7.3 | / 10 |
Users | 5.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 5.0 |
When Takao, a young high school student who dreams of becoming a shoe designer, decides to skip school one day in favor of sketching in a rainy garden, he has no idea how much his life will change when he encounters Yukino. Older, but perhaps not as much wiser, she seems adrift in the world. Despite the difference in their ages, they strike up an unusual relationship that unexpectedly continues and evolves, without planning, with random meetings that always occur in the same garden on each rainy day. But the rainy season is coming to a close, and there are so many things still left unsaid and undone between them.
Starring: Miyu Irino, Kana Hanazawa, Fumi Hirano, Takanori Hoshino, Megumi HanForeign | 100% |
Anime | 96% |
Romance | 21% |
Drama | 10% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
Japanese: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A (locked)
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 5.0 | |
Audio | 4.5 | |
Extras | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Note: The first paragraph of this review contains spoilers. Those who don't want at least one major plot point
revealed may want to
skip down to either the second paragraph or perhaps even better the technical aspects of the review, below.
The Garden of Words is a slow, delicate, incredibly artful anime short film that is evocative, sensitive and
heartfelt. That might seem like an unqualified rave, and it is, more or less, except for one nagging point (and major
spoiler alert for those who don’t want to know one of this piece’s central secrets): the film is about an unrequited love
affair between a student and a teacher. Now hairs are going to be split over this, as the student is not in the teacher’s
class, and in fact for a lot of this already brief outing the student isn’t even aware that his heartthrob is a
teacher, but that doesn’t completely erase a central plot device that some parents at least may find a little unsettling. I
can’t help but wonder if all of the lovely sentiments that are offered in The Garden of Words couldn’t have been
handled just as well without this really disturbing subtext, especially in this day and age where older teachers and their
young “lovers” end up being exploited on very special episodes of Dr. Phil and the like. There are any number
of places where The Garden of Words could have gone seriously off the rails—its young male hero has a thing
for designing women’s shoes, for example—and the point that writer-director Makoto Shinkai manages to overcome
these potential obstacles with apparent ease then begs the question as to why a different connective tissue between
the two characters couldn’t have been found. This may seem like making a mountain out of a molehill, but the fact that
The Garden of Words ends with the young male protagonist still obviously pining for his estranged teacher, a
feeling which seems to be returned by the teacher herself, may
bring the Mary Kay Letourneau saga to the mind of more than one viewer. The fact that the teacher is also
experiencing trauma since she's been accused of having a relationship with another student the year before
injects an unusually troubling subtext into this often haunting little film. The fact that the proceedings are fairly
chaste is one major saving grace in this film, but there’s still going to be a certain “squirm” factor for some, one way or
the other.
The Garden of Words is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Sentai Filmworks with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This is quite simply a stunningly animated piece which makes the transition to high definition with flawless precision. The piece is a really winning combination of CGI and more traditional hand drawn techniques, but it offers an almost immersive visual approach that is exceedingly dimensional, an aspect which pops incredibly well on this Blu-ray. The really lovely renditions of the rainy environs of the park come through very clearly as well, with absolutely no artifacts despite a glut of parallel lines streaming down at times. Line detail is very sharp, colors are beautifully modulated and nicely saturated, and this is certainly one of the most visually sumptuous pieces we've seen from Sentai Filmworks in a long, long while.
The Garden of Words offers lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mixes in both Japanese and English. There's no appreciable difference between these two tracks other than the obvious languages. Both of these tracks are extremely subtle at times, washing nicely rendered ambient environmental sounds (bird calls, the ripple of water, torrential downpours) through the soundfield and creating a very realistic sounding sonic world. Dialogue is clearly presented, though anchored in the front channels, as is Takao's narration. There are a few bursts of energy—an early cut to a barreling high speed train and the like—but overall, dynamic range is somewhat limited here, which really doesn't detract from this very nuanced set of mixes.
Those who have either already seen The Garden of Words or who deigned to read the first paragraph above may frankly not have the same qualms that I did with the central tenet of this unusual relationship. I really feel very strongly that Shinkai undercuts his own obvious good intentions by coloring his story with this troubling aspect, when certainly other solutions that would have resulted in the same overall plot arc could have easily been found. But putting that perhaps major issue aside, there is a lot to admire about this haunting, heartfelt short film. Anyone who has ever struggled to "reach out and touch" someone—even an ostensible stranger—will certainly relate to the underlying truths of The Garden of Words. This Blu-ray offers superior video and audio and comes with some excellent supplements. I'd normally give this an unqualified rave (as is mentioned in that troublesome first paragraph, above), but I frankly just can't quite overcome that one very troubling plot point, so this is slightly demoted to a "mere" Recommended.
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