As soon as he started reading, Gao Dian checked the art first.
A new mangaka, huh. There were bound to be tons of problems with the drawing. He was already planning to nitpick that to death later.
But after a few pages, his expression gradually went quiet.
You could say there's no such thing as a flawless manga in this world—but the art of 5 Centimeters per Second was definitely above the average level of series currently running in Sakura Weekly. In fact, it was a good deal higher than that baseline.
Unwilling to accept that, Gao Dian kept reading.
As usual, he flipped quickly, but that didn't mean he wasn't actually taking anything in. Years of professional work had trained him to read fast and still grasp every important detail.
A single glance at a page was enough for him to fully understand it, and soon he'd gone through over twenty pages.
When he reached the scene where Takaki, changing trains, accidentally dropped the handwritten letter he'd meant to give Akari in person—only to watch it get caught by a sudden gust of wind and vanish into the sky—and then saw him sitting on the station platform with his head bowed, crying…
All the pent-up feelings built up by the earlier pages were about ready to explode.
"This level of immersion and emotional punch… from a new mangaka?" Suspicion filled Gao Dian's eyes.
Granted, the plot so far didn't have any huge twists.
Makoto Shinkai's early works, strictly speaking, were never all that plot-heavy. If you had to sum up 5 Centimeters per Second in one line, it was just: how a pair of childhood sweethearts gradually drift apart thanks to time and distance.
There had to be at least eight hundred, if not a thousand, romance manga in China with a similar theme.
But the reading experience here—the way the details echoed and reinforced each other—was on a completely different level.
He read on. When he reached the panel of the girl in the waiting room, head lowered, still sitting there alone in the pre-dawn hours, he felt something soft inside him being touched.
He was past thirty now and had had a few unforgettable relationships of his own.
Students who'd never dated would already feel crushed and depressed by 5 Centimeters per Second. Adults who had been in love would feel all that, plus the weight of their own failed relationships resurfacing—more pain, more melancholy, but also a bittersweet sense of remembering something once beautiful.
Like the tear that fell on Akari's hand when she clutched Takaki's sleeve on the page in front of him.
Not a single line of dialogue, but her heart was laid bare—from believing he'd broken his promise, that the one chance they'd gotten to see each other again after a year of letters had been wasted, and that this might be the last time they ever could meet—
To the moment her hope reignited when she saw him finally arrive.
Those tears must be scalding hot.
The night walk, the bare cherry tree branches in the snow-lit darkness looking like they were covered in blossoms again.
The way that scene echoed their earlier promise to watch the cherry blossoms together next year.
The kiss beneath the tree in the middle of a snowstorm.
Their farewell in front of the station the next morning—followed by Akari taking a letter out of her pocket that she never gave him.
At that point, Gao Dian already felt something off…
The boy had lost his letter before. Now the girl also chose not to hand hers over. What was that implying?
If he hadn't lost his letter, and if they'd exchanged them with each other at the station… then what?
Would their story really have turned out differently afterward?
He read on. In the second chapter, Cosmonaut, the launch of a satellite into space was used as a metaphor for life…
Loneliness, isolation. Even if you travel unimaginable distances through space, you might never even touch a single hydrogen atom.
Kanae's confession ends before it even begins.
Knowing, deep down, that the two of them could never be together, she still ended up watching the rocket with him—a rocket that was about to begin the loneliest journey of all.
And what about Kanae and Takaki?
By now, Gao Dian's emotions were in pieces.
He'd completely forgotten his rivalry with Su Mingxi and just kept turning pages.
A hope had started growing in his heart: if even Kanae couldn't get close to Takaki, then surely one day Takaki would go looking for Akari, right…?
A girl that unforgettable—no matter how many years had passed, no matter how far apart they were—there had to come a day when he would go find her, see her again. Right?
Clinging to that hope, he started the third chapter.
This chapter was almost entirely made up of the inner monologues of the boy and the girl.
Both of them had forgotten the details of that night long ago.
But they each, separately, kept dreaming of vague scenes and remembering that once-blazing emotion.
Finally, he saw the railroad tracks. He saw that slope where cherry blossoms fell—and, years later, the two of them walking toward the crossing from opposite directions.
He saw the final image: the train thundered past, and once it was gone, the other side of the tracks was empty.
His expression remained calm, but he was deeply disappointed. A quiet, indescribable ache started spreading in his chest.
He looked around the room at the other editors. He wanted to say something—wanted to criticize the series—but in the end, all the lines he'd prepared in advance stuck in his throat.
Did his opinion even matter as far as whether the work was good or not?
Everyone here had taste. Did they really not see it?
In the eyes of the editors around the table, he could already see it clearly: thoughtfulness, sadness, heaviness. The whole room had turned somber and tense.
That alone told him everything he needed to know about this manga's impact.
"Alright, you can all share your thoughts now," Director Huang Yan said, then paused and turned to Su Mingxi.
"The author of this short series… is a newcomer?"
"Yes. And a high school student," she replied.
At that, a ripple went through the room.
Everyone knew the company had been running support programs for particularly young mangaka these past two years.
Competing publishers had produced several college-age stars recently, marketing them as "manga prodigies," and their results had been shockingly good.
It was the same thing that had happened in Xia Jing's previous world with Guo and Han's rise to fame.
Their works' depth and thematic weight weren't necessarily greater than those of old masters of literature.
But the fact that they were still underage when their names exploded earned them sales figures that veteran authors might never touch in a lifetime.
A high school mangaka, huh…
Huang Yan fell silent for a moment. Then, at his signal, the discussion for 5 Centimeters per Second officially began.
"Impressive."
"I think it's very good."
"The ending is just a bit too sad. It doesn't quite match the usual tone we go for in Sakura Weekly," Gao Dian finally said, picking the only angle he could really criticize. But he didn't even need to wait for Su Mingxi to respond before another editor spoke up.
"There are tons of romance stories with bittersweet or regretful endings. We've published plenty of 'supporting girl becomes the main heroine, original girl loses out' type stories before. No need to overthink it."
"Even if it's short, the ending hits hard. And the art is excellent."
"I really like it. This manga really got to me. It brought back a lot of memories."