5 Centimeters Per Second

I wonder if any of you has heard of this little gem from Japan.  I surely hadn't until today but I was lucky enough to stumble across some high praise of it on IMDb.  The person was basically saying how wonderful it is but was lamenting how few people have ever heard of it much less seen it.  Apparently the DVD is nearly impossible to find although Amazon will hook you up with people selling rare new copies for anywhere between $160 and $220. (And no there are no missing decimal points in those prices.)

Fortunately it is on the YouTube (at least for now.)  It is just over one hour long and I have included the links to the six parts it is broken into.  These are not the only postings of it but I think it's probably the best quality you'll find. (Be sure to open it up into full screen if you watch it. Even on U2b it looks very good.)

It is a story of growing up.  It's about the relationships we have along the way and maybe it's even more about the ones that we miss.  Of course you know that I don't want to give too much away but I do hope that you will find an hour sometime to watch this.  The animation is truly gorgeous and the story will touch you in the best kind of way; the way that Hollywood forgot how to so long ago.  Seeing this movie only made me realize further how far Hollywood movies have sunk.  It is so far removed from the constant diet of vulgarity sold as comedy, slut culture paraded as romance, sarcasm, hostility and general meanness pushed as drama.  But I guess that topic is for another time...

Of course this movie is in Japanese with English subtitles. I hope that won't deter you.  There are three parts (episodes) to the story which are connected by the characters in them.  So be sure you don't shut it off after you see the first credits roll, there are still two more episodes left. 

It was particularily interesting to me because some of the story takes place where I lived in Japan. I saw the same station signs and visited many of the same places.

Anyway, you will probably need to use only the first link and will find the next ones once you're there but just in case here they all are. Embedding was disabled for these so that's why you can't watch them here.

I hope you'll watch it. I think you'll like it.

Update: The YouTube version I found is no longer available.  There may still be others but I didn't bother to search for them because the good news is that the DVD has been re-released and is available on Amazon and possibly at other places as well.