Seasons and Eternity

It's a pity that among all the people I know, only Johnny has watched both Toki Wo Kakeru Shoujo and Byousoku 5cm. Somewhat just as much that apart from him, only XM, SZ, Dneo and JY have at least watched one. Seems like not that many people will get the reasoning behind writing this one =p

After thinking about it somewhat and looking at the ending songs, Garnet and One More Time, One More Chance, I started wondering how different they really were.

Tokikake is simply put a story of a girl who learns the importance of her loved ones and the importance of time through a series of fortunate and unfortunate events (So generically put that it fails to spoil people). Byousoku 5cm is, aptly put by the movie itself, "a chain of short stories about their distance." Both deal with the concepts of time, distance, human emotions, relationships etc. Perfectly down-to-earth unlike Paprika and most Miyazaki films, haha.

Yet how much more different can the two songs be? One focuses on the past and remembering it for as long as possible, the other talks about searching and seeking, and finding again. Ironically, the one who cares more about remembering the past is far more optimistic about the seasons coming again (Perhaps because for her it's already ended) compared to the one wishing for the seasons not to end and hopelessly searching for a now-lost cause.

Maybe it's just because the two are different in nature. Tokikake uses Summer as a seasonal point compared to Winter in Byousoku 5cm. Innocence, passion and youth compared to coldness, frigidity and loneliness. Maybe it's just because that the former had a far more hopeful ending and was more moralistic in nature. Maybe it's because Makoto had already conquered time once, hence her hopefulness towards the return of Chiaki.

Makoto reminds me of both Takaki and Akari at the same time, mainly because she is very much what Takaki goes through, but yet her character at the end is strangely far more like Akari's. A previously unimportant question suddenly becomes more prominent; what did Akari think of Takaki in the end? A mere shadow of the past? Or did she love him like she did before? What of the marriage, then?

Both films talk about moving on, Makoto and Akari alike; except that Byousoku 5cm wasn't about Akari, it was about Takaki. Why was it the girl who managed to move on in both cases and not the guy? Even Chiaki was an emo bugger near the end.

When Makoto's Aunt Kazuko decided not to timeleap in the end of her own story (In the manga version, novel version is probably somewhat different), it was because she felt that there was no need. She had already remembered her favourite moment with the person she liked, and she would never forget it. That was enough to her.

Interesting food for thought, huh. K nevermind I need to do work or people will start worrying about me again from the shadows. Or maybe said people have already disappeared and I'll never have noticed, haha. What can I say? Gone without the goodbye. Wonder when the return is.