TITLE – The Garden of Words [Alt. Title – Kotonoha no Niwa]
RUNTIME – 45:51 minutes (approximately)
DIRECTOR & WRITER – Makoto Shinkai
DEMOGRAPHIC – Seinen
PLOT Summary:
The Garden of Words is considered a romance and drama film. It opens at the start of the rainy season in Tokyo with Takao Akizuki, a 15-year-old student and aspiring shoemaker, opting to skip his first class and sketch shoe designs in the garden at Shinjuku Gyoen, where he encounters Yukari Yukino, a 27-year-old woman who is skipping work and enjoying beer and chocolate. When she notices the school crest on his uniform, Yukino bids him farewell with a tanka (a form of Japanese poetry), leaving Takao puzzled as to its origin and meaning. The two continue to encounter each other and socialize in the park on rainy mornings, but never formally introduce themselves. After Yukino expresses an interest in Takao's shoemaking, he decides to make a pair of shoes in her size. With the end of the rainy season, Takao stops visiting the park and focuses on his work. The story begins taking twists from that point on and the consequences follow as such. Takao comes to know about Yukino’s whereabouts from his fellow classmates and friends and the series of events follow as such.
The credits show Takao barely passing his final exams, but still working towards his goals, while Yukino moves back to Shikoku and resumes her teaching career. In the epilogue Takao revisits the park that winter, reads a letter from Yukino, places her finished shoes on the bench and then vows that he will go find her after he has made progress with his career.
Plot Rating: 8.75/10
ANIMATION & GRAPHICS:
Like other Japanese anime, The Garden of Words was created using a combination of hand-drawn animation, rotoscoping and computer animation (CGI), with the latter facilitating the realistic appearance of the film's rain sequences. Half of the film's backgrounds were made by using photographs as bases and then drawing over the top with Adobe Photoshop, while the other half were fictional settings created with traditional animation and computer graphics. As with the other films of Makoto Shinkai, the backgrounds are vivid and meticulously drawn scenery while the characters are drawn with less detail, though they are still convincing and realistic.
The animation and graphics part of the film gets a rating of 9.0/10 for the realistic effects.
GENRE/THEME:
Drama, Romance
Two common themes among Shinkai's films, including The Garden of Words, are subtle romances and lingering emotions. However, this film's focus on "lonely sadness" (koi) was interpreted in a couple of ways. The loneliness is seen at the end of the film, when Takao learns to cope with Yukino's move to Shikoku. Luke Carroll at Anime News Network felt the end of the rainy season and the resulting separation created the sense of koi.
MUSIC:
The theme song, "Rain", was written and composed by Senri Oe, and was originally a popular Japanese song in 1988. Shinkai enjoyed listening to Oe's song regularly while attending university, and since one of the film's themes was rain, it was the first song that came to mind while he worked on the production. He particularly liked the song because its lyrics reflected daily life, much like the film. The song was remade for the film in 2013, and sung by Motohiro Hata. Shinkai met Hata on several occasions and noted a similarity between Hata's passion as an artisan and that of the character Takao. Shinkai also felt that Hata's voice was perfect because to him it carried an "underlying loneliness" and "sounded a little like an anxious young man".
I give 8.0/10 for the music.
OVERALL REVIEW:
The plot designed to picture the short animated film was, according to me, a perfect one which has the ability to touch the sentiments of any person who watches the film carefully. The story is set as such that the protagonist meets his special someone in the garden, just by mere luck and thus, the garden becomes the spot for the meeting of both of them. The story of the two begins with a Tanaka and ends with one which reveals that the Tanaka had a special role to play in bringing the two closer. Hence the title, The Garden of Words, according to me, is the most appropriate one for the story. There is a manga as well as a Serial Novel adaptation of the short animation anime film as well, written by Makoto Shinkai, both of them having 1 volume each.
IMDB Rating: 7.6/10
My Rating: 8.6/10
NOTE:
In the manga illustrated by Midori Motohashi, scenes were either added or slightly modified from the anime version. For example, after the conclusion of the rainy season, Takao was unable to visit the park during the only rainy morning that summer because he had scheduled to visit the footwear college he wanted to attend, disappointing Yukino who had hoped to see him in the park. Also, at the conclusion of the story, Yukino is seen wearing the shoes Takao had made for her.
[A faint clap of thunder,
Clouded skies,
Perhaps rain will come.
If so, will you stay here with me?]
[A faint clap of thunder,
Even if rain comes or not,
I will stay here,
Together with you.]
