Makoto Shinkai’s repertoire is filled with anime films that are about love that can cross all boundaries regardless of the toll. From movies like Your Name, Weathering With You, and The Garden of Words, Shinkai loves to tell the stories of star crossed lovers who have happy endings and audiences like to watch anime like that too. I think that’s why 5CPS flies under a lot of people's radars. It doesn’t try to please its audience or try to play up the powers of undying love. Because sometimes, regardless of how much love can exist between two people, circumstance can disrupt fantasy.

It’s a classic case of Idealism vs Realism. The idealized worlds of anime like Your Name heavily romanticize what “love” can do for people. 5CPS, on the other hand, is not afraid to show its audience a harsher reality. The story of Takaki and Akari is one of misfortune. A boy and girl whose physical distance between each other leads to actual distance put into their relationship. As they grow older, they grow further apart and eventually both are forced to move on from the other.

A common complaint that I’ve seen about this film is that it has a pointless plot. But I’d argue that the directionless nature of the three parts that are presented are intentional. The reason the film is presented in such a unique way is to simply SHOW the viewer events that define Takaki’s (love) life rather than to WRITE a flowing, cohesive story. The disconnect that the viewer feels from Akari in the second and third parts of the film, due to her lack of presence, directly mirrors Takaki’s own feelings of disconnect from Akari. Again, I feel as though Shinkai deliberately chose to do this and it is kind of genius on his part. So it is not that Akari is a shallowly written character, rather, the viewer only gets to know one side of her just like Takaki only knew her for a small part of his life.

So is calling 5 Centimeters Per Second a masterpiece a stretch? To be honest, yes. I think that from a writing and story perspective, Your Name and Weathering With You are actually far better (imo). The writing can at times be bloated, the pacing can sometimes suffer, and the writers almost respect the audience TOO MUCH by leaving huge chunks of time left up to interpretation. On top of that, the characters could have been fleshed out better and because they aren’t it is not super easy for the viewer to care much for anyone other than Takaki.

But all that being said, if you haven’t, I implore you to watch this film. It’s a welcome change of pace to the average romance, star-crossed lovers, trope-filled anime. Mature themes shown through beautiful animation make this a must-watch for anyone who has interest in the medium.