What a nice guy.
Hello and welcome to Are We verriot an exploration and education in Anime. I'm your anime idiot, patrick dugan.
I'm an anime expert, dana hollander.
And I'm brenda mccullough. Your speed of an expanding anime universe.
Faster and faster and faster. And we're on a fastered streak.
Got to go fast.
I knew someone was going to breathe.
Got to go faster. Faster, faster. Fast, fast. Faster.
We went like, what, a month of just speed and running at sonic?
At least three.
Three? Yeah, I don't think we no, erica.
Proxy doesn't count at all.
Yeah. Did we bring up sonic in that episode?
I already forgot about.
It was 12 hours ago.
Well, hopefully what we're watching today is more memorable. So, dana, what do we have going on this week?
This week we're watching a movie called five centimetres per second. It's by, I believe his name is makuto shinkai. He made your name as well as Garden of Words, bunch of other really beautiful, cool movies.
Pretty things that make you cry.
Yeah. This one I actually haven't seen, so I'm excited to watch it because I've heard nothing but good things about it. It is like what's the word? It is like necessary weeb viewing.
I think your anime checklist. You can't get your license until this course has been taken.
Exactly. So technically, I haven't even been the queen of weeboos until after this.
You can't get your officially licensed thousand folded nippon Steel katana.
Right, I'll get it in the mail.
After this, all official weebs have just a ninja just shows up and drops it off on your balcony. And you don't even know it was in the course of the night, no one even saw him.
Thanks an aruto.
Your wife who body pillow is only your fiance.
Body pillow?
Yes. tonight's the night I'm finally getting married to Princess peach.
I've been sleeping in body pillow sin. unmarried, unlawful premarital.
Body pillow sin.
Oh, God. My body pillow priest would be so ashamed of me.
You're living in bedlock.
Coincidentally, Brendan, my body pillow is also a body pillow priest. Ha ha. That's disgusting.
I would never brendan, do you know anything about this? Have you seen this movie?
No, I know absolutely nothing. I googled 5. Something came about the expanding universe and I just went with it. So I'm guessing it's about universes.
Love it.
Yeah.
I assume you don't, dugan, that's a silly question.
Of course I don't, as a big ten four letter partner.
So we're all just going to go in blind? Take a chance.
We're all winging it today.
I mean, it's worked out sometimes for us, but just that Christmas episode just makes me scared.
Anytime we're all what Christmas episode? I don't know what you're talking about.
Your name. It was a very surprisingly enjoyable no, that was the New Year's episode. Yeah, we don't talk about that.
Remind me, it's the only anime series I've seen in full.
Whose fault is that? We got plenty of shows for you to choose from, and you just ignore all the good ones.
But Santa anyway. All right, so, yeah, this is the movie, so of course we're watching all of it. No, jump it around. That'd be weird.
So it doesn't matter if you like it or not, because there's nothing else.
Dana, are you sure we didn't just watch your name again?
It feels like your name again.
You know, I can't tell you I couldn't say that. I'm not 100 I'm 100% sure. I don't know.
It's like we met your name. It's like, how do you do? Nice to meet you. And then we see a shambling skeleton behind them, just, like, dancing. It's like, hey, wait a minute. That's the basic structure of your name back then.
This one's different.
What's going on back?
Yeah, less terrorism in this.
Wait.
Terrorism? The meteor.
That's what I thought of, but then I realized that they do destroy the electric plant of their city. That doesn't happen in this one.
Let's talk about romp.
Yeah, very gentle. So it is split up into three different quote episodes. And in the first one, in, like, the first 2 seconds, we find out that 5 cm/second is the speed of falling cherry blossoms.
Here's the title. Here it is. We're getting that out of the way here.
It is something, kids, because I always.
Wondered what it meant. So I'm glad that they put it all out there right away.
Yeah.
And, like, in the beginning, it's already very pretty. It's two kid ish characters. They're like eleven or twelve. Their names are takaki and akari. And they're shown walking home from school together. There's a shot of them running, and that's when I was like, okay, this is pretty. This is one of his movies.
Big open fields, lots of skyscapes.
Yeah. Later in my notes I'll just mention it now. Later in my notes, I realized that the skies in this movie are very pretty just as they are in your name. I don't know if this guy has, like, a thing with animating skies.
He's got a sky. That's normal.
I didn't want to put it that way, but he went and did it.
If you don't make it clear, I'll corrupt it.
So pretty much the first half of this first part is just akari speaking to takaki through letters, because they went to different middle schools. They were together in the end of their elementary school career, and then when they got to middle school, they went to different middle schools. Because I don't know. I think we find out in this part that akari moved away. But they're still good pals.
Bill pen pals.
Yeah.
So the last time they saw each other was when the cherry blossoms were falling. The cherry blossom petals. So we're kind of shown her letters over the course of a year. So it's winter. She talks about how she checks the weather in Tokyo because that's where they lived together. She checks the weather in Tokyo every day even though she still doesn't live there. And I thought that was really sweet. And I find it very relatable because every once in a while I'll look up the weather in San Jose just to I know. How gay is that?
You have feelings.
I'm in a loving relationship. Gross.
I usually do the same thing with the East Coast science. Go. Thank God I'm not there anymore.
Snow. suck it.
Yeah.
So he talks about how after this year of middle school, he's going to be transferring elsewhere to a place called Kagoshima. And there's a part where I liked this because we're just shown a bunch of different things through his school year. Like, we're not shown any of akari's. And there's a part where he's sitting on a bench with his friends and they're supposed to be doing pe. And he's just like, Where's Kagoshima? And they're like, pretty far away, isn't it? And then the coach is like, freshmen. And they're like, coming. I just thought that was funny. I watched the English dub because that's what was on YouTube.
Yeah, same.
Hence freshman.
I think he says, like, where's Kokoshima? And they're like, I don't know. He's like, is it far by train? It's like, fucking, man. I don't know. I just told you I don't know.
I really I'm sorry.
I thought that was a good, like, cue, that he was just kind of really fixated on it and he wasn't really listening to what they were saying if that wasn't just a weird translation.
So we find out that they're planning to see each other again on March 4, which is the last time they saw each other was March 4. So they're meeting up on March 4 again, and it's before he transfers because Kagoshima is really far away. Even though Tokyo is far away from wherever she is, kagoshima is going to be even farther. So it's going to be even harder to see each other.
It seems like they're basically like she moved pretty far east, and then he's going to be moving further west. So it's going to be like almost twice the distance as it is already.
Yeah. And in one of her letters, she talks about this really big cherry tree that she likes to sit under. And she's just imagining them being together, sitting under this big old cherry tree while it's blossoming. So cute. And then we're shown it's the day of it's, march 4, and he's sitting in class after school, and he has this whole train itinerary written out. And I love it. It's so cute. I love that planning. I actually wrote it two days ago. I always write a list of everything that I need when I go to San Jose. Like, every single thing, even though I could probably memorize it by now. So I just like, that he wrote it all down.
Yeah. If I'm driving anywhere more than an hour, I used to print out directions as well as have a GPS.
Yeah. mapquest.
Hell yeah.
I loved mapquest. But it's snowing, so no cherry blossoms, which is already kind of like, oh, no, is this a bad omen? What's going to happen?
Sign of things to come.
I wrote, it's snowing. No cherry blossoms this year, boys.
Pack it up. We also don't get any it's all the voiceovers of akari's letters. We don't get any of his letters. So for like almost all of this first part, I didn't think he wrote any letters back. I think it was just like I thought it was just one sided and I was like, man, this guy is kind of a dick. So I got a bad impression of him because we didn't hear any of his letters that we see later in the movie of him writing like in flashbacks.
Yeah, like the flow of the conversation. It feels like it's one sided because they jump from like, I'm starting school into like, I so can't wait to see you. We're got this plan. So you do sort of get to piece it together, but yeah, we basically don't hear from this guy for most of this.
Yeah, it's just all her talking about how excited she is for him and how excited she is for her and stuff. And then we get like a little flashback where they're hanging out and they go to like a little fast food place and they're talking about a book about evolution that they like nerds. Yeah, they're talking about their favorite creatures throughout time, I guess. dinosaurs. They're talking about dinosaurs.
Well, I think it was even before dinosaurs. This is like the sea monster creatures that crawled out of the ocean. They're talking about some deep, deep stuff for like twelve year olds or something. Whatever they are.
Yeah. And they make shapes out of them with the fries.
Nothing like nerds in love.
It's so cute.
I mean, dub them into a locker together.
Isn't that what just our podcast is? Nerds and love?
Yeah, we're all in different lockers showing solidarity. And so during this flashback, we kind of hear takaki talking about how they met. And he actually transferred to this elementary school like a month before she did. So they were both transfer students and they both had really bad allergies, so they preferred to stay in the library and read as opposed to playing outside. Their classmates always made fun of them for being in love. Being nerds in love. There's like a shot of them going into the classroom and they've like written takaki hearts akari. And it's like, whatever, leave them alone.
You've interacted with the opposite sex. You must love them.
We're all twelve. That's how this works.
There was a moment, this moment I really noticed the background acting. I'm not sure why, but I just really liked this part where he took her hand and they were running out of the classroom and you could hear the kids making fun of them, and one of them goes, oh, how romantic. And I was just I don't know, there was something about it that really caught my ear, and I thought it was really good.
Yeah, I did like that because there was someone else who's like, oh, what a gentleman.
Yeah, it was really, like, good, unique, and not just like look, when I've done background stuff, I always go, nonverbal. I feel like it's especially in moments like that, it's hard unless the directors specifically say something, it's, like, hard to.
They don't want the attention to be drawn to the voice instead of what's being shown on screen. So it's not just too identifiable.
But I thought this was a good balance.
Yeah.
So we get that flashback, and then we're shown to cocky getting on and off of trains. And I just kept thinking how nervous I would be if I was taking all of these trains by myself. And he doesn't have a cell phone, it seems like.
Yeah. Especially at, like, 1213. That's a big trip to take by yourself.
Yeah. He's 13 at this time.
Yeah, we don't find that out till later. But I was just like, oh, he's like high school or something. And then we find out 13. I was like, oh, yeah, no, I'd be just riddled with anxiety of like, I fucked up. I fucked up and got on the wrong train. I'm going to the middle of nowhere. I'm dead.
This is it.
They're sending me back in time.
Oh, no.
I got on the very worst train.
Oh, shit.
Doc Brown, what are you doing?
And then again, another flashback of akari in a phone booth. She's very sad telling takaki that she's going to another middle school and that they won't be together. And this part really made my heart ache. Just like, the way she sounded as she started crying, like, made me, like, upset. They were sad.
It's a rough game.
This was just a very well done, narratively driven story. They knew how to tug all the heart strings in the right places. It was very good.
Yeah. And then that's pretty much the gist of that flashback. And then we're back to takaki, and he's still switching trains, and there's a part where he talks about how the city smells while there's, like, a fresh snow. And I just thought, it's that smelly. Smell. That smelly got that smell tank. Yeah. And he's going, like, real far out into the country. And as he's hopping on train to train, each one keeps getting more and more delayed.
This is around and when I started realizing, like, I got to watch different stuff because the whole time I was just like, this is Silent Hill. This is just setting up for Silent Hill, where there's longer delays. There are fewer were people on each train. There's more snow. It's him by himself now, and he's going to just get there and there's going to be, like, pyramid head ripping someone's skin off or something. I'm just like, no, I know that's not what this movie is, but my mind couldn't get out of that.
I got to consume different content.
See, this just made me so bitter about the American trains because they're like, hey, this train is ten minutes delayed due to heavy snow. We apologize profusely. And I was like that they acknowledged that it's going to be more than, like, five minutes late. What I thought, where energy expected?
Where is this energy in America?
I think your train is going to be 2 hours late and you're going to love it. Fuck you.
Or am I not expected and you're.
Just going to think, whoa.
Well, I think there's a story of, like, a train conductor in Japan who, like, did something wrong and, like, made the train a few seconds late and had to make a public apology on television and like, kind of like a press conference. It's like, damn versus, like, philly. It's kind of like that training coming. It's like you don't know that. And you'll be out there all day and you'll never know that. And it just won't show up because why?
Yeah, I've in Boston, waited for the last train of the night at midnight, drunk, after a party in college, and it just never showed up. And this happened several times. I'm like, Well, I wasted 40 minutes waiting for this train. They keep saying is ten minutes away. Ten minutes away. So I guess I'm calling a lift right now at one in the morning? I should be in bed by now.
I've never had to deal with trains. I live in Southern California.
I wish you had to deal with trains. God damn you, elon Musk.
Get to it.
Ready? Okay. He's running late. They said they were going to meet up at seven and he is already 15 minutes late. And I was very stressed because on top of me thinking about being in that situation, I also hate being late. This is very stressful for me at this point. Things go on. He says he's written her a letter. He has so much he wants to tell her and so much he wants to ask her. And he's just worried that she won't be there anymore because at this point he is an hour late, which sucks because he's been traveling since after school, which might have been like, 03:00, and now it's like 815. So he's been traveling on trains for like, 5 hours.
And they're supposed to meet at the station, like, at 09:00 when his train gets in.
No, they're supposed to meet at seven.
It was seven.
Yeah. So he's already late.
Yeah, but so he's on the train and he's saying that the buildings are getting, like, fewer and far between because he's heading out further into the country.
Pick him a lot.
There's a part where he's standing on a train platform and there's like a big gust of wind and he's holding the letter for her, and it blows out of his hands. Rip. So he's on a train and it just stops in the middle of nowhere. Terrifying.
That's happened to me.
Yes.
And he's just, like, so upset that this is happening. And he's 2 hours late now, and the train took another 2 hours. Just sitting there in the snow, in the heavy snow.
I feel like I would be stuck on that train for 20 minutes. Be like, all right, who am I eating? We ain't going anywhere.
I got to get out of here.
Just immediately planted out in my head real quick.
It's an older guy. I can take him down. If I partner over with this bigger guy, we might be able to run the train.
But then I got to watch my back because I can't defend myself from the bigger guy. I need to keep at least one ally.
We've all seen Snow piercer, right?
I was going to say, what is that movie? So I was just thinking, I was like, gee, I hope she understands, and that he didn't stand her up because of all this snow. Snow. And then he gets there and I'm just like, where's he going to stay? how's he going to get home? What's he going to do? He's here now.
He's a child.
He's a child. And he walks into the waiting room of the station, and akari is still there.
She waited.
She waited the whole time. And he walks up to her and she just looks up at him and she grabs his shirt and just cries because she's just so happy to see him.
The reunion.
And then she boils some tea over this little room heater and she made him bento. He's a very big rice ball. I don't think I would enjoy eating just a rice ball, but in miyazaki movies and in this movie, it just looks so delicious. Just big sticky rice.
I mean, they're always, like, filled with stuff, so depending on what they do.
Yeah, mostly jelly because a lot of them are jelly donut.
Jelly donut?
Yeah.
Sorry. We mentioned a rice ball. I had to get it. I was thinking, let me check that off.
Pokemon reference business ad.
So they're sitting there just talking for a little while, and then the guy at the train station is like, hey, kids, I'm sorry, but you have to go. There's no more trains. And they're just both like, okay.
Hoff into the winter tundra with you.
Okay. And then they get up and they're taking a walk. And I was at this point that I was like, does his mom know where he is? Has he called his mom? They don't have phones because he mentions living with his mom, but he doesn't mention his dad, so I assume that his dad isn't around, but I don't know.
As his animal mentioned later on, that because he's moving it's for his dad's work.
Oh, that's right.
Okay, so they're taking a walk, and they walk up to the tree that doesn't have any cherry blossoms on it, but it's still a nice big tree. And they're standing there under the tree together, watching the snow fall, and they kiss. You cute little 13 year old first.
Kiss reminded me of a race romantic erase.
This is very much erased.
Oh, erased. Yeah.
Let's go see the big dead tree in the wood.
Yeah.
Life sucks right now. Let's try to find any joy we can. Oh, look, some foxes. Oh, wait, you're murdered again.
So they smooch, and he's talking about how it's really nice, like, in his brain. He's like, oh, this is a really nice moment, but I'm very sad because I know that we're not going to be able to stay together and this moment is going to end and blah, blah, blah. But it's just a nice, warm moment, and they have a nice hug, and that's all that matters right now.
I wrote down after they kissed. He says, at that moment, I felt like I understood all of eternity. And I was like, yeah, he's 13. All right, I understand everything now. I've been kissed.
I kissed a girl, and I liked it. Wow. And then they find a little scary shop.
No, I'm sorry.
Oh, wow.
I knew where you were going with that.
They find a shack, and they just stay in the shack, huddled under a blanket, and they talk all night, all cuddled up together.
The love shack.
They're 13. And then it's the next morning, and she takes him back to the train station, and he's off. And that's the end of the first part.
Oh. And we see that akari had a letter that she didn't give to him.
Yeah. She looks at the letter thinking, oh, I didn't give it to him.
Blew my chance.
But they did kiss.
So it's like that sentence more than any letter ever could.
I know it's march. I don't know much about Japan's weather, but they're sleeping in the middle of the snow in this shitty little hut. Like, they could have died.
Hey, you know what? What's her name?
Akari?
Shit. No, the name of the little girl that gets killed and erased.
Oh.
She stays in a trailer.
I do like it. I don't know anyone.
I remember you guys were saying it wrong, but I don't remember what it was.
I want to say it was like kaiu. It was something related to caius kaiu.
But it was like regardless, she stays later in the series, she stays in a trailer in the snow for days at a time.
Yeah, but they prepared for it anyway.
Doesn't matter. The warmth of their bodies and love.
Kept the most high. All right, part two.
Sorry, I had to look back in my notes, see if I had a race, but I didn't have an episode. She was in it's. Cool. Anyway, dang it. So we get a time skip. This is a couple of years later, I think, later on in high school. Yeah, they're seniors now, about to graduate. So we are introduced to a girl named kanye. Well, first we see he has a dream. Sitting there with her watching like an interstellar sunrise on a different planet.
I was like, look out for meteor. Right.
Don't die.
Also it was kayo.
Kaya.
So kayo is pretty glove.
So, yeah, we are introduced to kanye. She's a girl, she's on a moped, driving down the street. Her sister pulls up in a vans, like see after school. And they go there separate ways. So we also see he is remind me his name. They call him something different in this takaki section.
Tikaki.
Okay. So for this section, he's referred to as Tono because it's anime. So everyone has well, it's Japanese, so everyone has different names.
Yeah, I think Tono is his last name.
Yeah. So they're not as familiar with him as a car. He is.
Tono has picked up archery, so he's always at the range, like before school. And kanye pulls up and is watching. She's saying, like, today's the day. I'm going to say it. I'm going to say it. And then she goes up to Tono finishing up archery and just like, oh, hey, you're at the beach. Because kanye is a surfer. And she's like, yeah, just finished up getting ready for school by so, yeah, clearly a crush has developed. So in class they are given a future career survey. And basically they're trying to figure out their career paths to figure out the college and all that stuff that they're.
Going to go to.
And a bunch of kanye's friends are all huddled up and they're gossiping about Tono and how kanye clearly is so into him and all that.
Back at the beach, just surfing and her sister and her talk a bit.
Yeah, talking with her sister about life and how she's on like a streak of not being able to catch a wave and she's just trying to get back to it. And in her inner monologue, we get how she is very much crushing on Tono and very much wants to Snooch his face.
She wants that boy.
He's pretty dreamy.
She wants him to threaten her.
It is scary.
It's the biggest thing in the world right now because they're teenagers and hormonal and dumb.
Are you not?
No, I'm just saying everyone at this point in time, teenagers like, God, the hormones really fuck with how you think it sucks.
Can I know?
I was a teen. Yeah, I was once a teen.
It may shock, believe it or not.
But I was not born a 22 year old person.
God, I wish I was just skip all that childhood bullshit. Oh, that'd be great.
So kanye is sort of hovering by the moped stands, which we we got train travel, we got mopeds. This is just this is making me miss all the ways I got around.
Cars.
I too, in high school was a moped kid.
What?
Have I not told you about my undying love for mopeds?
No, but it makes sense. Like it fits how you love very.
Small city and it's easy to take a moped places. Also, gas was like $4 a month.
Wow. Anyway, maybe I should get into moped.
We have to find a moped anime.
La would murder you on day one if you tried to use the moped. That's the only reason I haven't gotten one.
Again, you ain't ready for a kid. You ain't ready for the bid week.
You ain't ready for the PED life.
Can we get pedlife jackets?
No.
Anyway, so she's hanging out by the mopeds waiting for Tono to finish up archery practice. And oh, what a coincidence. We just got to our mopeds at the same time. Do you want to ride home together? So they're cruising, they're going home, and we get the flashback of how he is introduced to her. So this is the island that he was moving to from the first section of this film. And in 8th grade, he was the new kid in class. And instantly she fell in love because he was so cute and nice and fun and just ever since she's been a friend but wants to be more.
She's studying classic. Trying to get better grades in class so she can go to the same school he will because she knows he's smart. So she's putting in the effort because.
He'S a fucking nerd. As we establish nerd.
She also says when they're like mopetting home, she's saying like, if I was a dog, you'd see my tail wagon so fast right now. I'm so happy. And she says it's a good thing I wasn't a dog. And I can honestly say I've never had that thought in my life. Being a dog would always be more preferable to what I got now.
Yeah, it was a weird little moment, but I appreciate it.
Yeah, I thought it was a cute little thought.
That's some high school logic right there.
Yeah.
So they stop at a little convenience store. They go in and get some drinks. He always gets the same thing. And she's just always so indecisive and takes too long because I sense a theme. And as she steps out of the store, since she took longer, she sees him writing an email to someone and gets jealous because she assumes it's like a long lost love in Tokyo from when he moved. So the next day at school, or at least later on, there's some time jumpy stuff in here so the timeline isn't super clear.
How. Are you going to ignore her dog?
I was wondering about that.
Sorry. Yeah, she goes home. She has a cute old dog and has a butthole.
I mean, yours doesn't.
I didn't notice his name's cubby Gulby.
I always appreciate Japanese culture and drawing dog buttholes.
I mean, it's what they got, whether you like it or not. Waiting, hiding it. Wake up, sheep. Dogs have buttholes. Get over it.
Okay.
Moving past the dog butthole.
Back in school, she hasn't turned in her survey yet and is talking to the teacher. And he's like, hey, the fuck? I don't want to put it like this, but it doesn't really matter.
It's not that big of a deal.
Aptitude tests mean nothing.
What I learned in podium school is blankety.
She's always so indecisive and talks about how she can't really talk to her sister or tono about things because there's so much indecision and all that in her life and it's hard to talk about. So she's driving back home and she sees tono sitting in a field. So she stops and they're hanging out, chatting, just watching the sunset.
And also I really wanted to there was a moment that before she talks to the counselor or teacher or whoever, she's like called to their office and someone asks Takaki. They're like, oh, can I that's your girlfriend? And he just goes, she's not my girlfriend. Like, really? Like, matter of fact, plainly, it just kind of made me a little sad for kanye.
He doesn't even get like teased about it. He's like, no, it's not my girlfriend. We're just friends. It's just like, nah.
What?
Yeah, that's what I was expecting. I was expecting something of like, what? No, she's not my girlfriend. But he just she's a girl.
He doesn't react to most things anyway.
Yeah, he's a pretty plain dude.
Speaking of planes. So they're chatting in the field, talking about how he's planning to go back to school in Tokyo. And kanye is like, wow, you have your whole life so figured out. And I'm such a fucking mess. And he's like, hey, no. I am terrified all the time. And I am super indecisive about everything. I just play it cool.
Me.
Yeah, it reassures her. And she makes a paper airplane out of that survey and just tosses it into the wind to be litter somewhere. You criminal litter pug.
Terrible.
I just met her saying like, hey, you want to see something neat?
Let me eat this into that air turbine.
What's the worst that can happen?
Oh no, I detonated this town. Not again.
I got you. It's your name.
Woof.
So they're walking home. It's after dark. They get to a train and they see a very slow train pulling a space shuttle because they are near the Japanese like space center. And they're talking about how they are planning to launch a rocket to the center of the solar system, which is the sun. Are they just firing a rocket into the sun.
I guess it's got a bunch of illegal activities on there, and they just have to get it off the planet.
Just got to burn this fucking space probe.
I could not delete my browser history enough into the sun.
There's a war I went to. My buddy died. We're shovel buddies. I can't bury this. I don't trust it. I got to burn. I don't know if he said the center of the solar system or center of the universe because he said solar system.
I think they said solar system, which.
Is why I was so confused, because that is the stuff.
Maybe they're just, like, sitting there and be like, see how far this can get before we lose connection with the probe.
Maybe. Who knows?
I'm not an astronaut.
Oh, also, this episode, quote unquote, is called cosmonaut.
Yeah, I forget what the first one was called. Something about cherry blossoms.
But also tying back into the theme, the train is pulling this rocket at about 5 meters/second. So when she mentions that little factoid she heard on the news, he's like, oh, my love.
Jeez, I love him so much.
So we finally get the perspective of tono in this little segment, and he's just thinking about space, thinking about that rocket and what a singular mission it is to be launched into space, into nothingness, for the sole purpose of being launched into nothingness. And he's talking about how he keeps trying to write these emails, but they end up going to no one because they always get deleted before he sends them.
Oh, do they?
Very angsty. He says, when did I get in the habit of writing emails to nobody?
Yeah, I thought he was just writing them and saving him as drafts or something. I didn't think he was, like, deleting them or actually sending them to nobody.
Yeah, they just show him, deleting it.
Okay.
Yeah, I assume they do that with all of them, but who knows? Can I? With a little bit more certainty in the fact that everyone is uncertain. She says that she will just do each thing she can after she graduates, and rather than having a full life plan, she'll just take it one chunk at a time.
Love it. That's all you can do.
We get a little bit more of a time skip. She mentions that she's been surfing. There's been more typhoons. The waves have been bigger. She's still plugging away. And finally in October, she finally catches a wave.
Yeah.
Hell yeah.
Gnarly.
So she says it's been six months since she caught a wave, so this bad streak in her life is over. And she uses that newfound confidence, and she's like, Today's the day I wrote a wave. I'm dope as shit. I'm going to ask out the boy. I like, yeah.
She catches a wave and a break. Ha ha.
I was going to say, she rides this wave of adrenaline to tell him how she feels.
Johnny tsunami.
Hey. He'd rip up that snow in the first segment.
That's true. He learns how to snowboard.
So she catches up with him after school and rides, and they ride their mopeds home together. And she's like, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm so nervous.
I'm going to love it.
So they get back to the corner store, but this time she is so ready. She makes a decision right away because her mind's so made up. And she gets coffee milk, which is the correct answer of beverage to drink.
Disagree. But we can move.
I really want to go. I mean, I've been to daiso, so I've been to a Japanese convenience store, but I would love to hang out around some Japanese vending machines, see what kind of fun drinks they got in there.
Just throwing a few bucks and just sort of matching buttons.
Just give me a day.
I'm very interested. I bought a small, beautiful can of Royal Milk tea from daiso. It was just like a little London fog in a can. It was delicious.
Anyway, we're very distracted this episode.
I'm very distracted.
I mean, coffee milk is a very rhode Island thing. So this show is just pinpointing my childhood so much and just let me just poke you in the feelings real quick.
Now you know where to go when you visit Japan. It's just this island. It's your hometown, but with chopsticks.
We have a sister city in Japan. Anyway, less about what do you know more about Japan? So she goes outside and she grabs the back of his jacket, and she's about to say it, and she has a moment of realization and just stops and chickens out.
And she just starts fucking crying.
A lot of crying in a short movie.
Well, her moped dies, so they just leave them there and walk home. And then she starts crying. And in her head she's like, you idiot, don't be so nice to me.
Why you got to be so nice? You don't actually care about me.
Yeah, that's kind of how it feels like when you really like somebody or are in love with them, like she says she is. And then you realize that they don't like you back.
I want you to be nice to me because you like me, not because you're a genuine human being.
Yeah, it's easier to take something when it's like, you either like me and are nice to me or you don't. And we don't talk to each other. The various shades of gray fuck this up.
I need that.
Yeah, that's how it feels. That's how it feels at the time. But then you think about it and you're like, I mean, he was nice to me because we were friends, so you kind of get over it.
That's the thing with the teenager stuff where everything's just the most extreme to both ends. There's no fine ground.
Yeah.
So she bursts into tears, and just as he's like, oh, what's wrong? We see the rocket launch, and it's just this beautiful sequence of the rocket just going up into space, being all beautiful. That lovely smoke trail up through the sky.
They got chem trails.
Government big pharma striking again.
Sorry, everyone.
Usually it's me with my government conspiracies.
Finally some balance and finally some truth. So we see them staring off into, literally, space as they watch this thing go up into the sky. And the realization she has is that tono is never really looking at her. He's sort of not present when they're together. And it's clear that he doesn't have the same feelings that she does. So in order to preserve his feelings, she's going to keep her secret and just weeps and weeps. And the relatable image of her just like, curled up in a ball in bed, crying, being like, this boy doesn't love me.
It's a ruffle. In the end, on.
Yeah. I wrote exactly what she said about the way he looks because I just thought there was something really nice about it. But also, I mean, sad. Like, very melancholy. She says it looks like he's always in search of something almost overwhelmingly far in the distance. And there's just something about that just saying it out loud, just like made I said this earlier, but it made my heartache it's just so very melancholy, very bittersweet.
Yeah. And that's basically where we end for episode two.
Yeah.
She's like, I'm always going to love him. And I was like, you're going to be okay. Can I there are so many.
You're 15. Just to be clear, he started that song off with kanye, right?
We should have we always love to cocky toro.
No, we're a little punchy this episode because it's a beautiful movie, but not a ton happens.
Yeah, that's true.
It's lovely. I don't really want to talk about it because it was just such a beautiful thing, but here we are.
Here we are. We have to talk about it.
Yeah.
So we get part moving on, moving on. We got part three, and it opens with Takaki on his computer just right in the way, presumably in this apartment. It's not super clear. I wasn't sure if this was like his work or something at the moment, but I'm pretty sure if this apartment.
Looked like an apartment.
Yeah, and he's got the window open, and he's got a nice spring breeze coming in, getting some of that hermit computer room funk out that I really need to clear out of my room. And you get some cherry blossoms blown in. He's like, oh, cherry blossoms. The theme of this movie. And he gets up, goes outside and takes a wall.
It's an anime cherry blossom.
It's Japan. They are everywhere. It's like the eiffel Tower in France. You can see it from anywhere in the city. And he gets up and just goes out to kind of clear his head and just kind of enjoy the springtime and walks around a bit. And as he's walking over a set of train tracks, he passes by a woman. And right as they cross, it's a quick moment of clarity. It's like something about her. I feel like I've turned around just now. She would turn around, too. We would lock eyes, and I would know her. And as they get off, I feel.
Like we've switched bodies for years apart.
I just woke up grabbing my tits every morning, and she got real mad about it. And right as they get off the train tracks, they're both getting ready to turn around. And right before they lock out, boom, it's a train. And every time this happens, I think someone's going to get hit by that train. Same with blooming to you.
Same thing.
And, yeah, the train goes by, and then when the train stops, she's gone. He didn't see her.
Wait, no, that doesn't happen yet.
I mean, it was that moment, but we don't see that she's gone.
But it's good to keep it to the end.
Well, I already ruined that now, didn't I?
It's a moment for the end.
I mean, this is definitely the most sparse of all of these. It is shorter, and most of it is a, like, recap song.
Yeah. So after that, we cut to new scene, and we just see him at train station, walking around, guessing after work. It's not super clear, but he's just, like, in the city walking around. And he starts getting a phone call, and he looks and we see that some woman with, like, long black hair, glasses, hair, is in a braid. So we're not sure who this is, but she's calling him, and he just doesn't answer. He just doesn't pick up the phone and ignores it. And as he's still walking around, the city starting to get a bit of snow, bringing it all back around with the snow. And we cut to it's, just a lot of shots of the city and him walking around. And we cut to akari, almost forgot her name because she wasn't in here for a while. takari at the station, and she's talking to her parents, kind of saying, like, what are they saying? Like, oh, we can come with you. She's like, oh, no, it's fine. Like, you got to stay here. You don't have to worry about this. It looks like she was just visiting them, and they were just sending her off on the train before she leaves. So she's getting on the train.
She says, I'll see you at the wedding.
That makes sense now, because when she's on the train, we see her with her head in her hand looking out the window and get a sparkle. sparkle. She got that big old rock. She got that big rock. Didn't know Buzz bunny was in this flick because that's a lot of carrots right there. So she's clearly either engaged or not piecing it together at the time. I watch it, but now I am. She's engaged, and presumably that's the wedding she's talking about.
Yeah.
What a beautiful wedding.
Can you tell her a little punchy? Like we said, there's not a lot in this part we got to fluff. And she's just thinking about she found an old letter yesterday, the one she was going to give to Cocky back on that fateful day. And she's talking about the dream she had about the past and walking down a snowy field and seeing the cherry blossom tree and the night sky and all this stuff. And the letter is what sparked her to have kind of those dreams and be very reflective on these memories of the days gone by, like sand through the hourglass, the days of up. And then we cut back to Takaki, and he's just kind of in his apartment, just kind of bumping around. He kind of looks really out of it. And he's smoking on his balcony because he's a center smoking.
That's how, you know things have gone downhill.
So, you know, they're evil, they smoke.
And how can we represent depression and monotonous life in the city? A smoking habit.
A single genius.
I've never seen this before.
Yeah, there's a lot of beer sitting around on his, like, table and on the floor and stuff. And he gets a text from that woman from earlier that was calling him, and it looks like she's at work. And it looks like he's just in his apartment. So guessing he doesn't have a job right now. And the woman's kind of sitting there waiting for her phone. She's very anxious, wanting to get in contact with them very desperately. And the mantra comes by and say, come on, Lisa, we got amazing movement.
That's not really I mean, that's more.
Animated than anyone else in this movie, but come here.
I need you to get me pictures of spiderman.
Get me spiderman. He's a masked man.
Get my violin.
And then we come back to taki, and he's saying he's just surrounded by sadness. He's become an Edge Lord. He's become the sasket of this anime. We need one. So he's just real bummed out and edgy and sad.
Just so sad.
Talking about an email he got where it said, I still love you. And I don't know, this kind of was jumping around a bit, and I wasn't sure who he got the email from or who he was talking about, because it seems like in this scenario, it could apply to at least two women, either a car or pretty sure.
It was glasses woman emailing him and breaking up with him.
Okay.
Because he says in that email she mentions, like, through years of conversations, I doubt our hearts have moved even a.
Centimeter closer yeah, I know that even more. I wasn't clear if that was akari saying that, because it's clear that she's engaged and happy and going to get married, but it's clearly not to him. So I wasn't sure if they reconnected and then separated again. And that was her email. And he just never got over it. And I don't know, it's a lot of assumptions, but I was like, oh, he got together with Lisa and he's unhappy, but he's in a relationship because he doesn't know what else to do, and she's trying to get in contact with us, but he's clearly still in love with cari.
Yeah, I was just assuming it was her because otherwise it's like, why is she there? She has no other reason to be there.
Yeah, I think that makes more sense, but it's not very clear. So it's a lot of assumptions. And he's saying how he just works now. He's kind of lost the spark and his desire. He just goes to work, and then he goes home, and we see him slapping the ground, drinking and watching TV. He's just real out of it. And he says once his beliefs were gone, he just didn't care anymore and he quit his job. So that's why we see Lease had work and then him just kind of bumming around in his apartment during the day. And he goes to a convenience store and starts looking through some magazines, presumably the naughty ones. And it's definitely an establishing shot on those. And then we see them looking at magazines. So it's safe to bet the naughty.
One about the space launch.
Yeah, you can make a space launch sexual.
I wish you would.
Have you seen elon musk's Twitter account? It's menace.
No, I haven't, because I don't want to.
I value my time on the Internet.
I wouldn't go so far.
And Takaki just starts talking about this dream he had, and it starts melding into the dream that akari was talking about. And they're saying they both had, like, the same dream of just their old memories and that one night they had together. And it all went downhill after that. Both just talking about it. And then, boom, title screen. Went three episodes without a title screen. Again, just like your goproxy, it's the same show, same anime, and that's basically it. Then we just get into, like, a montage of a bunch of different scenes of their lives. A lot of them are scenes we already saw that were in throughout the movie. But then we do get a few snippets of shots that we didn't see. Shots of him leaving kanye after college or after high school and going to college and taking off on a plane. And then presumably, they end with a clip show. It's a bottle episode.
Damn it.
They ran out of money. And we see shots of akari out with her, presumably her husband out having a great time. And, like, happy. And we see shots of takaki out drinking and avoiding Lisa and stuff. So looks like one of them is pretty happy.
Yeah. Rip taco. I like that part, but that part at the end is pretty I mean, it was impactful to me, just because they show they pass each other on the train tracks. They're on separate sides, they both turn to look at each other, and then the trains go by and he stands there and waits. And then when the trains are gone, so is she. So it's just like very much like this whole movie, I feel like, is just saying, let go.
Just give it up, just let go.
Because he's held on to this since he was 13 and akari hasn't.
It's like a baby bird. He imprints.
Maybe it's time to move on. Yeah.
I guess you could also see it as like their relationship is growing 5 cm/second apart as they get older. So it was more strained. And it's over the course of what they were 13, say over the course of twelve years or whatever, say they were like 25 at the end of it. It's twelve years of seconds. And then multiply that by 5 CM. Like, there's a big distance now, and it's to the point where it's just they don't even think about each other. Or at least akari doesn't think about him ever. It was just because she found the old letter.
Yeah. We see the time on the magazine with the Time Shuttle.
The time shuttle.
Captain wormhole on the center of the solar system. That's what they're doing. But it was launched in 1999 and they're checking in as it, I guess, completed its mission in now 2008. So it's been nine years.
Even longer than that, because it launched in when he was in high school.
So nine years since the stuff with kanye happened. And I think about like 13 years since. It's a full year in high full term of high school. It's four years. Math. This is interesting audio.
They're late 20.
It's been a while. It's been like over a decade since.
They'Ve seen each yeah, they're about 26 now.
Yeah, 26. That's a rough year. It all goes downhill around then. Don't envy anyone who's going to be 26. It only gets worse. It only gets worse.
I have time.
I don't know, but yeah, that's pretty.
Much it's not your name, but I liked it. I mean, to say it's not as good as yours.
Just imagine going to a restaurant being like, hello. Yes. Can I add, like, an order of your name? Be like, Is 5 cm/second okay? It's like, I guess.
Yeah.
Not but I'll take it.
I have a choice.
I feel like your name is the evolved version of this. This was enjoyable, but your name is like so much more style, more.
Yeah.
It is clear that this one came out first because it has all the bones of it has all the French fry dinosaur bones that I put out on the table. Kids of Your name, but it's not quite there. Like, I thought the ending of this wasn't great. It did sort of bug me that we got these very deep, very involved stories of the first two segments, and the third one sort of just it felt like they hastily needed to wrap it up. Yeah, I wish we had more of that narrative thing. We could have seen the whole thing with Lisa and it falling apart, but we didn't. And it feels like they took a shortcut to the ending.
It's like in How I Met Your Mother, when the whole last season could have been about him being with his wife. And then they just packed it all into one episode.
That fucking show. Yeah.
Bad ending.
He was fine with it, but I understand it's so bad.
Just undercut. Anyway, this isn't how I met your mother. Podcast. We do that on thursdays. But, yeah, I'm the one that needs a happy ending. I actually enjoy a lot of stuff just because it ends. Like certain video games or certain TV shows or books where it's just like, here's the ending. It's like, yeah, but that ending sad and everyone dies. It's like tough shit. That's the ending. Everyone doesn't get a happy ending. I enjoy that most of the time because I'm a cynical, sad asshole. But, yeah, I agree with you, dug. And where it's just like there just wasn't anything here. It's not that it was a sad ending. It was very minimal and we really just got very few, like, breadcrumbs out of the whole sandwich. That was the rest of the movie.
Yeah, I wasn't mad at it. I really liked that ending shot of him waiting for her and her being already gone.
She pulled that, man.
Because that was the most impactful part in this whole last 15 minutes. Chunk is like me, so the first two parts were like, okay, sure. And then the last part was like.
Yeah, I guess I'm not angry they did that. I did very much enjoy the first two parts because, as I mentioned, they hit very, very close to home. I have very visceral connections to walking around at midnight in the snow to my early high school days. So that just gott punched me right in the soul.
You had a dog with a butthole growing up. It connected with you.
Yeah, it hit me right in my soul. perplexed.
As opposed to not having a dog? To having a dog without a butthole.
It's much worse. It's much worse.
It's much worse.
It's a curse. It's in existence. I don't wish, but yeah, it just feels like if they had that little extra addition to the ending, it would make this whole thing much more satisfying.
Yeah.
If it was a whole half hour like the other two parts were, maybe we would have gotten a little more.
Yeah, because this was especially that first part, this was very close to your name levels of me liking it territory. But as a whole, it suffered because of the ending.
Yeah, I agree.
It feels like because it is only 60 minutes, almost, like, right on the dot. So they say it's a full length feature film, but it doesn't feel like it. It feels like it might have been like a, you know, miniseries or just short films all compiled together, which it would work for, but like yeah, just combined all together.
Diimon approach.
Yeah.
Yeah. Everything goes back to ditchimon and it's the source of all joy in the universe. And I enjoyed it. And we were talking about how there's not a lot going on. It's, like, very minimal with content. And we've had other shows where we've had shows where we talked about that and how that's a big problem with shows. But this like, I did not enjoy it. It was just like, oh, it has to be very beautiful to make up for it. And it was. And the music was good, so it worked, but it was just like this is probably the least amount of notes I've taken on any show or movie we've done and just not a lot happens. It was still nice. That's what it was. It was nice. It wasn't great. I don't know if I'd recommend it, but it's like, this was nice. This was pleasant. I enjoyed my time.
I'm pleasantly surprised by your reactions because I didn't know how dugan would feel about it. And I thought Brendan was going so I'm considering this a success.
I enjoyed myself.
Yeah, because I just kept thinking about how nothing really happens with it. And I mean, not necessarily nothing happens in it, but yeah. And that was, like, brendan's biggest problem with azumanga dio. So I was like, oh, no, he's going to hate this. But this is different.
That's where I say the difference are with Azamanga dio, where they have a full minute of just two girls throwing a volleyball bag at each other and hitting themselves in a white background. Like there's nothing going on else in the scene, but at least like, because.
You don't need anything else.
Perfect anime, but Kentucky on the Train, it's beautiful. And you see him interact with, like, the old guy and shut the door and it's just, like, very well animated. So I'm like it's at least nice to look at. They put effort into it. But, yeah, content wise and story wise, it's very slow and not much, but still good.
But it's still good.
It felt like I don't want to say student film because the creator wasn't in college or a student, but it felt like, I don't know, like a pitch for a movie of like, hey, I got this idea for a full feature film, like a two hour movie. Here's what the general. Premise is going to be about and they're like, oh, we like it. So it felt like this was like a pitch he gave to executives. And they're like, we like it. We'll give you the funding for a full feature film. And then nine years later, he made that feature film.
He made your name. Yeah. Well, I'm glad you guys enjoyed it. Semi enjoyed it.
What do we get going on next week?
We have a recommendation from Will parsons and we are going to watch assassination Classroom.
Don't know much, but it seems real popular.
Yeah. Thanks, Will.
I mean, hopefully.
Hopefully. Thanks, Will. Thanks for sending it in.
Thanks for the recommendation.
Based on last year's.
We don't know.
Who knows?
But either way, we love you, Will.
We love you.
So, thank you for joining us. If you have a show you would like us to watch, a recommendation like Will, you can send us stuff at are we there yet? On Twitter and Instagram. Or email us arwyveryet@gmail.com. You can find me on Twitter and Instagram at mrpatrick. dugan.
You can find me on Instagram at queen. Period Weebu, and on Twitter at queen underscore Weebu and my art Twitter. Queen underscore weebu art.
You can find me on Twitter at abts. Brendan stands for Almost Better Than Silence, which is a video game podcast I do. And it's real low key because it's just me now.
Wow. Is this a call out photo?
No. We used to have a bunch of.
Sub tweet and the plugs. Brendan.
We used to have a bunch of co hosts on it and now it's just me and Doug. And it's just like just two guys talking about video games. It's real low key and low energy now.
Just guys.
View House thank you to camille ruley for our artwork, and thank you to Louisong for our theme song stories off the album Beats. You can find all of louie's music at Louisong bandcamp.com. Thank you, and we hope you'll join us next week as we learn to live with ana.
Just watch your name.