Makoto Shinkai’s 5 Centimeters Per Second Anime Gets Live-Action Film

A website opened on Sunday to announce that Makoto Shinkai‘s 5 Centimeters Per Second anime film will get a live-action film adaptation in fall 2025. SixTONES member Hokuto Matsumura (Suzume‘s Sōta Munakata) will star in the film.

Spoon is producing the film and TOHO will distribute. Yoshiyuki Okuyama is directing, and Ayako Suzuki is writing the script.

5 Centimeters Per Second opened in Japan in 2007. The film is split into three individual segments. Crunchyroll previously released the anime on DVD in 2011 with the help of Bandai Entertainment. Discotek later released a reissue of that version with new cover art. GKIDS later acquired the license in 2022 and released the film on Blu-ray Disc with Shout! Factory.

The anime focuses on Tono Takaki, telling the story through three stages of his life and describing his weakening connection and relationship to a girl he once loved. In the first part, set in his middle school years, he tries to make his way to one final meeting with Shinohara Akari, a girl who he befriended in elementary school. With Akari moving away, he realizes this will be his final meeting with her, and he braves the snow and the circumstances to see her. The second part is set during Tono’s high school life, when Tono is still thinking about Akari, ignorant to the feelings of a girl named Kanae who has fallen in love with him. The third part is set during Tono’s adulthood, where he struggles to hold down a job and a relationship as he continues to find things that remind him about Akari.

Shinkai directed, wrote, and storyboarded the film, and was also the sound director, producer, and art director. Tenmon composed the music.

Sources: 5 Centimeters Per Second live-action film’s website, Comic Natalie