5 Centimeters Per Second - Blu-ray Review

[Michael Scott]

5 Centimeters Per Second



Movie:
Video:
Audio:
Extras:
Final Score:


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Movie
Makoto Shinkai has long since been hailed as “The next Miyazaki”, and while the famous animated director hasn’t exactly become AS accomplished as either of the two Miyazakis, he has certainly made a name for himself. Films like Weathering With You, Your Name and The Garden of Words are incredible modern anime films, and with Shout Factory becoming the defacto distributor for Gkids, I was REALLY hoping we would get some of his older works that Discotek held the rights to. Well, luckily for us Shout has pumped out the 4 remaining films in his backlog, and we’re going to start out with my favorite, 5 Centimeters Per Second.

5 Centimeters Per Second takes a unique look at time and speed, changing up the 3 arc story line a bit by altering it into 3 chapters, each with a different time period of the main character’s life. In this case we get to see the passing years of Takaki Tono, beginning early in the 90s and passing into (what was at the time) present day 2007 in 3 various episodes (or chapters as it’s setup as). Each chapter plays with themes of time (the first chapter actually ping pongs quite a bit) and speed, while making a rather helter skelter narrative that is much more focused on being thematic rather than spelling out a traditional story arc.

The ping pong motion of time takes a while to get used to, but luckily being barely 60 minutes long and placing more emphasis on themes of speed and time in and of itself, it doesn’t over stay it’s welcome. The story itself revolved around Takaki and a young girl named Akari, with whom Takaki bonds with nearly instantly when she comes to his school. As you can tell from the first ten minutes, there’s a sort of “made for each other” theme to the movie culminates as Shinkai toys with elements of time and experience as Takaki tries to express his feelings to the young girl.

The story itself happens mostly on a long train trip, where Takaki has gone to finally meet Akari for the first time in some years as she had moved away, and the two teenagers have spent years playing pen pal with each other. Takaki is planning to move even FURTHER away from Akari in the coming year and this could be the final time where he could reveal to her his true feelings before time and adulthood whisk them away via fate.

The second and third act change things up a bit, with Akari out of the picture and a high school Takaki has a young classmate by the name of Kanae fall for him. Once again, the themes of time and unrealized emotions play a theme here, but this mid section really feels like the “filler” break for the 3rd chapter when Akari and Takaki meet up once more.

The film is not your sweet star crossed lovers story. It’s a tale about how time and fate can swing us around a bit out of our control, and sometimes there’s nothing we can do about it. Speed still plays a heavy thematic element here, as time slows and speeds up depending on our point of view, and the ending leaves us with the realization that this narrative is a bit more cold and “realistic” than some would have liked. It’s still an incredible work of artistic talent, blending water color visuals, a bittersweet story, and a sense of being immersed IN the story rather than just watching it unfold.




Rating:

Not Rated by the MPAA




Video:

I never actually got to see the Discotek Media Blu-ray and only had the DVD, but from what I can tell this is MOST LIKELY the same master used for the 2017 Blu-ray. That being said, the Blu-ray looks fantastic, with a wonderful array of watercolor tones used for the animation. There’s some light banding in a few transition shots, but overall the disc is mostly artifact free. Shout used a Variable Bitrate encode for this one (thank goodness it wasn’t a CBR encode like Belle was) and it looks very stable, spiking up into the mid 30 mbps range. This has a sort of impressionistic look to the water colors, and the hand drawn edges sometimes look a bit intentionally wonky. The cherry blossoms sort of spark with a bright pink hue, while purples and reds blend together for the over tones. It’s a very stylistic film, and looks incredible.







Audio:

The Disc and the press release state that the film comes with a 5.0 DTS-HD MA track in Japanese and a 2.0 DTS-HD MA track in English (it seems to be missing the 2.0 LPCM Japanese mix from the Discotek disc), but I noticed that when I pulled up the source info on my player it was recognizing the input as 5.1 instead of 5.0. I’m not sure if that’s correct or not as I would ASSUME they used the 5.0 mix from the Discotek, but just something I noticed. Overall it’s a very good mix, but also a rather tame and mild one as well. This is a dramatic flick with long periods of nothing but dialog and then a few bursts of activity on the train, or hearing kids playing in the background. Music fills out the surrounds the most, and it’s a very smooth and mellow feeling. Dialog is placed up front where it should be, and overall it’s an impressive mix.












Extras:

• Original Japanese and English lossless audio
• Voices of a Distant Star, a film by Makoto Shinkai
• She And Her Cat,a short film by Makoto Shinkai
• Feature-Length Storyboards
• Interviews With Makoto Shinkai
• Interview With Cast
• Trailers

Final Score: ​

5 Centimeters Per Second is a fantastic story by Makoto Shinkai, and one of my absolute favorites. The Blu-ray from Shout Factory and Gkids is quite well done, and while I haven’t seen the Discotek Blu-ray to compare, I doubt it’s much different judging by other older reviews and what I’m seeing/hearing on screen. The addition his short film Voices of a Distant Star is a nice addition (although it seems to be SD in an HD wrapper, and doesn’t look much better than my old DVD). It’s nice to see the film in public circulation as I had missed out on the Discotek disc some years ago, and had meager hopes for seeing it again outside of the Japanese Import. Highly recommended.


Technical Specifications:

Starring: Kenji Mizuhashi, Yoshimi Kondou, Satomi Hanamura
Directed by: Makoto Shinkai
Written by: Makoto Shinkai
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 AVC
Audio: Japanese: DTS-HD MA 5.1, English DTS-HD MA 2.0
Subtitles: English, English SDH
Studio: Shout Factory
Rated: NR
Runtime: 63 minutes
Blu-Ray Release Date: May 7th, 2022

Recommendation: Highly Recomended.

 

[tripplej]

Thanks for the review. I haven't seen this one yet so will check it out.