Last night, after I wrote the last post, I was scanning through my messy collection of anime that had been hogging larger and larger amounts of space on my hard disk, and I noticed a mysterious AVI that one of my friends had given to me. But I haven't watched it.
(Warning: this is a long post so don't blame me if you can't hand in tomorrow's report because of this ;P)
秒速５センチメートル
Oukashou. That was its name. So I gingerly opened it up, hoping it was not another prank piece of Hentai they handed to me. It seemed alright at first sight.
It didn't take me long to realize it was a romance anime. 久しぶり. I don't remember the last romance anime I watched. Since I still had time before bed, I thought I'd watch it tonight. I have my Pepsi bottle with me anyway.
桜花抄 Oukashou
It is a story of a boy and a girl, who have been together since elementary school. The girl unfortunately, had to move from Tokyo to a remote town called Tochigi.
The story starts with the girl's letters to the boy. The casual, yet thoughtful contents were read out in the girl's voice, conveying the feeling of distance between the two.
Haha. Don't worry. I have not spoiled anything for you. This is something you have to experience yourself. Apparently the YHBT asshats have done it again. They have released a subbed version as a Not-NarutoShippuden file or something at the Dattebayo torrent.
It turns out that what I watched was the first one-third of a movie intended to be shown in the theatres. The movie clip was only supposed to be shown to subscribers at Yahoo.
The clip was a half-hour episode filled with flashbacks and thoughts of the two protagonists of the story. The way they met, the way they were separated and the way their relationship developed were weaved subtly into the script, bringing forth a sense of loneliness and struggle.
One main thing that caught my attention in this movie was the animators' attention to detail of the scene. Although the characters were not drawn very well, or rather, unlike most serial anime, the sceneries were painted to the last detail.
In the night shots, every window on the massive buildings in the background was rendered. The art was obviously cel-painting ala watercolour. Few animators use this now in favour of more modern computer graphic rendering techniques, resulting in solid colour fills and faster production.
To tell the truth, the sky scenes and the scenes where the lights gradually turned on were the ones that really wowed me. They were beautiful renditions with very very close consideration for the lighting and cloud particles in the sky. I felt a sense of envy that they not only could render the skies and lights so well, but they could animate it smoothly.
The other scenes of the train, train station and city were also very well drawn out. You could read clearly the signs and letters on the newstickers and LED displays that littered Japanese cities.
The building and train interiors were also exquisitely rendered, with attention to even the finest details, such as the reflectivity of the signs in the train and the metal bars.
The story continues with the boy making an appointment with the girl, and makes the journey alone by train to the station in Tochigi, which (given the impression the movie gave me) is very far from Tokyo.
Once again, the boy's thoughts continued to sound more and more painful as the snow conditions that day made it difficult for the trains to operate.
Delay after delay was what made the journey seem long. No part was skipped, and at every stop, the boy's thoughts were read out, revealing his growing impatience with the train system. The girl was waiting, and he felt guilty.
This is a show I will definitely recommend to everyone. To those who think that anime is just random comedy and fanservice, this is a good movie to correct that misconception.
Of course, I'll leave the rest to your imagination, or your turn to watch it. Overall, I'd have to say I am very impressed with this movie. The story was conveyed very effectively and the impressive renditions of the sceneries were more that one would expect from a hand-animated picture. Congrats to the director who managed to finally satisfy my tastes enough to make such a grand ovation for the movie, and kudos to the artists who drew it.
If I could get the DVDs, I'd grab them the moment they are within my reach. *sigh* Not living in Japan is probably one of the biggest obstacles that face us otakus. And I really like the ending song. It was acoustic. Will definitely attempt to translate and annotate.