In our review of 5 Centimeters Per Second (2025), we talked about the deceit that structures the romance genre: to allow any romance narrative to sort any kind of effect, one must accept the fantasy of the writability of The sexual relationship, the fiction of a natural complementary bond.
While many narratives merely reaffirm this deceit – allowing the spectator to dream of what structurally does not exist, certain writers and directors take the opportunity to subvert this a priori assumption to confront audiences with something that we could call the hidden truth of romance. In the case of 5 centimeters Per Second (2025), Yoshiyuki Okuyama, in the footsteps of Makoto Shinkai, punctures this fantasy to show the very impossibility of the romantic fate.
Hideta Takahata, with his adaptation of Takeshi Kitano’s novel Analog (2017), utilizes this deceit to show that beyond the fata morgana of The sexual relationship lies the possibility of fabricating a sexual relationship, a fabrication made possible by bringing love into play and accepting the erasable presence of lack.
We, as spectator, are introduced to Satoru Mizushima (Kazunari Ninomiya), a designer who works at a reputable company. He shies away from technology and contends himself bringing his designs to life by drawing and hand-made models – this contentment leads him to meekly accept his katakana-loving boss Iwamoto (Kosuke Suzuki) claiming the designs he poured his philosophies in as his own.
One day, while waiting on Jun’ichi Takagi (Kenta Kiritani) and Yoshio Yamashita (Kenta Hamano) at Cafe Piano, Mizushima, due to the facilitating role the master (Lily Franky) plays, starts talking to Miyuki Miharu (Haru). While Mizushima deflects the woman’s compliment on the design of the shop – “I’ll let Iwamoto know”, the owner steps in to emphasize that, despite Iwamoto taking credit in the magazine publication she was reading, Mizushima designed everything. The conversation that follows – the deep appreciation by Miyuki for Mizushima’s attention to detail – leaves him starstruck. They meet a second time and, before saying goodbye, make a promise to meet each other every Thursday.
The opening hour of Takahata’s Analog is dedicated to tracing out, in a heartwarming way, what happens when two subjects succeed in encountering each other romantically. What inaugurates the romantic encounter is, as beautifully shown in the narrative, the ‘phallic’ trap – the entrapment of desire by perceiving the mesmerizing glance that signals what is radically absent: the phallus.
What happens within the first exchange of signifiers between Mizushima and Miharu, what allows her arise as a presence worthy of his desire, is the fact that she, with her attentive signifiers, pleases his desire for recognition: she makes him symbolically appear by discerning his subjectivity within the interior he designed (Narra-note 1). He feels attracted to her – she becomes his object-goal of desire – because she has seen him despite his attempts to be a mere wallflower.
Miharu breaks Mizushima’s continuous attempt to flee from his own subjectivity, to reduce himself to a mere inconspicuous cog within the machine – he makes himself disappear through silence or, in needed, by deflecting any appeal made to his subjective position (Narra-note 2).
That the act of making his subjectivity present is something he struggles with is also emphasized by his peculiar way of inviting Miyuki to dinner. Whenever an indirect expression of his desire (“Are you hungry?”, “Actually, I know a great Yakitori place nearby.”) is met with a slight moment of hesitation by Miyuki, he seeks to retract the signifiers that obliquely gave expression to his desire (“No, that’s a lie. What am I saying?”).
The shift we introduced in our previous paragraph – from subjectivity to desire, allows us to refine our reading of Mizushima’s fundamental struggle: we come to realize, by analysing the way he utilizes the signifier with respect to the Other, that one can only arise as subject within the societal field by putting one’s desire into one’s signifiers. Mizushima, for some reason, constantly hesitates to bring his desire into play.
The initial encounter – the encounter with the phallic shine in the Other, ultimately leads to a concatenation of romantic meetings. Takahata, by maintaining a slow-paced rhythm throughout his narrative, turns these interactional moments into peaceful and heartwarming explorations of the mutual exploration of the other as ego, the way the ego is fabricated and given to the other, and subtle effects of the exchange of signifiers – at the level of desirability (Psycho-note 1).
Takahata takes the opportunity to show how central the register of the imaginary is in the first few steps of the romantic dance. For instance, in the second encounter, he highlights that, for the male subject, the act of falling in love – of raising a female subject to one’s object-aim of desire, tends to put his sense of phallic desirability into question, thrusts him into the space of insecurity. Mizushima, unsure of whether Miharu considers him desirable, becomes overly self-conscious of his own image, concerning on how she will/could perceive him as image. By shaving and washing his face at the last minute, he seeks to clean, as best as he can, the blemishes of doubt away to present himself – his fantasized phallic quality – in its most agalmatic state – ἄγαλμα.
However, one of the first twists within the narrative, happens after the image Miharu Miyuki presents to Mizushima falters. The confrontation with the classical music performed on stage causes her ego to break down – she starts crying, escapes out of the concert-hall and, after saying sorry to a visible confused Mizushima, flees away. The beautifully performed classical music causes a confrontation with a part of her subjectivity – an unresolved struggle, a dismissed truth she is not ready to integrate within the narrative she presents to Mizushima.
The second twist concerns Miyuki’s unexpected failure to appear at cafe piano, despite having told Mizushima, who is ready to propose to her, that she also has something to tell him. At first glance, the spectator might thing that it is precisely because of that something that she has to tell him that she fails to show up. Is her sudden absence a challenge presented to Mizushima – make your desire present, act in accordance with your desire – or has something else happened?
Takahata delivers a composition littered with thoughtfully composed static shots – e.g. frames within frames, repetition of framing – that deliver elegant moments of still-life beauty. While the director does not ignore the compositional power of dynamism, he integrates dynamism (e.g. slow zoom-ins, slow panning motion, jump-cuts) in such a way that it supports the peaceful rhythm of the visual fabric and support his emphasis on interactions.
Takahata relies on musical accompaniment to smoothen the visual flow when framing transitions, echo the atmosphere of certain narrative spaces (e.g. cafe piano), and to amplify the romantic mood that arouses from the natural flow of the interactions between Miharu and Mizushima – both Kazunari Ninomiya and Haru give convincing and touching performances. The music, moreover, subtle signals that the film takes on a lighter note – an airier mood.
Analog pleases the spectator not merely because Takahata offers a bittersweet romance narrative that gives the spectator a chance to re-appreciate the joys and sorrows of ‘analog’ interactions, in the formation of connections without the support of digital interconnectivity, but because he re-affirms, touchingly, that only love can compensate the non-existence of The sexual relationship – one can only fabricate a sexual relationship in an analog way.
Notes
Narra-note 1: Mihari Miyuki, on the other hand, feels pleased by Mizushima because he, unlike those around her, expressed a deep appreciation of her mother’s antique order-made Italian designer bag.
Narra-note 2: The recourse to fleeing from his own subjectivityis also evident in the dynamic between him and his boss:he welcomes his boss’ theft of his designs to embellish his ego and promote his interior design company. One could argue that he, at a conscious level, accepts his boss’ exploitative behaviour because of the hierarchal difference – he has the right to pick the delicious fruit of his worker’s labour.
On a side note: The dynamic that the boss is honoured for the successes of his employees and his employees take the fall for the boss’ mistakes is also explored within other fictional narratives – e.g. Hanzawa Naoki (2013, 2020).
Psycho-note 1: Analog beautifully illustrates the fact that what we tell the other is a carefully curated fictionalization that obtains its coherence by the omission of anything that does not fit within the image of desirability one seeks to present.