5 Centimeters per Second (2007)

Everytime..Absolutely stunningly beautiful, with a perfect music score, and an incredibly well thought narrative/story/tale. It's an unstoppable watch. I personally don't even know how you could find a more beautiful, and beautifully made love story..Everything about this movie is right on point, and wistfully beautiful - the colors in the distant clouds, and the breeze in the grasses and sugar canes, the sounds of the birds and insects, the glittering reflections of lights in the rain and waters, and the pastel scenery.A great tale of love, friendship, companionship, and happiness - who's great strength, is held together and bonded by delicateness, and fragility - and by it's importance, meaningfulness, thoughtfulness, and sweetness.It can be a touch difficult to follow - specifically because it's narrative based, as opposed to character story based - you're listening to the characters read you a book basically, so you have to pay attention.It doesn't get any better than this - it's like the entirety of FF7 smushed into a beautiful tiny love story..If you need a beautiful place to go, and be, but can't find one - put this movie on, and that's where you'll be :)A reminder that love is more eternal than life, and with eternal love, life continues on in love..That ending though, after the song. You know that's not the end..

Makoto Shinkai's sophomore feature is an intimately crafted, elegantly narrated & gorgeously animated tale of young love & yearning desires that unfolds in three interconnected segments. A very grounded effort compared to his previous work, it is a touching & nostalgic reminiscent of first love.5 Centimeters per Second follows the life of a young man named Takaki. The first segment, set in elementary school, focuses on his first love and the long journey he takes to see her one last time. The next segment, set in high school, is about a girl who has a crush on him. And the final segment illustrates his present life.Written, produced & directed by Makoto Shinkai, 5 Centimeters per Second paints an exquisite portrait of real life struggles through its protagonist, and is brought to life with affection & intimacy. The animation in itself is beautiful, evocative & radiates a heartfelt warmth, and the attention to detail is breathtaking to say the least.The slowness of time felt when you have no choice but to wait is wonderfully depicted in the first chapter and the smallest of details presents in this segment add to that relatable feeling. That longing for love yet difficulty in expressing it is effectively portrayed in the second story. And the final segment is a reminder of just how detrimental living in the past can be.Exhibiting noticeable improvements & welcome maturity in Shinkai's direction, every scene is allowed to simmer & unfolds in an unhurried fashion. Every image is gorgeously rendered & absolutely beguiling to look at. Characters arcs' carry enough depth, plus many will be able to identify with their predicament and may find snippets of their own lives in their journey, which is always helpful.On an overall scale, 5 Centimeters per Second is an affectionate, heartwarming & emotionally stirring anime that's handled with care, told with composure & brims with warm feelings. Its sentimental quality may not go well with every viewer but for those who can connect with it, the film will turn out to be a mesmerising trip down memory lane. Worthy of your time & money for its spellbinding animation alone, 5 Centimeters per Second comes delightfully recommended.

5 Centimeters Per Second is an animated 'romance' that follows a boy and girl who were in love for a time and shows how they eventually grew apart and what happened to each one afterwards, told in 3 short episodes. I put the word romance in brackets because that aspect of the movie is relatively unimportant, but other than drama there is no other real way to categorize this movie, or trilogy of short films, whatever you want to call it. I would still call it a romance, but the romance is barely evident throughout the movie really. The art style in this movie was pretty good. It didn't stray from the norms of anime styles, but it was different enough to make it look somewhat special. Everything else is pretty unpleasant. Honestly, I found little enjoyment in this movie. The plot is...I got no clue, honestly. It was just people living life who had been connected at some point. Don't get me wrong, I love movies about people living life. But this one just didn't try to be anything special. For an anime especially, it was pretty lacking in originality. The characters were pretty terrible, and while they were definitely the main focus of this movie, they suffered tremendously. Not that their characters suffered, but that they were just awful. They were unrelatable, uninteresting, un-engaging, etc. As far as anime characters go they were the most average ones I've ever seen. The awkward girl who blushes all the time and is convinced that she loves the main character (despite still being in grade school), the main male who has the attention-span of a small yapping dog and the intelligence of a dying cabbage field, and our lead female who just cries and looks pretty, all of whom can't stop grunting and moaning with pleasure or displeasure (which one it is isn't always clear) for no apparent reason. This is a problem I've had with a lot of anime. Nobody grunts that much, and especially in a movie like this where I can't think of a single reason why they would even be grunting, it makes it hard to take any of them seriously. Most of the time the grunting doesn't bother me, but it did in this movie. At least in the other anime it was pretty clear why they were doing it in the first place. They're all pretty unrealistic characters too, they do things that no human being would ever do, simply because it's anime and not making sense makes sense in an anime. Not only that, but the movie itself is about as interesting as it's characters, as in it's not. For a 1 hour movie it certainly has trouble holding the audience's attention. I was so incredibly bored by this movie. And it's not like in 'It's Such a Beautiful Day' where I expected it to be over quick so it felt longer. I barely processed the fact that this movie was so short, and even if it was paced well it still would have sucked. At the beginning of the movie I figured that it was boring because the director had so little material to work with so he was stretching it out, but by the end of the movie I saw some decent potential in it. But that potential never seemed to be realized, and instead we got this thing. Overall 5 Centimeters Per Second isn't very good. Visually it's kind of cool, but it fails on every other level with flat and uninteresting characters, a poorly presented plot, and bad pacing. I think that this movie could have been good, but nothing was developed as well as it should have been. In the end I would never recommend this movie, nor would I ever watch it again.

Honest to god, I think they should've done up the storyline again because it was so badly done and of course gave the frigging thing episodes, it's meant to be a film! They have completely messed this whole thing up!That's not all.....At the beginning of the movie, I found Akari's voice rather annoying. No wonder Takaki was suppose to move school to get away from her because really I thought of her character voice was suited as a sub character, not a main character. Also I was confused when other girls felt the same way for Takaki, was he a cheater or a womanizer? I think this was a bit over the place. You wouldn't have a clue what's going on!I'm not happy after seeing this film, I give it 1/10 because it didn't appeal to me :/