Director: Makoto Shinkai
Release Date: March 3, 2007
Rating: ★★★★
Review:
‘5 Centimeters per Second’ is a rather original love story in three parts. Central character is high school student Takaki, whose love interest Akari, moves from Tokyo to Iwafune, a distance three hours by train.
The first part consists of Akari’s voice over reading her letters to Takaki, accompanied by a lightning rapid montage of images of Takaki and his memories to his girl. When, after a year of exchanging letters, Takaki is about to move to the South himself, he decides to make a one time visit to Akari. This train journey through a snow storm, which delays him for no less than four hours forms the emotional highlight of the film. Nevertheless, Takaki and Akari are reunited in Iwafune, only to have to part again.
The second part is set in Tanegashima, a small island in the far South of Japan, and although set in October, its sunny images form a welcome contrast to the snowy images of the first part. This part is told by Kanae, who’s secretly in love with Takaki, but never able to tell him that. Like the first part, the second part ends with an opportunity lost.
The third part is set in Tokyo again. This part is the shortest, the most fragmentary, and the least satisfactory of the three. Sadly this episode shows that Takaki hasn’t really learned to love and to allow others near him, still longing for something else. Akari is seen, too, but her ‘story’ is touched on so little it could well be missed. Added to Takaki’s admirers is yet another girl, who is hardly seen, but as he declines her calls, her pain and loneliness are certainly felt. The episode ends with images set to the rock ballad ‘One More Time, One More Chance’ (1997) by Masayoshi Yamazaki, unknown to us Western viewers, but apparently instantly recognizable to the Japanese audience, and adding to the film’s nostalgic feel. The film ends undefined, and with its mere sixty minutes the feature feels a little incomplete.
Like many other Japanese anime, ‘5 Centimeters per Second’ needn’t necessarily be made with animation, as its characters and settings are highly realistic, and drawn from everyday life. But as it is animated, one can only marvel at Shinkai’s beautiful and engaging images. ‘5 Centimeters per Second’ is a story about distance and love, but despite being a story of emotions, the character designs and human animation, both by Takayo Nishimura, are not very impressive: the character designs are very generic, while the facial expressions never reach enough subtlety to draw one into the character.
No, the real emotional story is told almost exclusively by the background art. This film uses a multitude of shots, often lasting only a fraction of seconds, and in its in these extraordinarily beautiful images that Shankai tells his tale. Indeed, many of these images he drew himself. The images are highly realistic, but as Shankai tells in the interview included in the DVD, they’re drenched in emotional memory, and they’re never neutral. And neither is his staging or cutting, which are both highly original. All these background images, with their glorious colors and superb lighting (made in Photoshop) give the film its unique and poetic character.
With ‘5 Centimeters per Second’ Shankai proved to be a new important voice in the Japanese animation field, a reputation he steadied with his next films, ‘Children Who Chase Lost Voices‘ (2011) and most notably, ‘Your Name’ (2016), which also deals with distance and love.
Watch ‘5 Centimeters per Second’ yourself and tell me what you think:
Dr. Grob's Animation Review 
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April 19, 2021 at 16:19
ospreyshire
This is a good work from Shinkai. Not my favorite movie by his, but still totally worth watching. Of course, some people downplay it because it’s not Your Name, but it’s whatever. A lot of Makoto Shinkai’s works are quite good. I would recommend The Place Promised In Our Early Days if you’ve never seen hat movie before.
Side note: Were you uncomfortable when I brought up those shady aspects of The Lion King? I saw you liked the comments, but I didn’t know if you aware of those things I brought up.
April 19, 2021 at 16:25
Gijs Grob
I’m not easily uncomfortable in that respect, and although I don’t entirely agree with you, I’m glad you share your opinion. I suspect that as a non-colored European I’ll easily miss some race subtleties, but I do suspect a sense of hyper-sensitivism in contemporary analyses of older movies that is not always justified and I doubt whether Whoopi Goldberg would have provided the voices if she had felt the same.
April 19, 2021 at 17:44
ospreyshire
No problem. It’s good that we can have a healthy dialogue about this. I wasn’t sure how you felt when I mentioned those facts or observations. The hyena issue involves how the characters talk in stereotypical “hood/ghetto” (pardon the terms) dialects to play up racially-coded ways of how people assume the Black and Latinx community talk while correlating those races to be criminal and stupid. Also, hyena’s fur isn’t that dark in real life, so people will make the connections that black and brown people are evil. I recently reviewed the documentary Mickey Mouse Monopoly. One section of the documentary talked about racism in Disney movies with human characters or stereotypes uses for animals (Ex: Siamese cats in Lady and the Tramp, Tito from Oliver & Company, the crows from Dumbo, etc.). They do talk about the hyenas and one Black women interviewee talked about a story where her white friend was concerned because her three-year old child associated some Black children with the hyenas with how they talked and thought they were evil which broke her heart. Obviously, not all Black people have that voice, but the fact that a child could make that connection is disturbing, It’s more low-key racism and it annoys me how people excuse it. To be honest, I doubt Whoopi Goldberg would care because she’s the same person who wanted the crows to still be a thing in Dumbo for the remake (even though they weren’t there) and to sing their song despite the bigoted way of their speech or how the lead crow’s name is Jim which is a horrible pun on so many levels.
April 19, 2021 at 18:23
Gijs Grob
That anecdote about the child certainly is disturbing! The crows in Dumbo are also a difficult matter: yes, they are caricatures, but at least they’re voiced by real black people (except for their leader), a small achievement in the early 1940s, and at least they’re friendly and not stereotypically stupid, docile, lazy, slow or superstitious like other blacks depicted in cinema of that time. Moreover, the jive talk is a great improvement over the pseudo-negro dialect blacks were forced to speak in American movies back then. Note that the crow leader’s only addressed with ‘brother’, not by its model sheet name. One could say the racism present is out of habit, not intentional, let alone vicious. Moreover, animator Ward Kimball drew inspiration from real blacks and his animation is top notch. This is another case of something that was pretty forward thinking for its time, even if that fact has become blurred over the years and cannot stand the test of today’s standards.
April 19, 2021 at 20:35
ospreyshire
Very much so. Learning about that as well as finding out about the unsavory things about The Lion King made me wonder if a good portion of Disney fans saw Black people that way and if you pardon the reference, believe that people like them don’t deserve to be in the circle of life. Then again, this movie and Tarzan didn’t have any Black characters despite taking place in Africa, so that’s very suspicious to me as they’ve never done that this consistently with other locales.
I understand that the crows in Dumbo are on the main character’s side, but just because they are protagonists still doesn’t make it right. They still talk in jive and come off as unintelligent despite their insight of Dumbo’s situation. It frustrates me when people excuse these portrays by saying “Disney didn’t mean it!”. So what did they mean then? The portrayals are still problematic regardless. Even if it was supposedly “progressive” at the time, it still plays up negative imagery. Racism is more subtle in modern films or TV shows, but it’s still there.
April 19, 2021 at 21:14
Gijs Grob
Good points. I can only say that people are children of their time, and what seemed normal or unexceptional in their eyes back then we can watch with horror today. When racism is part of the mode of life, like it was in 1940s America you need only to do like the rest of society to be judged as a racist in retrospective. Same thing with say sexism, homophobia, treatment of animals or smoking. In that respect all past is condemnable. I even dare to say that our own age will be judged with equal contempt within twenty years in that regard. A more interesting question is whether something or someone was perceived as (exceptionally) racist in its own time. I’d say the crows in Dumbo not much so, but for example ‘Scrub Me Mama with a Boogie Beat’ from 1941 yes. On its intended re-release in 1948 this cartoon got the attention of the NAACP, which rightfully objected against its re-release. To me there’s a great risk in confusing intentions with ignorance, and in my opinion ignorance is much, much more widespread. To me the ignorant racism of Disney’s 1940 crows pales when compared to for example the blatantly obvious intentional racist vote repression in present day Georgia. But then again I’m not black, and I’m not American, and I admit I’ll miss certain sensibilities.
April 19, 2021 at 22:39
ospreyshire
Things can certainly age for worse, so I do agree with you right there. The concept of racism tends to get more subtle and more “refined” as not to be detected. Obviously, someone saying the N-word or burning crosses is overt and extreme bigotry which anyone would understand. What gets more insidious are coding and dog whistles. I’m starting to see some of those sneakier ways get called out like the “I have Black friends/family/employees!” defense whenever a racist is caught saying stupid things. Ten years ago, someone MIGHT have gotten away with it, but certainly not in 2021. No disagreements about that song being racist because it is. I’m also concerned when people play dumb in order to save face with various depictions. Then again in 1940s America, voter suppression was the norm as The Voting Rights Act wouldn’t be a thing until the 60s. The current intentional voter suppression in Georgia is certainly reprehensible which I agree with you right there. Sometimes these images can coincide with the worst part of the times. Keep in mind that there were attempts to allow Black people to vote during Reconstruction, but it involved mass lynchings, assassinating Black politicians, and even staging coups against them even if they were in local positions. These double standards in laws are still there even if they may look different. What frustrates me is how Disney gets a free pass for everything whether it’s their older movies or the ones that came out during my lifetime that could be problematic.