The sights visuals in this movie are indeed hyperrealistic, like an intense dream. Shinkai has a knack for creating extremely sad films, and one wonders if he’ll ever do a comedy. It is also almost cruel in the emotional punishment it doles out to the characters, and the implacable forces that keep two people desperately in love so far apart for so long.

I even feel sometimes that the film has that “malicious intent” Tono mentions, in that the characters are limited from actions we so dearly want them to make, but they don’t, because this isn’t a cliched American romance story. Things don’t always turn out, and the reasons are never clear.

But did the wind really have to take the letter away, and couldn’t Tono send those messages? If I loved someone as much as he did, I feel like I would have done more to be close to her, and not be hampered by such things as parents’ jobs and train routes. At least, I like to think I would…

This is one of most heartbreaking films, animated or not, I have ever experienced, and I am grateful that there is anime of such high quality that it can bring out such feelings we so rarely bring out into the open.

Despite the simplicity of the plot, the feelings this film evokes are powerful and lasting. That feeling in your stomach, you know? Intense. And unlike hardly any other anime out there in terms of the amount of emotional punch it offers per second.

I can’t wait for the next Shinkai film.

The degree of empathy rather than sympathy we have for characters depends on two seemingly opposing things: the degree to which the situation rings true to our own experience, which often ironically depends on how specific and detailed the depiction of that experience is. The more specific and detailed of course the less it’s like anything we’ve gone through (unless we’re the writers), but the feeling of reality, emotional and physical, is key. The great art that produces empathy makes us say–yes, it was just like that when I…. “Honey and Clover” did that to me many, many times.