A story about the theme of "traveling" is always clichéd. It always has to combine time and space, feelings, growth and other elements in a way that is destined to be unsatisfactory. The audience is always very familiar with this routine from the beginning. Famous as "The Time Traveler's Wife", it is impossible to carry out any "paradigm revolution". So, just like the narrative structure that is too vulgar, "Through" cannot tell a content other than the old-fashioned "Through story".
But this cartoon has no intention of making any breakthroughs in the "narrative mode". Let’s start with a statement that may be as old as all "traveling stories" but persuasive. The heroine Makoto spent many "traveling" opportunities to avoid Qian Zhao’s confession, but finally wanted to take the last one. One chance to hear his confession. If everything can be repeated, Zhenqin will undoubtedly choose to give up all opportunities to travel through time and space, and the natural passage of time will give her better results.
This explanation is powerful, but undoubtedly too emotional. Any story involving the theme of "regret" can be explained here. If you think that the original author of the cartoon is Tsutsui Yasuo, who is well versed in "literary theory," we seem to have reason to believe that he will not be satisfied with such a simple narrative technique. Therefore, within the framework of an old-fashioned "traveling story", this story tells more.
From the first time Makoto saw the figure in the laboratory, to when she came back to confirm that she found that the person who came in to deliver the homework was Yuri, the difference between this film and the general "traveling story" is clearly revealed. For convenience, I call it "structuralist narrative". A recurring sentence in the whole play-Time waits for no one-means exactly this: time will pass anyway, time is irreversible; and, more importantly, the irreversibility of time is "traversed" in Zhenqin "It means that all behaviors are firmly determined. Everything will happen every second, the only difference is who needs to "play" this role at this moment. At first, Makoto naively thought that she had played an omnipotent role in time, and did not realize that what the witch said to her, someone must be misfortune because of her crossing. why? Because everything is regulated, people just stay in their specific positions and do their duty of "destiny" arrangements. Therefore, Kosuke borrowed a bicycle from Makoto and acted as a victim of that time and that car accident. No one here has any uniqueness, everything has been stipulated.
Therefore, Makoto hopes to hear Qian Zhao's confession again through the last crossing, which is destined to be impossible. When the two looked at each other in the sunset, a bicycle slowly passed by-the boy carrying the girl, very like a scene where Qian Zhao confessed, didn't it? ——We can understand that Qian Zhao will not confess. However, if everything is a prescribed location, why does Makoto cross the last time? It's simple to say, because she likes Qian Zhao. She is obsessed with each other's uniqueness, and she doesn't want to give up because of "specific behavior at a specific time and place." Perhaps for this kind of personal obsession, nothing is more cruel than the term "structural position". Therefore, the author asked Qianzhao to tell a "noble lie": "I am waiting for you in the future."
"I am waiting for you in the future." What does this mean? How can two people from different eras meet in the future? Rather, Qianzhao should go to his own time to identify an old man named Zhenqin in the crowd, or look for a tombstone with this name inscribed? no. Waiting here replaces searching or identifying, and secretly conflicts with the sentence Time waits for no one. Qian Zhao stayed out of time, left in an impossible utopian time and space. However, his breaking into the age of Zhenqin is not an act of seeking utopia in itself?
Is it possible to wait for the impossible to happen? ——What's the point of asking like this. Zhenqin can no longer hear Qian Zhao's confession, just as Qian Zhao can never wait for Zhenqin to go to the future with him. If what was lost becomes so precious, where does this precious nature come from? Repeatability or non-repeatability?
Let us return to the scene of Qian Zhao's confession to Zhen Qin. This scene happened three times, and in the third time, the confession was so abrupt, it was a forcible interruption of the conversation. Through constant repetition (reminiscent of Yamada's confession to Mayama in "Honey and Clover", doesn't it?), Chiaki's confession becomes precious. Its uniqueness seems unshakable and extremely solid. But "all the solid things disappeared in smoke." When Zhenqin finally returned to the past, she thought she could hear Qian Zhao's confession; as mentioned earlier, her hopes fell through. Where does her confidence come from, since she already knows that everything is determined? Because she is convinced that Qian Zhao's feelings for her are not a "structural product", but a unique value. Its uniqueness lies in the fact that it has been so confirmed that it can be repeated countless times. In other words, the preciousness of a thing is not lost because it was once owned, but because it can be repeated with all confidence and can be repeated forever. ——Things are not valuable because they are not available; it is precisely because repetition overcomes contingency and one-off that the preciousness of things is established. This presents a certain synchronic structure—in fact, the entire "structuralist narrative" approach is synchronic—but the passage of time itself can be said to be diachronic, and the synchronic structure itself has a certain relationship with time. Confrontational nature. Therefore, things that happen repeatedly have their own unique value because of their repetitiveness.
When Nomiya took Yamada away, would Mayama remember that Yamada repeated "I like you" to him several times? What does this confession mean now, if not some kind of "specter of uniqueness"? The two sides of the contradiction are not "memory" and "reality", nor "this is also right and wrong, and the other is right and wrong", but the uniqueness that can be repeated forever. How does it become an empty cycle? If repetition becomes monotonous, "bad infinity" in the Hegelian sense, can it confirm the preciousness of things? Let us imagine that Mayama and Yamada meet again on the street. If they are willing to look back at each other, I think the best ending will be the MV of "Five Centimeters Per Second". At the end of the track, the people on the rail are looking forward to reunion, and on the other end. People are no longer waiting.
What is blocking time and space? In a symbolic sense, "the ghost of uniqueness" separates Mayama and Yamada, and they may be strangers. On the other hand, "I am waiting for you in the future" may not be a noble lie, because the barriers of time and space have been "traversed" here. We can only understand this sentence from a negative perspective, from the opposite perspective of "just like a stranger", and can only understand this sentence backwards from the meaning of "I am no longer waiting for you". Sentence.
Only unfulfilled promises are the most precious, and only hopes that cannot be materialized are promises.
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