I went into this movie expecting an improvement on Voices of a Distant Star and came away impressed and very touched. You see, it’s nothing like Voices of a Distant Star, which was rather out of touch with reality and at one point even ripped off Vandread, my first favourite anime.

No, the reason I love Byousoku 5cm is because it resonates within me. Byousoku 5cm is a colleciton of shorts, Oukashou, Cosmonaut, and Byousoku 5 Centimetre, each a tale with Tohno Takaki as the subject. We see him braving a 6 hour train journey to see Akari, his childhood friend (or should I say lover?), then a scene from his high school life after he moved away and lastly, several years into adulthood.

Spoilers ahead.

There is a plot, but what really gets you as any other love story should, is the feelings expressed in each scene. I remember reading a review online that compared this to Voices of a Distant Star, and found the situation which the protagonist was in nothing compared to the one in Voices of a Distant Star. I find it quite appalling that someone would compare them in such a fashion - the heartache is there precisely because they are so close, yet so far. Tohno braves train delays and sits on a stationary train for 2 whole hours in the first part, Akari only minutes away if only the weather would improve. The theme carries over to the last two shorts, where Sumida often rides her motorcycle back home with Tohno, yet is unable to get close to him. Tohno and Akari cross paths at a train crossing, and at that moment, a train just has to come across and separate them.

Speaking of which, why are trains always a prominent feature in every Japanese anime love story? Maison Ikkoku had trains going by all the time, and if they weren’t in your face, they were clanking and roaring past in the distance. Byousoku 5cm has the train delay Tohno’s arrival by 4 hours - Tohno leaves on the train, now more than willing to carry him out of town - and most importantly, everyone is alone on the train. Akari? Writing letters alone on the train. Tohno? I’m sure the time he spent alone on the train waiting for it to arrive at Akari’s more than made up for whatever time he did spend with his friends on trains. The last scene pretty much sums up Akari and Tohno’s relationship with two trains - one for each of them. And like that, they were separated, physically and temporally.

Byousoku 5cm is a great movie. If you’ve been living alone for the past thousand years and never experienced love’s feelings before, this is like a crash course in one hour. You learn what it’s like to miss a person, anticipate the meeting, where a lovelorn person’s eyes point towards, the taste of unrequited love, and finally the feeling of regret as you mull over what might have been.

Perhaps you’ve already experienced all this… what’s new, you ask? Nothing, really. But you get to feel that somebody out there understands how you’re feeling. Another person’s been in love, and he knows just how you feel - a kind of you’re not alone thing.

That’s why I partake in love stories, at least.