5 centimeters per Second has a good combination of romantic situaions mixed into one good film. The film is split up into 3 parts so I will split my review into three parts depending on which one you want read about.
The first part of the story introduces our main protaganist who is named Toono Takaki. The setting takes place in tokyo while he is elemenetary, and his character is fairly quite and dpoes nlot show that much intrest in other people and he mostly spends his time reading books. Due to this he was able to meet a girl in the library called Shinohara Akari. Shinohara is a person similar to him, and due to their similair intrest they end up becoming friends. The story then goes into the development of the actual characters and their relationship. During this time the director takes time to show of his amazing visual work in the art as well as engage us with the dialouge these two share. 8Suddenly the plot shifts as we have the revelation that Shinohara is forced to leave due to family, this leads to the two seperating, but that does lead to them not talking anymore. They did not have phones, but they had letters that they had sent to each other continously. After a couple years they decide that they want to see each other again so Toono plans to take a train all the way over to where she is. During his train ride over ther there are multiple delays due to the snow and halfway there he is already late. Hours and hours go by and we see alot of dialouge go through his head thinking about if he will actually be able to see her or not. The time in which we he gets there is around midnight. It is below 0 cold, and he walks out ready to have her not be there, but the first thing he see's is her swadled there in a blanket, by the heater. He approaches her, and that leads to them going outside after getting kicked out and having a conversation by a cherry blossom tree, leading to a kiss. That ends the 1st part of the movie.
Going into the 2nd part of the story the Toono has now moved to a school in the country, but he is no longer the main character, but it is a character that is in love with him. It is a girl named Sumida Kanae. She is a surfer who is always trying to get closer to Toono, but isn't making any significant progress. Throught this part we see how they walk home from time to time, and there relationship starts to grow. Even so, she see's him always texting a message a day. We later get revealed that he is still in love with Shinohara, but has not talked to her in years. Everyday he would write a message to her, but would never send it. This then led to his great amount of love overshadowing his care for Sumida. Sumida is not told this, but realizes this when time and time again she is only seen as a friend. This aspect of rejection to a character is usally not touched in moview or series, so that fact that this story, had given a full part to it was fantastic. Many people have gone hrough rejection in life, even so we do not see it a=much works of literatue. The fact that they reached into that area and did it properly was a great feat that is worthy of the high praise this movie gets. In my personal opinion this is the best part in the movie edition.
Now this next portion is going to be very hard to actually talk about. There is a manga version of this part, and is actually in my opinion the best part of the whole thing, but in the movie, it does not do it justice, and turns out to be the worst one which is the shorstest, and makes the least sense. I would advise anyone to read the manga version first then watch the movie, just so it makes sense. Either way lets get into the details. So a huge time skips accurs and it results in Toono just getting fired from a job. He seems to be having a pretty miserable life at this stage. He is involved in a relationship, but it seem sto be going down hill due to comparing Shinohara with his current girlfriend leading to them breaking up. In the manga they go more in depth with there relationship, but in the movie it is brushed over quickly. He then decides to take a trip back to his hometown in tokyo were he visits the place that he spent with Shinohara. He starts trying to convince himself to let go of her, but he just can't seem to do it. Finally when a train buffer stop is in his way, he sees her on the other side walking away. he yells out for her, and she turns around last minute leaving the train in between them, unable to see each. In the flash that he saw her, on her hand was a wedding ring. When the train had passed she had been gone, but throught that he was able to get over her with that final encounter. This part of the movie is done the worst, even though it is one of the most important parts. That is one of the few negatives, about this movie. Other that though the movie had carried a good plot that kept you engaged as well as a proper looking art and animation that would leave you breathless for what had been available at that time. This would definitely be an enjoyable watch.