"Without a doubt, the title has a somewhat odd ring to it." "The origin of the film's title Without a doubt, the title has a somewhat odd ring to it." "The origin of the film's title One understands early on in the film what the title is referring to" "The origin of the film's title when the heroine, Akari, uses these words in reference to the speed of falling cherry blossoms." "when the heroine, Akari, uses these words in reference to the speed of falling cherry blossoms." "And so, with that idea as the unifying theme, we decided on this title." "This work was not focused solely on the speed of falling cherry blossoms, however." "Rather the theme draws on the speed of a variety of things." "For instance..." "I guess the first of these images would be the speed of the train as Takaki goes to meet Akari, and the time it took for their letters and mail to get to one another..." "There is also the time it would take for Takaki and Akari to express their feelings for one another, or the speed at which they part from one another." "In that manner, I decided to make "speed" the central theme of this story." "To put it simply, that's why I decided on a title that was simply an expression of speed." "Still, I wanted it to evoke a certain feeling too." "In other words, my goal was to have this film focus entirely on the concept of speed, you see." "To put it more concretely, in my previous films, The Plaoe Promised in Our Early Days, and even preceding that, Voioes of a Distant Star..." "If I were to put the theme of those works into words, it's the distance between the souls of two people, and the speed at which they meet one another." "In all these works I've been following this same theme." "But this time, the concept of speed was my sole focus." "I wanted to delve into the question of why the characters' relationship changed simply because of being separated by distance." "That is the sort of feeling I was trying to paint with this." "The most important image I used to paint that feeling was Takaki's train ride with a single-minded purpose of seeing Akari." "There is the image of the speed..." "the speed at which the train moves as well as the speed at which Takaki draws physically as well as emotionally closer to Akari." "The second image was that of Kanae being drawn to Takaki, while the third was of Takaki continuing to grow closer to Akari, despite Kanae's feelings." "Basically that is what the story is all about." "So in that way... though this is animation," "I wanted to endow this piece with a certain power without adding any other elements, keeping it simple." "And so I decided on the title "5 Centimeters Per Second"" "because it invokes solely the idea of speed." "This piece was divided into three connected short stories." "Connected short story style This piece was divided into three connected short stories." "Connected short story style I think it's kind of a rare style to use." "Connected short story style Actually, in the beginning we had started out with about ten different plots, not three." "Connected short story style At that point, we didn't even know how many of them we'd end up using." "At that point, we didn't even know how many of them we'd end up using." "We just kind of wanted to take a free and easy approach to changing the method and the themes as well as the manner in which each of them were to be presented, and try to create some short stories." "That was the initial reason behind our approach." "Well, as production got underway, we found out that it might be possible to present this in theatres." "When I found that out..." "Hmmm..." "I started thinking it might be interesting to bring together pieces with different themes and different worldviews together and make them into an omnibus movie by one creator." "But then I thought about the possibility of it being too random." "Well, going to the movies means paying for transportation to get to the venue, taking time out of your schedule and sharing time with others in the darkness." "So I wanted the audience to feel satisfied after seeing this movie." "So while I was thinking about that," "I looked at the ten plots we had in the works and picked three that looked like they could be knit together from a common perspective, and began to rework them so that they could be knit together into a single story." "Such were the circumstances." "Effectively, we ended up with a single story that preserved remnants of our original idea of making a connected short story style film." "It's just that, well... yeah..." "The idea was also out there that it'd be just as well to make it into one single story." "But I just wanted to present it in its brief, separate parts." "I mean, one can watch it as a single movie too, but the short individual parts can be watched when a person has just a bit of time on their hands." "And so from the beginning, despite the fact it consists of separate parts," "I was trying to achieve a single piece." "And that is why, in the end, there is essentially a single film consisting of three separate, but related stories." "So we decided to use "One More Time, One More Chance" as our theme song..." "Theme song So we decided to use "One More Time, One More Chance" as our theme song..." "Theme song The circumstances at the point when we were thinking about choosing a theme song" "Theme song are tied back into those ten separate plots that I was speaking about earlier." "are tied back into those ten separate plots that I was speaking about earlier." "I wanted to have a separate theme song for each of those individual stories." "And I also wanted songs that everyone was already familiar with." "At first I was planning on making a film consisting of a collection of 5-minute stories." "But, unfortunately, when the length is short, the story I could tell also becomes small." "However, using a song that everyone is familiar with in the story could bring out the memory of the person who watches it." "It might be just a 5-minute long movie, but I thought I could create this "visual experience"" "where the audience could experience something much greater than just a 5-minute movie." "That is why I was thinking a theme song for each part first." "But at the end we all decided to narrow it down to just one theme song because it is one connected story after all, although it is a short-three-parts story." "Then we got to thinking about which song would fit the movie the best, and we eventually decided Mr. Yamazaki's "One More Time, One More Chance" at the end." "And the reason why we picked it is that, first of all, people already know the song." "That being said, Mr. Yamazaki's song was released over ten years ago." "And not only that, the time the song was actually released pertectly matches the era of the first story, which is about Takaki and Akari." "And besides, the biggest reason was that the theme of the song matches the theme of the story." "It also happened to be a song I already really liked." "Well, there were several reasons like that." "Then we talked to Mr. Yamazaki's agency, thinking they probably wouldn't let us do it." "Fortunately, they gladly allowed us to use the song." "The casting process for Mr. Mizuhashi was a bit different from the other members'." "About casting The casting process for Mr. Mizuhashi was a bit different from the other members'." "About casting As far as Mr. Mizuhashi's voice goes, I'd already had a certain image of it." "About casting This is a long time ago, but he played in the Japanese live action movie Moonlight Whispers." "This is a long time ago, but he played in the Japanese live action movie Moonlight Whispers." "That was in 1999." "One day I happened to go see the movie after work." "The movie was great, but the most memorable thing about it was Mr. Mizuhashi's voice." "I remember thinking, "There's something mysterious about his voice."" "That was when I learned about his voice." "After that, I never had a chance to actually pay close attention to his voice acting." "But when the time came for me to pick a voice for Takaki," "Mr. Mizuhashi's voice that I heard in Moonlight Whispers naturally came to my mind." "There was a question of whether or not the same actor could pertorm the voice of an elementary school kid and an adult in the same movie." "But when I had an opportunity to meet Mr. Mizuhashi and actually listen to his voice, well, how should I put it..." "I felt that he had a very unique voice with low and high tones." "I'm sure it has a lot to do with his highly-skilled pertormance, too, but he pertormed both an elementary school kid's voice and an adult's voice just fine by switching his voices accordingly." "That was when I became certain that Mr. Mizuhashi alone could cover adult Takaki's voice." "So we decided to use the same actor for Takaki's voice." "Concerning Miss Kondo, Miss Hanamura and Miss Onoue, we conducted the "MD audition" for them along with many other candidates." "We auditioned both male and female voices, and that's how those three were picked." "With Miss Kondo, we requested her to say the actual lines in her demo MD." "And to tell you the truth, it didn't give us a good impression." "She read the lines for Akari as an elementary school student." "Her pertormance seemed... hmm... too "made-up."" "Maybe she was too hung up on an "anime voice," so her pertormance was too stereotyped." "So when we first heard her voice we thought she wasn't right for the role, but there was something about her voice." "Behind her voice and pertormance, there was..." "How should I say this..." "There was that rawness of a typical teen girl, so we couldn't completely let it go." "We went on with the audition, but we just couldn't find the right voice for Akari." "Then we thought about Miss Kondo, and we told her that we wanted to meet her in person and we got to talk to her normally." "And surprisingly her normal voice was great." "This is just the impression I got, but there was the liveliness of a teen girl, the unique groundless cockiness of a typical teenager and at the same time there was unexplainable anxiety hidden in her voice." "Also, I strongly felt fragility in her undefined, not-yet-matured voice when I was talking to her." "And that was exactly what I was looking for in Akari's voice, so I asked her to take the role." "And about Miss Hanamura..." "Actually, how she was picked is sort of similar to Miss Kondo's case." "When we first heard her demo MD, her pertormance sounded too made-up and it didn't leave a good impression on us." "Her main occupation being voice acting, her profession is to make the voice, so in that sense I thought it was a given, but what I was looking for this movie was a little different, so we had to keep on looking for the voice for Kanae, but we had no luck." "But then I thought about Miss Hanamura's voice, which we didn't think would work at first." "Because when we heard her demo MD, just like with Miss Kondo's case," "I noticed something behind her pertormance that I couldn't let go." "So we told Miss Hanamura that we wanted to meet her in person and talk." "Sure enough, her actual voice was very nice." "The impression that I got from Miss Hanamura's actual voice was very energetic, but I could tell that she was carefully keeping her distance." "It was almost like her voice trembled slightly at the end of the sentence." "I just felt that in her voice." "And I thought it'd work pertectly if she could let the natural character of her voice come through in the pertormance." "That's how we picked Miss Hanamura for Kanae's voice." "Well, about Miss Onoue, I thought she had a very beautiful voice when I first heard it." "But the thing is, she has the same type of voice that Miss Kondo has." "We had already decided that Miss Kondo would pertorm the voice of elementary school Akari, so of course we had to decide who was going to play adult Akari's voice." "As a test, we asked Miss Kondo to do the voice of adult Akari, but because of the liveliness in her voice, we concluded that it wouldn't fit the voice of a woman in her 20's." "We were looking for a mature voice of a woman in her late 20's." "So we thought it'd be a little difficult for her." "So we were looking for a voice similar to Miss Kondo's but with maturity, composure and no fragility, which were very difficult criteria to fulfill." "Then we happened to meet Miss Onoue." "In Miss Onoue's voice, there was none of the instability of Akari as a teenager, but only her maturity and beauty, so we asked her to take the role." "When I actually met her," "I learned that Miss Onoue and Miss Kondo both belonged to the same agency so they knew each other." "And they're very close, just like sisters, so it was very pleasant to see them chatting, but at the time it was funny." "I was very nervous the whole time during the recording." "Notable happenings during recording I was very nervous the whole time during the recording." "Notable happenings during recording I wasn't the one who had to say the lines," "Notable happenings during recording but for some reason, I was so nervous that they probably thought I was the most nervous one." "but for some reason, I was so nervous that they probably thought I was the most nervous one." "Before the recording I'd spent more than a year putting all the images together." "The day of the voice recording finally came, but to me, it meant there was no turning back." "The idea that everything I did in the past year would become definite on that day probably made me nervous." "I went to the recording studio having had no sleep whatsoever the night before, but I didn't get sleepy at all during the recording." "I was that nervous." "I'm not sure what the voice actors and actresses thought of the recording itself, but I had a lot of fun." "Now that we actually had the recording with the real voice actors, this piece turned out to be much richer than I expected thanks to Mr. Mizuhashi, Miss Kondo, Miss Hanamura, Miss Onoue and the other voice actors." "What I'd like to note about the recording is, there's a veteran voice actor, Mr. Yuji Mitsuya, who's been supporting me since The Plaoe Promised in Our Early Days." "I sought his support for this movie as well." "Since I've almost had no recording experience, there are a lot of times that I don't know how to direct the voice actors." "But for times like that, Mr. Mitsuya would quickly and precisely provide directions to the voice actors by showing them his own pertormance as an example." "He's a great mood maker, too." "He's also good at conducting the recording very rationally." "He was the one who made it possible to finish everything in two days, too." "So in that sense, when it comes to recording," "Mr. Mitsuya gave me tremendous support in the practical aspect." "We finished in two days because Mr. Mitsuya was there for us, but if it was just me directing, it could've taken a week or even more." "The production system for this movie was..." "Production system forthis movie The production system for this movie was..." "Production system forthis movie Well, I think it was created in a bit of a unique way for a commercial animation." "Production system forthis movie" "Production system forthis movie I started working on the images back in September, 2005." "Production system forthis movie On September 1, Mr. Nishimura, the director of animation, came on board." "On September 1, Mr. Nishimura, the director of animation, came on board." "So Mr. Nishimura and I kicked off the project." "Mr. Nishimura drew the characters and I drew the background art." "We sought out what kind of pictures would work as we went on." "After that, a girl who was a part-time worker at the time, joined the project as an assistant." "Then after that, Mr. Majima, the key staff of the background art, joined." "All four of us worked together, trying to figure out what kind of movie we wanted to make by trial and error until December, 2005." "The year 2006 was the period when we spent a whole year gradually increasing the production speed by adding more staff members." "At the peak period, about 13 staff members were commuting to my place in the last three or four months of the production." "My place isn't big, and it was never meant to be used as a studio, so with 13 people it was really crowded." "We also had an electricity-related issue, too." "I had it at 60 ampere, which is pretty high, but that still wasn't enough as we were running one or more computers per person." "So we rented a one-room apartment in the neighborhood." "For those interns who did the finishing, which means coloring the characters..." "For those interns, we asked them to work at the apartment." "And for those key animators and animators who didn't want to commute to the Shibuya area, we had them work from their own homes." "Just like that, people were working at different locations, but the main staff members were working at my place for the whole year of 2006." "As far as the main staff members go, all the people who were in charge of the key animation, the art, finishing and filming were able to work together on the project in the same room." "I'll touch on this later, but because of the working environment, everyone in each section was able to work on the picture cohesively." "I'm glad that we were able to work on this project in such an environment, where I felt like we were almost living together." "I've said that I was very careful with the location hunting for this movie," "About location hunting I've said that I was very careful with the location hunting for this movie," "About location hunting and similar things have been mentioned in the "promotional speech."" "About location hunting" "About location hunting However, to tell you the truth, I wasn't all that conscious about the locations." "However, to tell you the truth, I wasn't all that conscious about the locations." "I just did what needed to be done to decide on the location, and as a result, I just happened to spend about a whole month for that." "That's all there was to it." "Our everyday life in the present is the stage of this movie." "So the audience will find many things that they can relate to, for instance, you'll see stuff like the Odakyu Line and Shinjuku Station." "So I wanted the audience to go like, "Hey, that's the place I go all the time!"" "if they're familiar with what they see on the screen." "And for those who're not very familiar with stuff like Shinjuku Station," "I wanted to make it so that they can feel the sense of reality through the pictures and the story itself." "It's almost like the viewer being able to put himself in the character's position." "I wanted to make a movie where it's easy for the audience to get emotionally involved with the story." "The setting for the first story is lwafune on the Ryomo line, and we went there for location hunting on September 1, 2005 or so." "It was a day with the massive late-summer heat." "The actual story unfolds in the winter, but I remember everyone was wearing T-shirts, sweating like crazy that day." "It was an overnight trip to lwafune, and we came back with about 4000 pictures." "As we were looking through the viewfinder and switching the summery scenery to snowy scenery in our heads, we conducted our location hunting in lwafune, trying to imagine what it'd look like if Takaki and Akari were walking down the street together." "And about the location hunting on Tanegashima, we went there the following month, October 2005, with all the staff members and we stayed there for about two weeks." "Actually, I visited Tanegashima in the spring of the prior year, and also in the winter of the following year." "So I've spent about a month total on Tanegashima." "Anyway, there were a lot of things that I learned about the island once I got there." "Before I went, I figured that they would have trains there, but there weren't any." "They do have buses, but there are only a few, so people don't use them a whole lot." "So for example, many of the local high school students would commute to school on school-designated Honda Super Cub mopeds." "Seeing stuff like that was sort of refreshing to me." "Also, Tanegashima is the place where you can find great waves for surting." "So surting is pretty popular there." "Even high schools have their own surting clubs." "So the fact that there are high school students, and in some cases even younger kids, who enjoy surting like it's a normal thing, was very new to me." "I could say that the location hunting we did on Tanegashima significantly changed the plot of the second story, "Cosmonaut."" "We went to see the actual rocket launch, too." "Well, regarding the third story, the main setting of the story is in Tokyo." "We basically observed the everyday scenery that we're familiar with by walking around town, instead of conducting location hunting." "We photographed the places that we wanted to see Takaki in and used them as the base of the movie." "Audience members would often ask me what it was like during production." "Notable happenings during production Audience members would often ask me what it was like during production." "Notable happenings during production But actually it's a hard question to answer." "Notable happenings during production The audience must have this notion that movie production is something very dramatic." "The audience must have this notion that movie production is something very dramatic." "For instance, staff members yelling at each other and having an argument, or some kind of positive event taking place and pushing the production forward and so forth." "But stuff like that rarely happens in real life." "It took me a year and half to make this movie, but it just consisted of everyday life." "So just like when someone asks you if anything notable happened in everyday life or at your workplace, you'd go "Hmm..."" "When I look back how things were at the production site, I think it was quite peaceful." "And personally I think it's a important thing." "Actually, four couples decided to get married during this movie production." "To me, it's not just the staff members getting married, but it means that during production, they were leading their normal everyday lives without me knowing it, obviously." "The bottom line is that portraying everyday life is what we do, so it's important that we ourselves are having our everyday lives, I think." "And the fact that we were able to make this movie while we doing that makes me happy." "I can talk about it like this now, but there was time when making the movie wasn't a part of my everyday life." "That was when I was working on Voioes of a Distant Star." "I was working at an office when I was making Voioes of a Distant Star." "Back then, I turned accumulating thoughts and feelings I couldn't process through my job into a movie as an independent project." "I'd come home from my job and work on Voioes of a Distant Star as if I was throwing those feelings against the movie." "So if I'm to call working at the office "everyday life,"" "working on Voioes of a Distant Star was festive and extraordinary." "I quit my job while I was working on the movie, then spent the next seven months finishing it." "But those seven months were almost reactionary because I no longer had the same job that had for years been my "everyday life."" "So in that sense those months were far from "everyday life."" "I did nothing but work on the movie, but it was a very happy time for me." "Working on the movie itself brought me so much more joy than anything else, so I didn't have a lot of opportunities to interact with others much." "Ever since I decided to make animation my career after Voioes of a Distant Star, creating animation has become my everyday life." "There was a time I wasn't very sure about it." "Well, up until then creating animation was an extraordinary thing to me, so I thought I wouldn't be able to do that for the rest of my life." "I didn't think any story idea would come out of it without my "everyday life" as the basis." "Just like that there was time when I was confused." "But my idea changed every time I worked on a different project." "But something became very clear to me;" "I definitely wanted to keep on making movies." "Then I asked myself how I should keep on making them." "Now I feel that everyday life is an essential aspect of making movies." "Because I was able to make this 5 Centimeters Per Seoondin such favorable environment," "I'm glad that I made it." "It became an important piece for me." "New challenges..." "New challenges attempted forthis movie New challenges..." "New challenges attempted forthis movie It's almost like I grope my way through each movie I make." "New challenges attempted forthis movie Just like I mentioned earlier, even the environment that I make the movie in is different every time," "New challenges attempted forthis movie so that itself is a new challenge also." "so that itself is a new challenge also." "If I must touch on the technical aspect and the contents aspect of it, technically it was basically the extension of what I've done in the past." "However, all the main staff members who were working on animation, art, filming and finishing were able to work in the same place, so I was hoping to create the picture in a collective way." "There's background art, and you see a character in the same light that the background art is in." "We wanted to make pictures which give the sense of reality that the character is really in the scenery." "And in order to make that happen, first we tried, as much as possible, to keep the characters' outlines drawn by the key animators and animators." "Even in coloring the characters, we tried to keep the look of them as close as possible to the background art by leaving the pencil lines as they were." "Well, it sounds a little technical, but all the background art was done using Adobe Photoshop." "Pretty much all the characters were also colored using Photoshop, with a few exceptions." "In coloring, the artists in charge of the background art would draw the outlines first." "For instance, if they were drawing a mailbox, they'd paint it using one color first." "And on top of that they'd add the texture to it by adding some light and shadow." "Using the same process, the staff members would take each character by parts and color them manually, then add shadows according to the key animators' directions." "After adding shadows, they'd add slightly different colors between the highlights and the edge of shadows as they go, in order to blend with other things better." "It's a very detailed and time-consuming process, but we always use a process like that throughout." "If you look at the screen and think there's something different about this movie compared to other anime out there, that means our detailed process is reflected on what you see on the screen." "Also about the content, in this movie, we're not portraying very many events." "For instance, if we try to portray romance, in order to make the story dramatic, I think we'd have to set up an obstacle there first." "On the flip side, if you look at our everyday lives, you realize that we're well-fed, well-clothed and well-housed." "We also live in a society where there's almost no class discrimination." "And we have freedom to live our lives however we want." "Considering what kind of society we live in, if you still have problems with relationships with people, the cause of the problem is probably not society or anything readily apparent." "In that case, you have to find the cause within yourself." "That's actually a hard thing to do, I think." "You might think there's nothing within you that's causing the problem." "So I had a strong desire to portray that "nothingness" as it is." "What I've said has been quite abstract, but because we're able to control the timing of the music and the timeline in the story," "I had a belief that this might be animation, but we could still portray both the real and the abstract at the same time." "So I made this movie." "So the contents of the movie are, to me, quite challenging." "And the audience can be the judge of how I overcame those challenges." "It'd be great if you could watch the movie from that kind of aspect." "As the art director of the movie, I could say I was very particular about the depiction of the scenery." "About the depiction of scenery As the art director of the movie, I could say I was very particular about the depiction of the scenery." "About the depiction of scenery" "About the depiction of scenery Well, let's see, compared to The Plaoe Promised in Our Early Days," "About the depiction of scenery the art aspect of the scenery has less "density," I think." "the art aspect of the scenery has less "density," I think." "As a matter of fact, and this same concept has been carried over since The Plaoe Promised in Our Early Days, we often portray places that actually exist." "However, we don't necessarily portray the scenery realistically, but rather, we want to portray the scenery in the characters' memories." "That has been our stance." "I can say the same about the characters, but the art of animation is art created artificially." "Because it is artificial, no matter how you control it or how realistically you try to portray it, the viewpoint of the person who creates it is bound to show." "So I thought, if that's the case, why don't we bring out the person's viewpoint to the fore, but at the same time make it subtle?" "During the movie, you might think you'd be able to see the exact scenery if you go to the actual location, but if you actually go there and compare the real scenery to what you saw in the movie," "you'll go, "Hey, the colors were completely different"" "or "the details were different."" "Just like that, what we portray is the image of the scenery, so we're not necessarily obsessed with how it looks in real life." "To put it simply, to implement stuff like that, we skipped a lot of the details, more so than with my previous works." "We tried not to detail objects to make them look like real things throughout the movie." "Many times people would ask me if the movie was based on personal experience." "Particular reminiscences about distance, time and speed Many times people would ask me if the movie was based on personal experience." "Particular reminiscences about distance, time and speed" "Particular reminiscences about distance, time and speed If I am to answer that question, it's not exactly based on my own experience." "If I am to answer that question, it's not exactly based on my own experience." "I've never transferred between schools before, nor have I had a long-distance relationship before, except one time, which lasted about a month." "But basically I've never done it, so I don't have any striking memories about it." "For instance, having a change of heart due to time or distance..." "That's universal and unavoidable." "Maybe that's why I keep portraying stuff like that..." "As my own experience..." "I'm sorry, but nothing comes to mind." "If I must comment on that using this movie as an example, when I talked to the audience after the on-stage interview at the premiere, many people would tell me stuff like, "I came to see your premiere two years ago,"" "or "I saw Voioes of a Distant Star at Tollywood five years ago."" "Now that I see them two or five years later, some people who were in junior high then are now in high school or college, some people who were in college then are now working, some people who were already working then have quit their old jobs and started new jobs." "Then I'd be like, these two or five years must've been something drastic for them considering how drastically the environments that they're in have changed for them." "As for myself, many things did happen to me, but I've spent the majority of my last two or five years in my room working on the project." "And that makes me feel like I've been staying in the same place for a long time." "So when I talk to the audience," "I can't help thinking that the speed everyone lives life at is always slightly different." "I sincerely thank everyone who went to the theater to watch this movie and who purchased this DVD." "Message forthe audience I sincerely thank everyone who went to the theater to watch this movie and who purchased this DVD." "Message forthe audience" "Message forthe audience Obviously, this is the movie that I made because I wanted them to watch." "Obviously, this is the movie that I made because I wanted them to watch." "Now that it's going to be on DVD, it feels like this movie 5 Centimeters Per Seoond has reached a certain settling point." "Thank you very much."