Note: This blog contains spoilers of the story
Recently I started to buy light novels and read them during my commute. The first light novel I decided to buy is “5 Centimeter Per Second: One More Side” since I was familiar with the story. To refresh my mind on the story, I decided to read the manga since it’s been many years since I last saw the movie. Those of you who watched the movie and were disappointed about the ending, don’t worry. I was also disappointed with the ending.
I thought it would be nice to expand on my GoodReads review of the book. You can find my review over here. I’ll also be repeating my review below essentially but perhaps expand on some parts and tell you spoilers.
I absolutely loved the novel and out of the three mediums, the novel is the best medium to go through the story. Here’s an excerpt from my review:
The story is very emotional and covers various themes of life that really connected with me. If you have ever watched the anime and read the manga, you will know that the main themes of the story are about moving on from your past connections (i.e. romance) and about how hard it is to maintain distance relationship. The main character goes through a lot of struggle getting over his lost relationship due to being apart from his first love. The novel goes much deeper than the anime and the manga where it emphasizes the psyche of the main characters such as what difficulties they face with their life. As the novel’s subtitle “One More Side” implies, the novel shows another side of the story by showing different perspectives that the anime does not cover. The novel contains sections from the viewpoint of Akari which the anime and manga lack. Unlike the anime and manga, the novel covers in much more depth of the troubles of being raised a life where you cannot call a place home due to your parents moving often and the challenges they face when transferring to a new school.
Due to medium restriction, it is often common to see the manga and anime cut off a lot of small details that have profound effects on the story. The novel does not have this restriction and so we get to experience these small yet important details that make us the reader more able to relate to. I often find in anime and manga, we have to make an effort to infer what the characters are going through and they are not wrong to do that. But as someone who simply watches without thinking much and slow at noticing things, I find it harder to relate to or understand the character very well. But the novel does not go through this issue. We can understand the character’s direct feelings on each and every small action. A quote I would like to quote is the Afterword in Your Name light novel written by the author himself, Makoto Shinkai.
The novel is written from Taki’s and Mitsuha’s first-person perspectives; in other words, from their viewpoints only. They can’t tell us about things they don’t know. Meanwhile, movies generally use third-person perspectives; the world as the camera shows us. For that reason, many scenes are literally told from a high-angle viewpoint and include characters other than Taki and Mitsuha.
Although the novel may not tell us about things they don’t know, we do know what the main characters are feeling and going through in great detail. It adds more impact and depth to the characters.
From my review:
The novel beautifully portrays the psychological challenges Akari faces. We find in the novel that Akari is a very shy person and lacks confidence in herself. She goes through a lot of psychological battles to get herself to attend school. Akari always felt that she would never be able to fit in with her peers, that no one would ever love and accept her. Through her interaction with the main character Takaki, she starts to gain confidence and grows as a person. The phrase “You will be alright” gave Akari an assurance that there was a person by her side which gave her first step to face the world.
In the second part, the novel also does a much better job in retelling the main female protagonist, Kanae, and the challenges she faced. I do admit that I was disappointed that the novel didn’t cover Kanae after graduating from High School, which the manga covers. But the novel gave another aspect to Kanae that I never noticed when I was watching the anime and reading the manga. The novel shows that Kanae’s troubles are not only about her love for Takaki but also facing the fear of not knowing what to do in life. I really related to Kanae in that she struggles to make decisions in life. It can be as petty as choosing what drink to buy from the convenience store to knowing what to do with your life. Living in an age where society and media gives off this idea that we need to have our life together to do well in our life. We are expected to know what career we should pursue and to have found a sense of purpose in life which wears down people like it did to Kanae. Not having a sense of direction in life and being compared made Kanae anxious about life.
The novel also goes in more depth of Takaki on what he thinks, how he thinks, and the struggles that he goes through. I kind of feel like Takaki is a philosopher and a poet. Takaki loves to think and you can see that through his dialogue with Akari and Kanae and through his frequent self-thinking. One part that struck me was the difficulty of putting ideas and dreams into words. Often times I find my ideas and dreams to be vague and formless and giving them a form really loses a lot of meaning to it. I guess this is normal in that communicating our feelings and ideas to others is a very difficult task, especially for those who are not articulate with their words. Takaki seems to have a difficult time conveying his feelings to others and ends up hurting them. One aspect that I never realize till I read the novel was that Takaki is very observant and is able to understand what his partners are feeling and thinking.
Another reason why I like the novel was that it made parts of the story that were confusing from the anime much clearer. In the anime, it isn’t clear what those dreams he has are even for or how he met the various females he interact with. The novel also shows Akari when she is in university and her life after university as well.
On a side note, the question of whether one should watch the anime, or read the manga or the novel, I would say to read and watch all of them. Each medium covers a different depth and aspects of the story. I love the anime with its stunning visuals and music which conveyed the main theme very well. However, I found the manga gives you more understanding of Takaki’s struggle of getting over his first love in much more detail and the fact that it featured Kanae when she becomes a working adult and her struggle to get over her first love as well. The novel showed an entirely new perspective of the story by featuring Akari’s viewpoint, the psychological struggles that each character goes through. I also felt the story flows much more smoothly and not rushed compared to the manga and anime. I also feel that after going through the anime, manga, and the novel, I can form my own interpretation of the ending which is highly implied in the manga.
As I stated in my review, I truly do think you can form your own interpretation of the ending of 5 centimeters per second. As many authors like to do, they like making readers form their own view of the ending. This can frustrate readers that there is no clear ending and the anime truly does disappoint the readers with the sad and triggering ending. I think the viewers are just upset that Taki did not end up with Akari nor did he seem to have any clear relationship with any of the other female characters. If I recall correctly, many viewers conclude that Taki could be trying to mend his relationship with his girlfriend. But after experiencing 3 different mediums, my interpretation is that Taki ends up with Kanae. The reason for this is that the manga shows an extra Arc that the light novel and anime do not show. It shows Kanae going to Tokyo to get over her first love with Taki and ends up in a park lost and not knowing Taki’s number. Kanae does find a way to know Taki’s number through the help of her sister and is comforted with the fact that she can always connect with Taki by just knowing his number and is satisfied with her trip even though she never got over her first love. This is where the novel comes in, Taki passes by the railroad crossing, passing by a lady who seems to be Akari (I believe it was Akari) just like the anime. Although Taki is unable to identify the woman since a train passes between them and is gone from the area after the train passes by, this was the moment when Taki gets over his first love. Just like the train comes and passes by, his lingering feelings for Akari flees. Being satisfied with the fact that the lady seemed to be very happy, Taki is in a good mood and considers calling anyone he knows. He is content and notes that as long as he knew their number, he can connect with them. This is similar to Kanae’s feeling as well that as long as they know someone’s number, they can connect with them. Taki forgetting his phone decides to wander around and see if he can encounter a phone booth. The ending of the story ends with “Takaki stepped forth — And turned a corner. When I was reading the light novel, I imagined that he was turning into the park which is why I think Takaki meets Kanane in the park. This of course is all my speculation so I could be absolutely wrong.
On a side note, a benefit of watching the anime before the light novel is to get a visualization of the story. As I was reading the light novel, I find myself remembering the scenes of the story which helped me enjoy the story more as I can imagine clearly what the author is trying to portray in terms of the physical background.