Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		5.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		4.0
Overall		4.0

The Garden of Words Blu-ray Movie Review

School for scandal.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 3, 2013

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.

Takao is a sweet high school kid who is a bit of a misfit, which some cynics might claim is tied to his obsession with women’s shoes. But in reality, Takao is an old soul who actually wants to become a cobbler, hence his perhaps unusual interest. His home life is something of a shambles, as his father is completely absent and his mother evidently takes off on whims to be with whatever boyfriend du jour is making her feel wanted. Though Takao has an older brother there, there doesn’t appear to be a wealth of familial bonding happening, and Takao tends to inhabit an interior world, as emphasized by the rather poetic voice over by the character as The Garden of Words begins.

One day Takao decides to play hooky from school and visit a scenic urban park which is awash in that day’s rain. He gets to a covered pergola to sketch for a while, where he sees a somewhat older woman enjoying the rather odd combination of chocolate and beer. When Takao drops his eraser, the woman picks it up and hands it to him, beginning a rather peculiar, halting relationship which slowly but surely blossoms into something more profound. While The Garden of Words is told mostly from Takao’s point of view, we slowly come to understand that the female character, Yukino, is having problems of her own, though since we don’t have the benefit of interior monologues by her as we do with Takao, we find out her story a bit more slowly.

The two continue to meet on rainy days, and since it’s the rainy season, that means quite a lot. A fumbling friendship is formed, though Takao soon seems to be harboring romantic feelings for this “older woman”. When school starts again and the rainy season ends, Takao almost simultaneously stops seeing Yukino in the park while he’s suddenly made aware of Yukino’s “real” identity and her somewhat colored past. Rather than serving as a warning bell of sorts, it somehow sparks feelings of empathy and sympathy in Takao, and the two have a brief, tear laden reunion—in the rain, of course.

There is so much to admire about The Garden of Words—its nicely developed characters, its streamlined brevity which nonetheless doesn’t shirk on atmosphere or plot, and perhaps most of all its lovely interweaving of the environment and the people, which often plays like an adult oriented Studio Ghibli outing—that many will either not care or not be overly concerned with the spoiler posted above. But that facet of the story is so central to all that happens that some may find it to be a fatal flaw that deflates an otherwise remarkable enterprise. Why Shinkai couldn’t have found some other way to link these two characters in The Garden of Words leaves me speechless in a figurative desert of bafflement.

The Garden of Words Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

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 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

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.

The Garden of Words Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Interviews (1080i; 52:22) features some good interviews with the Japansese voice cast and crew.


• Storyboards (1080p; 45:09) presents the film in storyboard form.


• English Production Stills (1080p; 5:08) offers photos of the English voice cast, with some patently odd commentary provided via on screen text.


• Garden of Words Japanese Trailer (1080p; 2:31)


• The Works of Makoto Shinkai (1080i; 9:06) is a nice retrospective on the writer-director.


• English Commentary features Maggie Flecknoe (Yukino) and Patrick Poole (Takao), who seem to have been recorded separately and who also seem to be fairly new to the commentary game. A lot of this commentary tends to be the voice actors' responses to the visuals.


• Japanese Commentary with English Subtitles features Risa Mizuno hosting director Makoto Shinkai. This is a somewhat more substantial commentary that gets into some of Shinkai's past work as well as what was hoped for with this production, but the two spend quite a bit of time at the beginning simply talking about each other, as it seems as if they had never actually met in person before, despite the fact that Mizuno voiced several of Shinkai's previous pieces. Shinkai does offer some really interesting technical information on the film's artful blend of hand drawn and CGI animation.

The Garden of Words Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

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.