[R] The Place Promised In Our Early Days

The thought of being able to communicate with the people we've left behind, and go on one more adventure with them, to explore a familiar but different city, to build something in your garage, to impress them one final time with the instrument you were forced to learn. It's a deeply saddening thought, because it's impossible. Makoto Shinkai's works repeatedly showcase what our worlds could be if those were possibilities. They're fantasies for people who were stripped of all of their friends on graduation night, who walk the Earth alone, thinking only of people they haven't seen in years. For people who fantasize about being best friends with every coworker who accidentally makes eye contact with them. For people begging for someone to take the time to notice them. They're the hope that if you could go back to your old friends, everything would fall into place. You'd be complete again. They're the embodiment heart you left behind that will never break.