5 cm per second: gather up our hearts and go
Where do I even start with this entry? I’ve been meaning to write about “5 cm Per Second” for the longest time, but I kept putting it off because just the task of it was so daunting. For me, watching 5 cm is such a personal experience that I can’t write about it without empathizing to the point of being vulnerable. People see the act of showing emotions as a vulnerability and they reprimand me for being so stupidly open with myself. On certain days, I agree with them. But when it comes down to it, I can’t write in any other way because my emotions are what move me to write and put these words down onto the screen; otherwise I wouldn’t have started blogging at all if I couldn’t write about the things that have touched me in some way, left their impressions on me, made me laugh or cry or think really hard until my head hurt.
This is the wiki summary of 5 cm Per Second: “a chain of short stories about their distance”
Upon graduating from elementary school, Takaki Tōno and his close friend Akari Shinohara drifted apart. Akari moved to Tochigi Prefecture due to her parents’ jobs, while Takaki attended a junior high in Tokyo. The two kept in contact by writing letters, but despite the special feelings that existed between them, the only thing that persisted was time.
5 cm per second made me cry so hard that I could barely catch my breath. And then afterwards, I ached for days every time I closed my eyes and recalled the aesthetics of it. Makoto Shinkai has been criticized for reusing the same fundamental plot [distance = QQ] in all of his works. While I do agree that he needs to experiment with new storylines for future productions, I think he rightly played to all of his strengths in 5 cm. I’m mesmerized and seduced by the concept of distance in 5 cm and how you can go so far but still not move at all from the point where life let you down and broke your heart. Shinkai is a prodigy of aesthetic grief. Everything, everything from the breathlessly beautiful settings, to the attention to tiny details that instilled nostalgia into the mundane, to the bare-bones dialogues delivered in all of their quiet wonder… all of these things consumed me whole, pulled me into Shinkai’s world of inevitability, made me hold my breath, sucking in as much air as I could contain and holding it all inside, feeling so full and empty all at once.
Kanae Sumita, in Cosmonaut [part II], said, “It must be so lonely, being in the dark, never knowing if you’ll ever bump into anything or find anyone. It’s too lonely like that, lifting your hands so earnestly towards the vast night sky.” In between the moments when I’ve fucked up and before I can pick myself back up, I wondered if life will always be like that, the endless search in the pitch blackness and the disappointments at every turn. Things don’t work out between Kanae and Takaki because he can’t see anything for himself beyond Akari. So then, what happens to those feelings that Kanae can’t convey? What becomes of them and where will they go now that it’s impossible to make them known to the person who matters most?
Melodrama theory would suggest that they go into the artwork itself. One such theory is that melodrama is an art medium that strives to express the inexpressible. The boundless regrets, the private suffering, the dreams that can’t be realized, all of these things that cannot be voiced appear within the anime in nonverbal, stylistic features that speak for the characters when they themselves cannot. When there is silence in the face of great suffering, there will be emotional excess. These excesses then get translated into the scenery, into the techni-colored skies, the vivid hues of sunlight reflecting off of chrome surfaces, and all the meticulous details that the artist painstakingly took the time to include in every frame. This is why just perceiving Shinkai’s artwork is emotionally taxing in and of itself, because it serves to be the interpreter of all the things that are too shameful or embarrassing or too heavy to be said out loud.
The sky caps from Cosmonaut are visual orgasms for my eyes. These skies with so many stars and crowded galaxies and the purple and blue astral gases, they stretch out into the darkness, wide-open spaces full of hollow minutes and empty years. For the characters, being under them, always gazing up at them, always wondering, feeling so small and strange, I can imagine their painful anxiety when they think about the future. And in the next part, it creeps up on them so suddenly that the momentum, the unwanted realization and unwilling acceptance of it, breaks them.
In the last part of 5 cm, Takaki has grown into a man, working and living on his own. He throws himself into his job and comes home to an empty apartment, floor littered with empty beer cans. His days are all the same. He lives like he’s not really living, always staring off into the distance, always looking jilted and so, so tired.
“Just by living one’s life, sadness accumulates here and there, be it in the sheets hung out in the sun to dry, the toothbrushes in the bathroom, and the history logs of mobile phones.”
The image of him sitting in his dark room, the soft glow of the TV, the rumpled bed sheets, all of that stayed with me long after I finished the movie. When I look to the future I can see those things for myself. And I felt devastated and relieved, all at once.
At the end of 5 cm per second, Takaki and Akari walk past each other and just as he was about to turn and look at her, a speeding train blocks his view, and he loses out again. So he stands and stares with all of his regrets and sorrows and resentments. He knows that it is her [how could he not] and he probably knows too that she has moved on and is now living a life that he is not [cannot be] apart of. And yet he’s still able to walk away from that scene with the softest smile on his face. Somehow, I think he must be so relieved. It’s like encountering a ghost and finding out that that girl from your memory isn’t the same anymore. She’s no longer a static figure. She’s grown and changed and fallen in love with someone else who isn’t you. And devastation and relief mixes together inside of you, propelling you forward, so that you can take it step and step and someday when you look back [it'll still hurt, it'll never stop hurting] you can see how far you’ve come and all the distance that you’ve put between then and now and how that has changed you.
May 25th, 20086:11 am at
I found it really touching too. My personal experiences floated up to my mind when I was watching this, more so than in other romance titles.
May 25th, 20082:35 pm at
Hmmm. I don’t think it’s overly dramatic or ridiculous.
…
I think I like your “emo shit”.
May 25th, 20083:50 pm at
I liked the personal story. Makes the internet all the less ‘faceless’. 5cm didn’t have the same effect on me but nevertheless I thought it was freaking amazing.
I have my regrets and all, and I can’t ever see myself not cringing and making a lemon-face when I look back to those days…thinking. “damn, that was me?” I don’t think it’s impossible, but like you said, that just another element of distance we have to overcome.
May 25th, 20087:51 pm at
That was a beautiful story. I really enjoyed that movie but I just wish it had a happier ending…
May 25th, 20089:33 pm at
So I read this while listening to the Warsaw National Philharmonic Orchestra. It made it so much more epic.
See, posts like this I the reason I <3 ya, and the reason you should have a robot. I think I’m going to have to write up my own post of 5cm now in response/addition to this one. It’s like robot + bubble ramen or something.
Moar epik than we could’ve nown.
There shall be tons of IM harassment tomorrow about this. Be forewarned.
May 25th, 20089:43 pm at
i’d seen Byōsoku 5 Senchimētoru tons of times, and it never fails to rip me apart and make me seize up too – possibly for the same reasons as you. it feels too close to home. i had a similar experience as yours… the distance lasted various continents and 13 years. he made me who i am today – and if i continue being the seemingly distant and aloof slowburner, there’s a reason for it too.
but talk about a twist of fate or good fortune: my (our?) days as Tohno-kun ended. somehow we got thrown back together. that said, the pain from the past never dissipated for me. i don’t think it ever will. but if it helps to make me more aware of what there is out there and what i have in my hands today, then it’s all good.
the distance you’d experienced with your bloke can only bind you closer to him.
(gomen ne… for my “emo” replique! xo)
May 26th, 200812:14 am at
OO I love this movie!
May 26th, 200812:18 pm at
Emo shit? Hell no. I’ve blogged about this movie more than once, read countless other blog posts and can still find new things to say about it…you’ve just added yet another set of ideas that hadn’t occured to me before.
This sort of thing isn’t juvenile angst or ‘emo’ – to me at least it’s open honesty, which I think is in short supply these days…all the more reason to value the work of people like Shinkai, who can drag the soft-hearted sentimental type out of the most cynical and jaded among us. Speaking from experience here, the pain never really goes away but as Takaki demonstrated in the final minutes, it is eventually possible to accept what’s happened and move on in your life.
For sure, it’ll be good to see him tackle different subject matter in later films but as far as this movie’s concerned it does what it sets out to do in the most beautiful and powerful way possible. Cheers for reminding me how awesome it is…I can’t wait for the showing in London next month now! ^_^
May 27th, 200812:51 am at
This… “emo shit”, as you so eloquently put it, is what makes this post stand out from the thousand or so reviews out there on the internet. I guess our raping and abusing of language has led most of us to believe that “emo” can be equated with just about anything resembling emotion, but I’d like to think that we’re not emotionless robots just yet.
That being said, what you might think as insignificant or inconsequential to those reading this is what I loved the most about the review. Adds character, and like Lelangir said, adds identity to the faceless reviews out there. Never apologise about your feelings. Great post.
May 27th, 20082:06 am at
@ritchan: I’m glad you enjoyed 5 cm. There is something really special about it. Doesn’t it make you wonder why it stands out from the other romance titles?
@Hoshi: Thank you. I’m glad no angry mob has formed in front of my blog’s front door and demanded for me to leave town on account of me being human and having emotions.
@Lelangir: Hey you, HxC music analyst. I try not to dwell on certain moments in the past too often because I’m scared that my face will be stuck as a permanent lemon-face forever (>.<). But it is that flinching guilt and shame that make you aware of the distance [how far you've come] and help you to build character.
@Choux: Aw, I don’t think 5 cm would’ve had the same emotional impact or thematic flow if it ended happily.
@Riex: Hey. You don’t get an actual response to your comment because I already spent 2 hours talking to you on the phone today. HAH. JK, BFFs 1+ month. Sekuhara onegai shimasu.
@blissmo: I <3 this movie too. So much so that I want to take it behind the dumpster and get it pregnant.
@avalyn: Thank you for sharing your story with me. I’m glad to hear that things did end up working out for you. Especially after all of the hardships that you must have gone through with a long-distance relationship. You don’t have to apologize for your comment. I’m glad that my entry has moved you and inspired you to come forth and share something so personal with me. I wish you the best of luck with your significant other.
@Martin: I’m glad you weren’t turned off by the personal story. I’ve read a couple of entries on other anime blogs where the bloggers were criticized for bringing in personal aspects of their lives and were told to separate the personal from their blogging. Which, to me, is ridiculous and cruel. Because anime as a hobby, passion, entertainment, whatever it could mean to a person is deeply personal in how that person interacts with it, whether s/he hates it or loves it. Just by provoking a reaction from the viewer, it becomes a personal experience. Thank you for your comment. Great Kaiba post btw. Your inquiries into memory are mind-blowing, in a literal sense.
@Owen: Wow… you’re… you’re so right! THANK YOU, OWEN. FOR ALLOWING ME TO FEEL AND VALIDATING MY FEELINGS. NOW THAT YOU HAVE TOLD ME THAT IT… THAT IT IS OKAY TO FEEL, I CAN STOP LYING TO MYSELF ABOUT BEING HUMAN. WITH YOUR PERMISSION, I CAN GO OUT INTO THE WORLD AND… FEEL STUFF!!! YOU’RE SO AWESOME!!!!!11!!!!eleven!!!!! You’re the Tomoe to my Kenshin, sheath to my sword, etc etc.
May 27th, 20082:09 am at
But what is “emo”? I believe emotions and emo are not the same, as emo is often associated with cheap teen angst over nothing. What I see in this post is real angst, and real pain, on a level I could identify with myself.
Is all emotion “emo”? Even though emo is a shortened form of emotion it is not the same as your melancholy musings about what might have been.
Let me tell you a story (oh God don’t start) about a time when I too wished I might have gotten to know a girl better. She was a beautiful schoolgirl my age from another school, and I admired her from a short distance. She looked me in the eye, not with disgust as I had expected, but a subtle joy in being admired by a gentleman. Then she had to catch the bus at the bus stop she was waiting at and I never saw her again. If only we could have spoken more, but our unspoken words in body language were a parting gift I will cherish forever, even if we never meet again.
This, is melancholy, not emo, melancholy, the good sort of emotion, not mourning the death of a broken iPod when you’re a teenager with enough money from your parents to afford a new one.
I feel your pain because I have known it myself, and your post awakened the gentle poet within me.
May 27th, 20082:55 am at
Excuse me? I believe we’ve already established that I’m Kenshin. I’ve got the skills, the hair, and the demeanour.. all I need now is a sword and a scar to make it complete. gb2kitchen, etc.
May 27th, 20084:56 am at
@Owen: Says Mr. l33t Shit who locked himself out of his own blog by being super paranoid. Aw, that’s alright. QQ to Mama. *pat pat*
May 27th, 20085:27 am at
No, I didn’t lock myself out of my own blog — Wordpress 2.5.1 did! But that’s besides the point, and I digress. QQ etc.
May 27th, 20089:58 am at
There is a difference between being emo and emotionally revealing. I seriously do not know the actual meaning of emo but it appears to be an expression of incoherent angst through my interaction with those who dare declare themselves to be ‘emo’. It annoys me when some people think that being ‘emo’ makes them most emotionally inclined. Ah well, I guess I have an aversion to that term.
From my perspective, this post is not made of emo-shit but of simple yet honest feelings.
Yes. This is what the People Pleaser has to say.
May 28th, 20081:29 pm at
I also cried while watching this. It was amazing.
Have you watched “The Place Promised in Our Early Days”? It’s even better.
May 29th, 20089:07 am at
I loved this post, itsubun! I have an extremely soft spot in my heart for 5cm Per Second and your post really did justice to it.
There’s nothing wrong with being “emo”. The only problem is when “emo” gets out of hand – like all other emotions. So don’t worry about it – your “emo shit”, like what everyone else has been saying gives a very human touch to 5cm Per Second. Now we actually know why you felt the way you felt.
June 1st, 200811:28 am at
You should really get started on writing your own book with that life story of yours. If people liked Byousoku 5cm, I’m sure your story will be well received too.
As for me, I never really felt the true emotions one would feel when watching Byousoku 5cm on my first watch. It was only after certain events, and when I rewatched the movie once again, I cried.
June 7th, 20084:37 am at
i didn’t like the ending *cries!* it broke my shoujo anime-loving heart… but i must say that i love the animation and the story was very good. i just ot frustrated with the ending. -_-’
June 9th, 20087:29 pm at
This is what I call a quality piece of work. Its not just big eyes, big tits and big robots. This anime is art at its purest form, not shrouded by financial constraint bullshit and what production companies decides best for the market. The rendering is so beautifully done, with camera angles excelling live action movies. I could say if it were to be made into a live-action movie, it’s gonna be a big flop.The emotional effect just wouldn’t be the same.
And for anyone who doesn’t like the ending, all I have to say is “welcome back to the real world,kids!”
November 26th, 20093:35 am at
such a marvelous anime with outstanding background and music as well as the characters that left me feeling the emotional catharsis of life. The anime’s ending was a cliche of some hollywood movies that we had come to love but it still brought me to tears and buckets of beer.
space and time are really one of the factors that made life a bittersweet flavor.