Now ever since I've been viewing forum boards a few months ago on the best anime movies to watch, aside from everything associated with Hayao Miyazaki, 5 centimeters per seconds has constantly come up as very high on everyone's list labeled most often by pretty much everyone as something you should like if you want something beautiful and emotional. So that's why at first I had such high hopes for the story this anime had to offer, more so after watching the trailer. Also without having to say the art was also the biggest element of interest. However, do to being more interested in my ongoing series I pushed this aside for when I just really wanted to watch something sweet and emotional.
Now I want to put a tiny disclaimer that I do have a very high tuned appreciation to art and this anime is close to top as one of the most beautiful works of anime I have ever seen. Especially for this being 9 years old it ages remarkably well. Without a doubt this anime has the most to offer an audience as far as the animation and the sound. That alone is why despite the critiquing I’m about to do if you haven’t watched it just go ahead, of course romance and slice of life isn’t everyone’s cup of tea and in that fact it’s okay to skip over.
Now, as far as the story this is a movie divided into 3 episode parts each a short story following a young boy’s life and his relationship with another young girl he bonded with before she moves away. Immediately into the story I felt very attached to the emotional storytelling that went behind the development of young love pushed away by distance. The boy is very close to the girl and despite being sort of standalone by himself most of the time you can tell that the sort of platonic relationship they have is mutual. However, as the story progress with his life I feel like the sort of tie I had for this anime cut off around the middle to end of episode 2. For me no matter how much I analyze every little emotion or detail this anime had very little to offer me in terms of story line. It all seemed like one big exposition and that it was leading up to something that I’d just really and myself understanding. Yet, being only an hour long the timing really pushes its story into this box of uncertainty and lacking detail. So the last episode was incredibly short and disappointing for me.
It wasn't just a lacking story though besides the lack of detail the characters stuck out so much as well. In the entire anime, the total collection of supporting and main characters is only 5 and that’s something that is spread out over 3 episodes with the main character boy reoccurring in every episode. Now maybe you can disagree with me about the story line and maybe you saw a deeper meaning that I still can't wrap my mind to understand, but I just really want someone to tell me how the story didn’t have time to develop the main character over 3 episodes. Especially since the episodes periods of his life I expected more depth to the boy than just dialogue and this actually went more down hill after the first episode.
Out of all the characters I can honestly state that the most developed character in my eyes was a girl named Kanae who isn’t even introduced until the 2nd episode. Sure you hear and see Takaki distantly depressed over time because he feels like the love of his childhood is keeping his heart locked away, but that’s all almost interpreted. Kanae is the only character that actually expresses her emotions and out of the episodes that's why out of each part episode 2 all in all made the most sense to me.
Now if I have to really pin point my issues, I guess the biggest flaw I just really had was with the end when honestly I can’t even spoil anything because nothing happens. It’s like 10 minutes of music and filler that really just expresses how sucky life is and all. The amount of how lacking the ending was almost made me mad too. Like I thought even if the ending was something so cliché it wouldn’t make sense I still would have felt more closure. Then again maybe this was like some sort of ultimate lesson I’m just not getting. That some things hold you back in life and there really is no closure that it’s not always what you want that you get.
In final words I would like to point out that I actually tried to scope out this anime’s reviews immediately after my let down to see why people found this as “sad” as it was. Honestly, the most I could get out of what I read was that the amount of realism was upsetting how nothing works out in the end. I hope anyone that has watched or is planning to watch this considers what I wrote because honestly the biggest let down was probably just my expectations. Keep an open logical mind and don't have the sort of hyped up expectations like I did going in.
