When I first popped this movie into my DVD player, I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. I had only seen the DVD case for about a minute before I decided I needed to see it, even if I had never heard of it before. The moment the film started, I was glued to the screen.



I watch a lot of anime, so the first thing I look for is detail in animation, which you'll find plenty of here. The backgrounds are breathtaking, and the colors are far too vibrant to be found in nature. It was beautiful on a scale I haven't seen in years. It made even the most mundane items seem as though they depth. This is made all the more amazing when I found out the small amount of people who made this movie. I think it was something like 12 people animated it in two apartments. Most of the places can be visited, since all of the backgrounds were built upon photographs of actual locations around Japan.



The story is a tale of a young boy and the one he loves, told in separate short films that tell a whole story. Each short film captures Takaki at different stages in his life, as he grows from pre-teen, teen and adult.

The story is touching, and even I was moved by its truth. It told a love story with none of the mush and dramatization you generally get with anime. It actually felt like these were real people dealing with real issues.



Its one of the best anime movies to come out in a year, which is one of the reasons I reviewed it, since RT's critics seemed to be above watching it.