The Garden of Words

I have no words that can describe how in love I am with this movie. I stumbled upon it randomly, thought the art looked lovely, and decided to give it a view. I'm so glad I did. The artwork and animation is just breathtaking. The landscapes and city scenes are almost photo realistic, attention being given to the tiniest of details. I would consider it on par with Studio Ghibli at least. I consider myself very critical when it comes to animations, and it takes a lot to really wow me, but this took the cake. I came with no expectations, and left wondering why this movie isn't more widespread and the need to tell everyone I know to watch it. Though the film is only 46 minutes long, it feels like a feature length film. I was captivated for every second of it, and will be watching it many times in the future.

Too long, didn't read? Watch this movie.

Promoted as a feature-length film, Shinkai Makoto's Garden of Words surprisingly only lasts 46 minutes. However, it was enough for the director to portray human emotions as well as understand the purpose of relationships.

The word "love" in modern Japanese is "ai", but in the ancient language, it was actually written as "koi", which is a compound of two other Kanji means "solitude" and "sad". Though Garden of Words is set in modern times, "love" in this film will be portrayed in its original meaning, which leads to a story about longing and loneliness, as well as suggesting an unhappy ending for love.

At the center, there is Takao, a 15-year-old student who wants to become a shoe-maker. On rainy days, he often plays truant in a Japanese-style garden and learns to make shoes there. By chance he meets Yukino, a mysterious woman much older than him, and whenever it rains, the two of them meet each other in the garden. Over time, their relationship deepens and the mystery surrounding Yukino finally reveals itself on a dry day.

Similar to Shnkai's previous films The Place Promised in Our Early Days, 5 Centimeters Per Second, Children Who Chase Lost Voices, the most impressive thing about Garden of Words are the vibrant & unique visual elements. In this latest film, he continues to develop his own unique style. Clean and cute, a little bit cheesy even, Shinkai uses excessive glare and light pink tones, and the result is a bombastic impressive 46- minute picture.

The park's natural setting, with green trees drooping into the water, the wind stirring the small rocks, creates a space ripe with romance and poetry, which helps ease anxiety. Although the scenes in the school, Yukino's house, train station etc were beautifully drawn, the brightest points in the painting of Garden of Words are the natural moments when two people sit in the park together and enjoy the stillness of emotion.

Garden of Words delivers a simple, soft love story, though many would argue that it is taboo. The director knows how to manipulate love, make it as natural as rain, by arranging the meeting at a far away location from where they work/study, only meeting on rainy days to make their feelings vibrate. Eventually, when the truth of their fate is revealed, the audience completely accepts it, because their love for each other is full of sincerity and cultivated diligently through the rainy days.

Garden of Words is a triumph of visual style over substance. It can be very predictable, can be very cheesy when two people are hugging and crying at the end. But the movie creates honest and fresh emotions, accompanied by an impressive visual expression. Garden of Words is not simply the binding of the last two people through some lines of Japanese poetry that they read to each other, It is also the shining of unique storytelling style with images.

And with the blink of an eye, a small gesture is enough to say everything about human emotion, words probably are not needed anymore. Garden of Words gives you a unique experience, exploring the visual and aesthetic language of love.

Trung Rwo

With it's short length of only 45 minutes, it's hard to call this a full movie - although don't let that deter you, as it's still better than most that I have seen, anime or otherwise.

When you hear about this movie one of the things that get repeated mention is it's visuals, and I concur. It's probably the most well made anime from a visuals standpoint.

The story isn't bad either, for only 45 minutes it sets up and tell a surprisingly deep and moving story. It is simplistic storytelling, but still very powerful. It is somewhat reminiscent of one of the director's previous films, 5 Centimetres Per Second, in that it uses a similarly "simple" story but one that relates strongly to emotions and situations felt by normal human beings. I also think this is a great movie to show people who normally don't like anime, as anime very often have different storytelling than I think many are used to. This one is more grounded without many of the "fantasy" elements that most anime's have.

The plot summary on IMDb do just fine setting up the story so I wont bother explaining it, it would just be redundant.

Within the first few seconds, you know you're in for a treat for your eyes. The animation in this movie so well done and pleasing to watch. It's one of the better animations I've seen, at least when it comes to the environment (the people are animated pretty much just like most other anime movies). There are so many details and work put into this.

We meet the boy Takao quickly through his narration. It's both beautiful to listen to and at the same time kind of funny, since he is only 15 and he makes it sound like an angsty diary entry. He like the rain, and shoes. He skips school to go to the park when it rains, where he meets a woman. They seem to have the same idea of going to the park on rainy days. He finds out eventually that he wants to design shoes for her.

The movie is unintentionally funny in its fixation in shoes and feet. In one way, it almost framed in a fetishized way, on the other hand, its very sweet and beautiful to watch.

The movie is very short, so there is not much time for character development or to let the story unravel in a slow pace. I don't know myself why Shinkai didn't make it longer (time or money or both probably), but if he could've made it longer, he should have. It has lots of promise, and would be way more interesting if it could tackle their relationship more, especially based on the massive taboo on age difference in Japan. It misses out on some really good opportunities for telling a deeper story.

There's a climax where there is a lot of feelings and crying going on and it is, unfortunately, bombarded with really loud emotional music. The dialogue is intense and almost violent, and at the same time kind of silly in a strange way. The music almost drowns out the dialogue and there is anger and sadness and love and it all happens so fast and in an intense way it's hard to know what to feel.

I really wanted to like this movie more than I did. It has a lot of potential, the animation, again, is gorgeous, the story is cute, but with not much substance (of course it has some, it tackles some issues of the woman, Yukari, for example, but not deeply enough. Everything is told so fast you'll almost miss it). I do want to see more of Shinkai (this is the first one I see), because I have no doubt he has made things better than this, and I look forward to see it.

Although I don't make reviews of movies (only read and maybe comment with friends), Shinkai's movies just force me to. My first comment was of, in my opinion is this director's best work to this day, 5 cm per second, and so this is going to be my second comment.

With that long introduction said, I must say this movie surprised me, with a scenery a OST worthy of the highest regards (like Shinkai has us used to) and a character development spot on. Not the deepest analysis in each character (he couldn't do that in 45 min) but deep enough for the audience to understand them and know what they are going through which is the whole point of the movie. All this wrapped up with a spectacular climax. Although you feel the climax coming, you don't expect a climax like this, with that much energy, sentiment, and art, all in 2 min long.

To finish, a little opinion on Shinkai, I have seen all his movies and I sense that him, with this movie, just realized what are his strong points: not huge movies with 8 characters and lots of themes (a ground where Miyasaki flourishes) but little situations where few characters stand for being truly humane and how they confront problems that ,at that time, mean the world to them and shape them for the future. He's a director that likes to test new grounds (part coming from being a young) but he's also getting reaching his full potential. That's why "Voices from a distant star", "5 cm per second" and this movie are his best work to date and "Voices from deep below" and "place promised" being his not so good movies (although I liked them).