Pros:
The Garden of Words is a story about how two people can help each other even if it starts off inadvertently. Takao and Yukino start off as complete strangers, just seeing each other at the park when it rains.
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Just by being around someone Takao is helping Yukino with her loneliness and Takao is able to analyze her feet to design better shoes. Over the course of the movie, their help becomes more proactive and it shows how two strangers can learn to know each other through continued interactions.
Takao starts off the movie
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with subpar shoe making skills, being able to cobble together some makeshift shoes. His efforts don't come without a cost either. His grades are suffering and his friends don't take his passion seriously, saying that he should spend more time with them instead. This causes Takao doubt himself, is his passion really worth it, especially considering the results he is getting? But with Yukino's help he's able to improve his skills dramatically, to the point that he's able to create a fancy shoe by the end of the movie.Yukino on the other hand is
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dealing with an eating disorder where her taste is limited and above all loneliness. She puts on a facade of being a responsible & professional adult to those around her. She wants to go to the school for the human interaction she desires, but she can't bring herself to, which is why she goes to the park instead. She needs to learn how to "walk" through those difficult situations. She can't admit to her coworkers that she's going to the park for the sole purpose of meeting up with a student. Through her interactions with Takao she gains the courage to return to the school. However, her professional facade also still applies to her interactions with Takao. When he confesses his love to her, she responds in a professional manner fitting of her position as his teacher. She doesn't let him know how much he has truly helped her with her problems. But over the course of the movie, her time with Takao has weakened her facade and she decides to bring it down at the end. She cries in front of Takao for the first time and let's him know how spending time with him helped her deal with her loneliness. She's able to head back to her home town with a stronger resolve because of him.Before you get to know Yukino's struggles, she's a mystery, which works as a great hook for the movie. You want to know why she is eating chocolate and drinking beer to a worrying degree. Why does she go to the park every day? These questions are answered incrementally throughout the movie, first you learn
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about her eating disorder, then about her profession and why doesn't go to work. Her job as a literature teacher is also well foreshadowed by the poem she recites to Takao near the start of the movie. The mystery culminates in
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the fight Takao has with the other students, which adds some much needed action and tension to the movie.
The ending theme, Rain, is great and the way it started immediately playing after
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the emotional scene between Yukino and Takao, made it work really well.
Neutral:
I did feel like
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Takao's doubts about his abilities could've been emphasized a little more, to make the movie's messages hit a little more. I didn't know it was an issue until the scene where he yells about them to Yukino. The only indicuation was his lacking grades. To make it a bit clearer, a couple more character's could've mentioned their doubts about Takao's career choice.Spoiler, click to view
Takao's restriction of going to the park only when it rains also felt a tad arbitrary later in the movie. In the beginning of the movie it's clearly established how he likes the rain, but over the course of the movie he meets Yukino and starts to care for her. Yet he acts like he can only meet her on rainy days, like she won't be there otherwise. if he wants to meet her so bad, he could just go anyway, there's nothing stopping him from at the very least checking if she's also there on non-rainy days as well.
