Makoto Shinkai Retrospective: 5 Centimeters per Second
I’ve been dreading writing about this one, because when I first watched it twelve years ago, I went into it completely blind and hated it. Makoto Shinkai’s 2007 hour-long movie 5 Centimeters per Second evoked such a visceral negative reaction in me that I recall screaming What the fuck was that? at the screen in sheer frustration. Until now, I have never revisited it, nor had I previously read its several novel or manga adaptations. Please never say, dear reader, that I do not suffer for your reading pleasure.
You can read my thoughts on Shinkai’s prior work She and Her Cat, Voices of a Distant Star and The Place Promised in Our Early Days in the previous entries in this retrospective. As much as I appreciate his sense of aesthetics, my opinions on Shinkai’s body of work as a whole is mixed to say the least.
5cm was once again produced at CoMix Wave Inc. with a full animation studio team (larger than the relatively small team assembled for Shinkai’s first full-length film The Place Promised in Our Early Days). Shinkai, as usual, took on writing, direction and production work, so we can be assured that the finished product is very much a reflection of his intentions and sensibilities, for better and for worse. In an interview on the DVD special features, Shinkai describes his intent of using the film to explore “the speed at which people drift apart”. Perhaps had I known this prior to sitting down for an hour of disbelieving frustration, I may not have suffered the climactic mental shortcircuiting resulting in my hapless television set weathering a storm of expletives rained down upon it.
Split into three sections, the first, Cherry Blossom, is the best, longest, and least likely to make me empty my lungs in primal anger. The “hero” of our story is Tokyo middle-school pupil Takaki Tohno, who pines for his female friend Akari Shinohara who moved away at the end of elementary school. Flashbacks show the two of them developing a close friendship over common interests in books, and being transfer-student outsiders. Akari informs Takaki that the ubiquitous cherry blossoms that fall during Japanese springtime descend at the rate of five centimetres per second, and they vow to watch the cherry blossoms again the following year, a promise thwarted by Akari’s parents who move her away.
Set between 1991 and 1995, prior to the widespread adoption of mobile telephones, Akari and Takaki correspond via letters, and there’s an almost constant vocal accompaniment to Shinkai’s trademark hyper-realistic/overexposed/vividly coloured backdrops. Although there’s little you could call “dialogue” here, characters rarely stop staring into the distance enough to speak to one another — the words are read from their respective letters, offering insights into their barely-adolescent thought processes.
What little plot there is culminates in Takaki’s frustrated journey to meet Akari before he himself moves even further away from her. He sees this as their last chance to meet, and he battles delayed trains and multiple transfers across a snowstorm-ravaged countryside to finally arrive, late at night, hours later than planned, to find Akari diligently waiting for him at her rural train station. Of the entire film, this sequence feels the most vividly human. Shinkai painfully evokes Takaki’s anxious feelings of powerlessness, doubt and self-pity. We’ve all had those moments where life has done everything it can to stand in our way, to prevent us achieving our goals in the most unfair, merciless and unfeeling way.
Even when they do meet, Takaki is unable to hand over the love letter he wrote her because it blows away in the wind, and Akari fails to pluck up the courage to give her equivalent letter that remains in her bag. Beneath a barren cherry tree with snow falling like ersatz petals they experience one perfect, beautiful moment as they kiss, and even then Takaki acknowledges that they will never be together again, as the tides of their lives will conspire to keep them apart. I’m sure that every adolescent feels something like this at some point — a powerful connection with a close friend, girlfriend or boyfriend that would feel like the end of the world should the relationship be sundered. The segment ends with their final parting, and as we will see, the effects upon Takaki will be profound.
So if that’s the end of a cute little adolescent love story, what is the other two thirds of the film about? And why do I hate it so much? Yeah, we’ll get to that. The next part, Cosmonaut, is set four years later in 1999, with Takaki now in his final year of high school on the island of Kagoshima (the first place guns were imported to Japan, obscure fact fans). To all intents and purposes he looks like he has settled well into his new life, making friends and taking up archery, however female friend Kanae knows different.
Kanae is a tanned, sporty island girl who is determined to learn to surf independently, and she falls in love with Takaki. Unfortunately for her, although Takaki is friendly and attentive to her, it’s clear he never really notices her — he’s always looking to the distance, at something far away. He frequently taps text messages or emails to Akari on his flip-phone, but never sends them. Kanae doesn’t know what to do with her life, and she’s heartened when Takaki tells her he doesn’t have a plan either, he’s “just doing his best”.
The whole segment is about Takaki’s almost wilfull obliviousness to Kanae’s interest in him, and his inability to move on. Despite his kindness to her, something inside him is closed off. It was during this segment on my original watch that I began to feel frustrated with Takaki, and although I felt sorry for Kanae I couldn’t help but wonder what the absent Akari was up to during this. Once again there is a central conversation about speed — this time about the 5km/hour by which enormous rocket components are transported by road to the nearby Japanese Space Agency. The probe there is due to launch soon, spending years travelling alone to the edges of the solar system, “barely even meeting a stray hydrogen atom”, as Takaki puts it. A stark reminder of the movie’s themes of distance, and longing.
Starting from an urban sprawl to a snowy countryside in the first segment, the second vividly depicts a baking hot seaside life, with Kanae’s attempts (and eventual success) at surfing a technically brilliant animation highlight. The incandescent night-time skies of Voices of a Distant Star make a return here, especially in Takaki’s recurrent dream of standing on a distant planet with Akari. Particularly poignant is the scene where Kanae, who has spent actual years building up the courage to confess her feelings to the distant Takaki, bursts into tears as nearby, the solar system probe launches into space. Their attention is captured by the majestic exhaust plume as the rocket hurls itself out of Earth’s gravity. Kanae realises Takaki is just like the rocket — focused on something so far away, so distant, that she will never be in his orbit. She resolves to give up, while acknowledging this won’t make her feelings go away, and she cries herself to sleep.
So that’s a downer, then.
Segment three shares its title with the film itself, 5 Centimetres per Second, returning to the motif of falling cherry blossoms. Once again, it’s spring. Takaki is now an adult, living and working in Tokyo and it’s 2008 — several years have passed since he graduated from high school in Tanegashima and subsequently attended university in Tokyo. He seems even more unhappy and empty than he was as a teenager — ignoring emails from Risa, who I presume is his girlfriend. She writes “we must have exchanged 1000 emails but our hearts only moved closer by one centimetre”. Takaki’s heart remains closed as he still idealises that one brief relationship with Akari when he was thirteen. We see him quit his job and sit dejectedly on the floor of his apartment, eating boxed convenience store food.
An extended montage plays to the theme song One More Time, One More Chance by Masayoshi Yamazaki (a popular music hit from 1997 that Shinkai chose because of its uncanny suitability for the film, and motifs from it litter the entire soundtrack.) In the montage we see that unlike Takaki, Akari has moved on with her life and is engaged to be married. Although she’s happy, she looks back on her time with Takaki with wistful fondness, and still dreams of him, most recently triggered by her finding her unwritten love letter to him. We see short flashebacks of them both excitedly finding letters in their mailboxes, then their disappointment as eventually the letters stop coming and the distance between them widens. I won’t lie, I found this scene viscerally emotional, but I didn’t welcome it.
The film ends with Takaki and Akari, by chance, crossing the same railway level crossing they did as children, as the cherry blossoms fall around them. Both turn slightly to look at the other as two long trains then cross between them. By the time they pass, Takaki is alone and Akari is no longer waiting for him. With this, he finally finds the resolve to move on. Having watched the film three separate times now, this scene still makes me tear up. Something about this movie hurts me.
To explain why I hate this movie so much, we’ll have to look at what the purpose of movies are in the first place. Why do we watch films? Primarily to be entertained. That doesn’t always mean the emotions evoked by films need to be positive. The existence of horror movies and the deliberate evocation of fear isn’t exactly positive, but they’re a popular genre. Tragic romance, or “weepies” used to be a popular genre, perhaps not so prominent now, but many of the greatest movies of all time have downbeat endings (Casablanca etc), and the fact that their conclusions are painful are what etched them indelibly into cinematic history.
I don’t mind when a movie tugs at my heartstrings when I feel it has been earned, and isn’t shamelessly manipulative. I don’t mind crying when the characters have been empathetic and have struggled to achieve their goals but fail at the last minute. But in 5cm, the main character Takaki is so god-damned passive that I can’t stand him. He does nothing to make his situation better. He idolises his past childhood romance while completely ghosting the one he supposedly loves. He pines for Akari for years but fails to keep writing/calling/emailing her. Even in the 1990s, we had ways of keeping in touch. Takaki is so unbelievably… pathetic. Why even make a film about this guy? Watching this film entails one entire hour of pure frustration for me.
So why does it affect me on such a visceral level? I’m about the same age as Takaki. I grew up in the 1990s, and I had a childhood sweetheart whom I adored. I also had to move away, and we were separated, cities apart without ease of transport, I didn’t even have my own telephone, email wasn’t a thing. You know what we did? We wrote to each other every week. Sometimes more than once a week. I called her from a public phone booth. We travelled to meet each other at weekends and holidays. We made it goddamn work, because we felt that strongly about it. I wasn’t willing to have her as some distant childhood sweetheart who would fade merely into fond memory. No, I loved her with all my heart and refused to let her go, regardless of distance and difficulty. That childhood sweetheart became my wife, and we are still together today after almost 24 years of marriage (yeah, we married young).
I realise our story isn’t really that common, but it pains me to watch such a pathetic, wasted life as Takaki’s. The end makes me cry because it makes me think what if that had happened to me and the girl who became my wife? I can’t imagine a life without her, and wonder if perhaps I would have ended up an empty shell like Takaki? Probably not, to be honest, I’d like to think I have more emotional resilience that that. But really… Shinkai… Why build up a teenage romance and then just… fail to follow it up? Why deliberately make such a frustrating film with a dull, wet blanket of a protagonist? I get you wanted to evoke strong, complicated feelings — congratulations, you managed — but was it worth the bitter aftertaste? I don’t think so, and that’s why I refuse to ever put myself through watching this ever again. I don’t think it’s a bad movie, it’s beautifully made, but I still hate it.
So in the interest of completeness, I also read the books associated with the film, the first of which is the first novel written by Shinkai himself. The previous book adaptations of his films were written by others. At only 90 pages, it’s a pretty short book, a novella at most, and in English it’s published by Yen Press alongside the novelisation of Shinkai’s later movie Children Who Chase Lost Voices. I have to admit, I didn’t realise that Shinkai himself had written it until I finished reading it and read his afterword.
The novel reads well, it hews very closely to the film, though helpfully embellishes the inner thought processes of the characters. It’s similarly structured in three parts — the first narrated in first person by Takaki, the second in first person by Kanae and the third written in the third person covers both Takaki and Akari’s experiences, though at something of a distance. The story is the same, and it’s just as frustrating, but the third part especially benefits from the extra detail and exposition lent to it from the print medium. If anything, the way Takaki treats his girlfriend Risa (whose part is greatly expanded) makes him seem even more of an asshole to me.
The second novel adaptation, published by Vertical, is something a little different — it’s called one more side and is written by Arata Kanoh, whom you’ll recognise as the author of both the novelisations of Voices of a Distant Star (which I disliked) and The Place Promised in Our Early Days (which I liked). As the title hints, the novel offers a different viewpoint on the events of the film and the first novelisation. Whether the film actually deserves two separate novelisations is another argument entirely.
One more side is again split into three segments like the film, with the first narrated in first person by Akari. It is nice to hear things from her perspective, it isn’t exactly revelatory, and it does tend to drift towards the deathly dull adolescent navel-gazing that marred Kanoh’s Voices novel. Kanoh’s writing is also rather staccato in style compared to Shinkai’s. While Shinkai tends to write in longer, descriptive passages (unsurprising, considering the visual splendour of his films), Kanoh writes in short sharp sentences, rarely grouped in paragraphs, it reads more like random thought after random thought splurged onto the page, which may be fairly accurate to the internal thought processes of a lovestruck adolescent, but I find it difficult to read.
The second part is narrated in first person this time by Takaki, which is interesting because in the equivalent movie segment, Takaki is seen almost exclusively through Kanae’s eyes, and his actions are a mystery. This part does a really good job of explaining his actions and views. He comes across as a very melancholy boy, emotionally adrift from those around him. It expands on his dreams, and confirms that the messages he continually types on his phone to Akari are never sent (something the movie only just hints at). It also confrms that he’s not completely oblivious to Kanae’s feelings, but he’s so emotionally constipated he does nothing about them.
Finally, the third part gives even more depth to both Akari and Takaki’s adult lives. Again, Risa has a larger part (she barely appears except as two or three mere cameos in the film) and Takaki really does treat her very badly. I disliked him even more after reading the book, though Akari comes off well as a functioning adult. The book ends with a transcription of both characters’ unsent love letters, which is poignant touch. Overall it’s a decent enough read, I didn’t hate it like I hated the film.
So that leaves the manga adaptation, available in English as a single omnibus edition from Vertical. It’s not just an adaptation of the film, there are scenes from the novel here too that greatly expand the story. The art is decent, the characters’ faces expressive, but what I really like is how it handles the ending. I don’t want to spoil it, but it adds an extra hopeful note to the climactic scene, but also adds an unexpectedly delightful coda where Kanae finally gets some form of closure. The manga is almost certainly worth reading for fans of the film.
All three book versions remain in print and are readily available, the movie itself was licence-rescued in the UK by Anime Limited two years ago, while in the US a blu-ray was released by GKIDS/Shout Factory last year. Perhaps if you go into it expecting a tragic/unfulfilled romance you might enjoy it more than I did. For now, I’m just grateful to be able to move on to Shinkai’s next film — 2011’s Children Who Chase Lost Voices (also known as Journey to Agartha). See you next time!
5 Centimeters Per Second
Directed, written and produced by: Makoto Shinkai
Studio: CoMix Wave Inc.
Music by: Tenmon
Japanese cinematic release: 3rd March 2007
UK release: DVD: 14th March 2011, blu-ray: 29th Oct 2018 (Manga Entertainment), blu-ray: 5th April 2021 (Anime Limited)
Languages: Japanese audio with English subtitles, English audio
Runtime: 63 minutes
BBFC rating: U
5 Centimeters Per Second (novel)
Written by: Makoto Shinkai
Japanese publisher: Media Factory
Japanese Publication date: 19th November 2007
Published in the US as: Children Who Chase Lost Voices from Deep Below + 5 Centimeters per Second (Hardcover)
US Publisher: Yen Press
US Publication date: 4th May 2021
Page count: 192
Translated by: Taylor Engel
ISBN: 978–1975315–69–6
5 Centimeters per Second (manga)
Written by: Makoto Shinkai
Illustrated by: Seike Yukiko
Japanese publisher: Kodansha (Monthly Afternoon)
Japanese Publication date: 25 May 2010–25 March 2011
US Publisher: Vertical
US Publication date: 12 July 2012
Page count: 468
Translated by: Melissa Tanaka
ISBN: 978–1–932234–96–1
5 Centimeters per Second: one more side (novel)
Written by: Arata Kanoh
Japanese publisher: Enterbrain
Japanese publication date: 20th May 2011
US publisher: Vertical
US publication date: 1 Mar. 2019
Page Count: 240
Translated by: Kristi Fernandez
ISBN: 978–1–947194–09–0
