Hacker Cinema
5 Centimeters per Second
秒速5センチメートル
2007 · Film · 63 min
Directed by Makoto Shinkai
Three moments in Takaki's life: his relationship with Akari and their forced separation; his friendship with Kanae, who is secretly in love with him; the demands and disappointments of adulthood, an unhappy life in a cold city.
5 positivefrom 5 commenters
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5 comments on Hacker News
FYI for "The Shinkai films" it's Your Name and 5 Centimeters Per Second.
The first is the second largest domestic box office ever for Japan (after Spirited Away) while also being critically acclaimed.
The latter is quite well received critically, but was less popular (without spoiling anything, the ending is somewhat divisive). Still at a 63 minute runtime it's well worth watching, IMO.
Also, I'll second the Wolf Children recommendation. Everybody in my family liked it, and that's rather rare for a film.
It would be a crime to watch anything directed by Shinkai Makoto (Your Name, 5 Centimeters per Second, ...) in anything less than the best possible image quality possible. "Every frame a painting" indeed !
5 centimeters per second: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0983213/
Visually stunning,leaves me with profound thoughts of fate,missed opportunities and connections between humans.
Your name is similar as well: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5311514/?ref_=tt_rec_tt
To quote bitwize from this thread: Well-done anime has a way of focusing on the mundane in order to establish an emotional connection to the setting.
For anyone who wants to understand this aesthetic, I strongly recommend watching The Garden of Words (言の葉の庭), which is only 46 minutes long. There is something breathtakingly beautiful about this film and other ones like it. They engender a strong feeling of longing and gentle sadness (nostalgia?) by bringing focus to the little things in life. It's a sentiment that tugs at the human soul.
Look up mono no aware (物の哀れ), which may be translated as 'a gentle sadness at the transience of things', as well as wabi-sabi (侘寂). Both of these are central to Japanese culture and history.
Edit: I also recommend checking out '5 Centimeters Per Second' and 'Your Name', both directed by Makoto Shinkai. To quote Ronnie Scheib's review:
Shinkai has been hailed as the next Miyazaki, and his dreamy mindscapes often equal or surpass the anime maestro in breadth of detail and depth of emotion. Shinkai extends the innate possibilities of the anime dynamic, reapplying its principles of lush effects, inflated background detail and sometimes undernourished character animation to mirror the interiority of the characters in every nuance of their surroundings.
Some images from 5cm/s: https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=5+cm+per+second&oq=5+cm+per+second
> I've never really developed a taste for Japanese animation, and went in with no expectations.
To be fair, the vast majority of it is crap. (In much the same way the majority of American entertainment content is also crap)
But there's also fantastic stuff out there, like Miyazaki films.
Makoto Shinkai has some excellent films.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makoto_Shinkai
Garden of Words, 5 Centimeters Per Second, Children Who Chase Lost Voices, The Place Promised in our Early Days, and Voices of a Distant Star are all excellent.
Mamoru Hosoda's recent works have all been quite good as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamoru_Hosoda
I'm not really a fan of his earlier works, but everything he's done since The Girl Who Leapt Through Time has been very high caliber.
I wouldn't say either is quite at the level of Miyazaki and Ghibli, but they're both quite good, and some of the better examples of the medium at it's best.