Five Centimetres Per Second

I have to say I never usually write reviews let alone negative ones but I felt I needed to share this. I have really become endeared to a lot of Anime in recent years especially with Studio Ghibli so I was willing to explore new films.

I lasted ten minutes with FCPS. The main reason was the absolute dullness of the two lead characters who I found it really hard to care about. Two school sweethearts who have to move away from each other as they grow up? I'm sorry I've read and seen it so many times before. This may be targetted at kids but what drew me to Studio Ghibli was that their writing works on so many levels just like you might expect from Pixar or The SImpsons.

The girl's character is also so ditsy and was voiced in an almost patronising and stereotypical way. She alone turned me off the whole film within 5 minutes. In the words of Andrew Stanton....'make me care!' This is just a personal preference for the type of characters I'm interested in.

However I was blown away by the visuals. The detail of the backgrounds really captures a sense of mood, place and time. The first sequence of the boy and girl looking at cherry blossom has an extraordinary timbre of sunlight to it. I'm sure that the rest of the film would have been a visual banquet. The boy's train journey reminded me of Sinn going to meet Yubaba's sister in Spirited Away.