[Archon_Wing]

After watching Place Promised I decided to watch this.

5 cm per second, or 18m per hour, seems to carry on many of the themes of its predecessor, namely distance, and moving on, basically waking up from these long streams of poignant memories.

This was a rather depressing movie; with all the troubles taking a toll. Takaki seemed to really suffer with no direction in his life, unable to see someone that loves him in front, and even ended up quitting his job. It was unfortunate that everyone involved suffered such tunnel vision, and it seems that had Akari or Takaki had acted more strongly, this wouldn't have happened.

But such is life and 20/20 hindsight. Despite having the same thoughts and feelings, they couldn't act on them, and so all our leads suffered. Sometimes it just passes by. But at least by the end, they could move on, and the future always has something to offer.

One thing that really separates 5cm from other romances is that there's no real obsession over the "destined" one. Anime seems to have an obsession with having one couple as the one true, and pure one.

In 5cm, the romantic feelings are very strong, but just because they weren't together or even if they end up with other people doesn't mean the feelings were not valid. And this made the characters' feelings very real.

The visuals even managed to outdo Place Promised, which was already very good looking. In fact; it's some of the best I've seen for anime movies. But holy fuck, here, you're just completely stuck looking at all the beautiful scenery.

It goes with the name very well too, 5cm per second is a very slow speed, and when time moves slowly, it causes a lot of frustration in our cast here. The rocket was also a really good allegory, as travel through the cold vacuum of space would also be painfully tedious.

I guess I wasn't a big fan of the ending. The actual conclusion, whether they find a way back or not isn't too big of a deal, but I was still going like "wtf, this just ended?" A bit anticlimatic to say the least.

But in any case, I'll rate this a 9/10, since it's rare that this medium portrays romance in such an honest and somewhat realistic manner. Easily top tier when it comes to anime romance.