5 Dissappointments per Second

That's a bit of an unfair title, because I was looking forward to Makoto Shinkai's 5 Centimeters Per Second. Like I said then, his "simple and elegant" approach is definitely something I like quite a bit.

At the very begining of it, I started to get a bit concerned, because there were these interminably long still sequences with only the littlest, tiniest bit of animation. You'd think that as a Bee Train Fan, I'd be more understanding, but in the context of a Shinkai theatrical, I was expecting a tad more. That said, when there was character animation, it was quite compently done, so I didn't really have a problem when all was said and done.

Well, except in the ending.

Everything else was meticuoulously rendered and quite beautifully drawn. There's a level of mundane=fascinating detail in Shinkai's work that's totally signature for him. And for the bulk of the movie(s), the languid pace and the deliberate character exposision was quite nice and very emotional.

But the very end, where it suddenly decides to close on some kind of hack-edited AMV of the movie thus far, where the cuts were to the rhythm and there were little to no new shots to see; that really stuck in my craw. Especially when the whole thing suddenly ended right there without any hint of resolution.