Chapter 5

ESSAY AI NISHIDA, IDOL SINGER AND BOOK REVIEWER It’s not rare for first loves not to work out, and yet… When the animated film 5 Centimeters per Second was released in 2007, I was fascinated by the visuals—the sights were too beautiful to exist outside of a memory, so glorious as to be cruel. The final scene, along with Masayoshi Yamazaki’s “One more time, One more chance” stayed with me for a while afterward. And although I was a middle schooler out in the provinces at the time, I still overheard bits of the modest fan controversy about how to interpret the “downer of an ending.” No, that was a happy ending. Why was the protagonist so slow to get over his first love anyway? This book is the novelization of the film 5 Centimeters per Second, written by director Makoto Shinkai himself and serialized in Da Vinci magazine starting in May 2007. It was his first novel, too. The book version was published in November of the same year, and in 2012, it was released as a paperback from MF Bunko Da Vinci. This is its second paperback version. In the text, the different and previously unseen aspects of the main characters are brought into vivid relief. Chapter 1—Tale of Cherry Blossoms Children are mostly helpless, so you can evade responsibility in your memories of childhood. But for adults, it doesn’t work that way. You have to take responsibility and confront the people, the reality in front of you. Takaki, a slightly precocious boy, met a girl who didn’t quite fit in, either. They’d both transferred schools multiple times, and in their minds, connections to people could be severed abruptly at the convenience of adults. For children, time and distance are longer and farther than they are for grown-ups. When their relationship was just beginning, the choices of adults tore them apart yet again. From Nagano to Tokyo, and on to Tanegashima, Takaki had been forced to wander at his parents’ convenience, and the only one he’d managed to open his heart to was Akari. Why does it always turn out like this? When it was decided that Takaki and Akari would go to different middle schools, when the train that was taking him to meet her stopped, when he had to move far away from her to Kyushu—that sense of futility was lurking within his heart. Because his last memory with Akari had been a beautiful one, he began to focus exclusively on what lay behind him. Chapter 2—Cosmonaut The transfer student who’d come from Nagano to Tokyo became a transfer student from Tokyo to Kagoshima. During the last summer she had to think about her future course, Kanae watched Takaki, single-mindedly pursuing the boy she liked. To a girl who lived on Tanegashima, Takaki the high schooler was captivating. She couldn’t win him, but she did have the ocean. Takaki didn’t. Chapter 3—5 Centimeters per Second Sweet-and-sour memories of love turn bitter. Now told in the third person, Takaki’s adult life couldn’t be called “captivating,” even if you were being diplomatic. The town Takaki chose for himself was Tokyo. However, at the university, at his workplace, and even beside his lover, he couldn’t become his true self there. He couldn’t seem to shake that futility that had bled into him during his childhood. He’d lived how he was forced to, adapted himself to his environment, and the freedom that followed felt more like a cavern than liberty. Love is often used to fill holes in hearts. But Akari had been too special. That first love, where everything had fit just right, had been miraculous. The approval she’d given him had been exceptional, but now that he was grown up, it had lost its potency. Takaki failed to become the knight who protected Akari. That spell had to be broken. Finally—through a miracle, he became able to focus on the future. That miracle was no more than a slight, encouraging push to face forward under his own steam. To adults, distance and time are shorter and closer than they are to children. In many stories, when the protagonist “I” searches for or reclaims his self, it’s done by using romance, or a similar relationship, or a woman as the medium between himself and the world. Many such women appear in the works of Haruki Murakami, which Makoto Shinkai claims as an influence. But this work is no fable. The visuals, the descriptions in this work that echo them, the first love that doesn’t work out, and the drab adult years—they’re all founded in reality. At first glance, this little love story is almost overly fantastical, but the shadow of its reality is bound to captivate adults.