Second moves the viewer with a sombre and painstakingly accurate account of emotion. 5 Centimeters Per Second is sixty minutes of exceptional cinema. BL


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