I have been reading manga and watching anime for 4 years now. I thought it was about time I moved away from the famous anime's and go in search of something thats particular to my tastes.
One of the things which I have found to be very disturbing about the whole anime culture in Japan is the overwhelming leaning on the shinigami/mecha theme. Its always a death god or a robot. There are very few animes which tell a good story based on normal people.
I started with Initial-D, which is The drifting anime. Its very old and is hugely popular and successful. But even so, its still basically the same underdog story as in Bleach and Naruto. I was distinctly unimpressed after I finished watching the first stage. After reading that the following stages are based in a big way on the same characters in Stage 1 returning with faster and better cars, I was turned off.
All this while I had ignored Japanese anime-movies (I'm not sure what else to call it). They are 1 to 2 hour long movies which are illustrated in quite the same way as the episodal animes. Well, the reason I'm saying all this is that I stumbled onto one such movie called Five Centimeters Per Second.
5 cm per second is by far the most expressively illustrated anime I have seen. The use of light & shadow, movement and stagnation, its all just brilliant. The best place to read the storyline would be the Anime News Network.
Its the story of Tono Takaki and Shinohara Akari, who were close friends but gradually grow farther and farther apart as time moves on. The metaphors used to show time, space and love are amazing. A first time experience of great animation.
Go ahead and click here for the torrent download!
1 comment:
Now this is a coincidence indeed! I downloaded 5 cm/sec a few days back (with an eponymous speed) and am going to watch it tmrw ... Thanks for the review. Makes my bandwisth worthwhile :)
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