In a single word: elegant.

This short review will simply be an expression of my take on the movie. It may be helpful in deciding whether or not you want to watch the movie, which I would highly recommend.

Kotonoha no Niwa (Garden of Words) is a short movie about a schoolboy, training to be a shoemaker, who skips school on the morning of rainy days to sketch shoes in a garden and his experiences with an older women he meets at the garden.

The main theme of the movie is rain, which it handles exceptionally aesthetically. The meetings of the two main characters in the garden is dictated by days it rains. Part of the narrative involves symbolism using rain. The atmosphere created by rain in this movie is wonderfully mesmerizing. For me, it successfully created depth beyond what you I have come to expect from experiencing an anime.

As it has come to be expected from a story written by Makoto Shinkai, the story of this movie is emotional, compelling and realistic. Unlike most anime, you experience the story rather than being told it. There are many occasions where the story is told by actions and things not said. Overall the story is quite modest and doesn't tackle the issue (

Spoiler, click to view

The potential romance between the characters, who are quite far apart in age.

) presented head on, instead leaving the viewer to come to their own conclusions. I personally like this decision as a direct approach could have detracted from the feeling of ethereality/mystery/beauty I experienced if the issue was handled immaturely. The storytelling approach could be described as terse - a lot is left to interpretation. I strongly believe unambiguous closure would have ruined the story.

Visually this movie nothing short of amazing. I would even hazard asserting that this movie is the one of the best looking anime in existence and will remain so for a long time. Even if the story doesn't interest you, the visuals and the atmosphere make this movie worth watching.

Audio quality is pretty much the same as the visuals. The musical compositions used enhance the atmosphere very well, sitting masterfully on line between lackluster and diminishing ambience.

I am not a regular anime critic, nor am I somebody with a vast amount of experience analysing plots or stories. However, that does not mean it should be taken lightly when I came to a conclusion about my opinion of this movie, that opinion being that this movie is objectively perfect. Subjectively? Everybody has their own take. I personally love rain so that contributes to my perspective of the movie. Could the movie have been developed more? Potentially. Does the fact that it doesn't try to be more detract from the experience? Not at all.

I have been very hesitant to give the movie the score that I did but I simply cannot fault it at all.