This series of short stories set me thinking about the intricateness (sic) of relationships and distance... it gave me a queasy yet "i know its true" feeling. Physical distance can pull apart relationships, be it friendship, kinship or plain bgr. It is both agonizing and saddening to see the process taking place, slowly but surely. And at the same time, how one can get as close to another physically, yet to remain far apart in terms of their thoughts and aspirations is also another theme that is simple, humane yet unexplanable (sic) .In short, a meta-narrative. A terse way of describing it is to look at adaptations in the same medium: Kanon had the meta-narrative of ‘repetition’; Air was ‘ephemeral’; Clannad posited on ‘family’; Bokurano had ‘everything’ in the sense of a shared reality: an entire world at stake, a shared fate, a distinct human desire for survival in the gnawing face of death, an existence defined by family and friends, and so on.
In a concatenated manner Byusoku 5 Centimeters had ‘distance:half-life of relationships’ as a meta-narrative by means of its intricate sakura petals, its telling seasonal appearance, and its nuanced falling speed which is titular.