So, I watched this last night, and I couldn't resist doing a short writeup on it. I'm prepared for any sort of ribbing I get for this, but I was enamored with this beautiful short film.

The Garden of Words is a Japanese anime from the mind of Makato Shinkai, creator of the acclaimed film Your Name. It centers around the interactions between highschooler Takao Akizuki, voiced by Miyu Irino, and a strange older woman named Yukari Yukino, voiced by Kana Hanazawa. It's a short film, clocking in at about 40 minutes, with small scale and very personal themes.

I'm going to keep this relatively short, there is a lot I could talk about, but I want to keep it easily digestible for a nice quick Sunday afternoon read. I want to talk about connection. The Garden of Words, at the end of the day, is a film about connection, and transcending the bounds of what people can "connect" to. It can certainly be pigeonholed into the genre of romance, but the relationship between Akizuki and Yukino feels as if it somehow overcomes that. These are two people lost in their world, feeling alone and isolated. But it doesn't go the route of bonding over a common goal or matching personalities. Yukino and Akizuki are part of two totally different worlds. On the surface they can't relate to one another, their problems, their desires, but below they have an understanding. A primal understanding of what it is to feel alone. Akizuki dreams of being a shoemaker with no one to truly support it, Yukino has been ostracized from her beloved career as a schoolteacher. No matter how different these problems may be, or how different the situations are, the root lies in the same place. Their gazebo represents that common ground. They come from two completely separate paths, both literally and figuratively, they don't need to understand why things are the way they are, but they understand why the other comes.

I'll stop there, if only because I intend to keep this short, and I know I could ramble just about this aspect of the stories for paragraphs. I implore all of you to give this short film a chance, its beautiful and will especially speak to those of us who have experienced the sort of passion Akizuki holds. If you've seen it, please, let's talk about it! I would love to hear more thoughts on it, even if it's on the somewhat controversial age difference between our characters haha!