Review: 5 Centimetres per Second

Summary
Alternative Titles: 秒速５センチメートル, Byosoku Go Senchimetoru
Genre: Romance, Drama
Release Date: Mar. 3, 2007

Tono Takaki and Shinohara Akari are close friends who become separated after graduating from high school because of their families moving. They keep in touch with each other through letter mail, but they’re afraid that they’ll never see each other again. One day, Tono decides to visit Akira.

Review
5 Centimetres per Second is definitely one anime movie I’ll never forget. I initially had high expectations for the film and they were almost exceeded. In my opinion, the strongest part of this movie was the animation. Saying that the animation quality was breathtaking would be an understatement. I thought the animation was so well done, it was beyond breathtaking. Everything was just extremely detailed and flashy. Even minor things like the main character’s watch and packages in a convenience store are drawn with so much detail that it looks like the real thing.

As you might have guessed, the story isn’t one of its strong points. The story isn’t very original and it’s a fairly simple slice of life story. However, the way that the story is told is the strong point. The story is told mainly using the thoughts of the main characters. In other words, what they were thinking of during each scene. This way of presenting the story makes every line of speech very poetic and touching. Overall, it gives added value to the simple story.

The only part of 5 Centimetres per Second that I disliked was the last 5 minutes. These last 5 minutes contains a montage of several different scenes. The montage was nice to see, however, the problem with it was that some of the scenes were flashbacks, while some where completely new. The new scenes cause you to desperately want to see what happened to lead up to that scene. However, the only thing you can do is guess what happened. I thought they should have eliminated the montage and added another 30 minutes to the movie to clarify some of these parts.


view larger screens

Pros

• Best animation quality, I’ve ever seen in any anime
• Story is told in a very poetic way
• Sound effects and background music was excellent

Cons

• Very simple slice of life story
• Last part contained several puzzling scenes; have to guess what happened to the main characters

Recommendation
Just watching the first two episodes would have made a near-perfect ending. Therefore, I recommend the first two episodes. I can’t say the same for the last episode. Just be aware that you might be disappointed if you watch the last episode.

Rating: 9/10