5 Centimeters per SecondYeah this is one of the most beautiful animes ever made. Only Miyazaki in top form can hold a candle to this stuff. Its not just a few pretty shots, every single frame in the film is atleast screen saver worthy. Even if its something as simple as two empty chocolate milk cartons left on a bench outside a convenience store, the director makes the shot look like a Monet painting. Go to the nearest modern art museum, take whatever they have hanging there and toss it in the trash, replace that garbage with stills of this movie, I guarantee you more people will start coming to the museum.
The plot is simple, its a story about a young mans first love and his inability to let go and move on from that first romance. We get a story of a couple falling in love, and a second story of unrequited love, and a third story of a young man trying to learn to love again, all told with immense tenderness and understanding. It almost makes me angry, Hollywood churns out dozens of romantic films every year and non of them bear any remote semblance to my personal life experience, I view those films as nature documentaries on the mating rituals of emotionless space aliens. This movie is the opposite, I found myself thinking "thats me" over and over again. The nervous anticipation before a romantic encounter, the inability to confess romantic feeling to the one you love, the sad realization that someone likes you and you are completely unwilling to reciprocate their confession, the triumph of a kiss, the heartbreak of a "no", its all here. Only 63 min but feels epic.
10/10 top 100 material