5 Centimeters per Second

5 Centimeters per Second (秒速5センチメートル, 2007) is Makoto Shinkai's animated romance, and you can watch it online on iFILM. It runs just 63 minutes across three short chapters, a quiet study of how distance slowly pulls two people apart.

Takaki and Akari are close from their grade-school days, but her family moves away and their bond survives on letters and rare phone calls. In the first chapter the boy rides a delayed train through a snowstorm to see her once. The second follows Kanae, a girl on Tanegashima who loves the now-teenage Takaki while he stares at something far away. By the third he is an adult in a cold Tokyo, and the gap from childhood never closed.

The title refers to the falling speed of a cherry blossom petal: five centimeters per second. Shinkai is known for rendering light, sky and ordinary things, so trains, text messages and pedestrian crossings here look almost painfully lovely. The closing montage set to Masayoshi Yamazaki's song wrecks a lot of viewers. Stream 5 Centimeters per Second (2007) online on iFILM.