Review Garden of words

 

Takao is a young man who has decided to skip school on days that it rains and walk through the park. One day he happens upon a woman who is drinking beer in the park. The two of them find a connection with each other and meet on rainy days. Takao tells the woman of his dream of becoming a professional shoemaker and offers to make a pair of shoes for her. However she is a rather guarded woman who has secrets of her own and parts of her life that she would rather runaway from.

 

Garden of works is the fifth and latest (at the time of this article) movie made by the acclaimed director Makoto Shinkai. Much of the reason why I am unable to give a more complete  It is a rather short movie clocking in at fourty eight minutes if you include the credits. In fact the movie's short run time is perhaps the root of most of the movie's shortcomings, as even though the two main characters have some decent development and character depth with the two main leads they are still a bit more shallow than they could have been with a longer run time. This is also another movie about a doomed romance, which is something that Shinkai seems to do with almost all of his works and definitely covered better than in other works of his.

 

Still the movie does have some strong points. There is a strong element of animation in this movie coupled with Shinkai's trademark direction. As such even though the movie's plot isn't as great as it could be it is still a joy to watch visually.

 

Overall I find myself conflicted with this movie. One one hand I think it is overall a good movie but one that is ultimately stunted by it's run time. I recommend it to those more into art films but maybe not the average anime fan.

 

Rating the bronze cloud, after all it is a Shinkai work.