Time and time again, you are gonna see romances developing through a full 1-cour season, a movie, or maybe even 3 seasons. Are they wrong for doing so? No, nothing leads me to think that way.

But what romance appears as in many cases, is as long as a very short experience, of you meeting someone, talking to them, and something going wrong. Those situations usually disappear from you mind the month after (or become something that will always haunt you and bring you plenty of "what ifs"), but throughout you being in love, that feeling takes over you and makes you only think about that person.

The Garden of Words is the very encapsulation of that, its length also helps encapsulate what the story portraits. The theme behind them both trying to escape different — though very similar — realities, the teacher too scared to step in her classroom, and the student that sees no future in studying, find comfort in sharing the same space, regardless of the little to no communication, each others presence is comforting enough.

Speaking of communication, the dialogue between the protagonists, voiced by the ever so impressive Kana Hanazawa and the also talented Miyu Irino is one of the highlights of this movie, they — aswell as the movie itself — feel very human, respecting the level of formality you would expect from 2 strangers, and evolving along as their relationship.

The two main characters don't feel as fresh as the story itself, Yukino seems to be defined by her background, a teacher that was bullied by her students and suffers on the daily because of that. The same could be said for Akizuki, though even more extreme, he feels like a really bland character and the only thing really driving him forward is his passion for shoemaking. Regardless of the lackluster character building, the story isn't really about that, pretty much the opposite. It serves to highlight that Akizuki himself also knows nothing about the one he's in love with, and knows nothing about himself.

The track is very simple and reminds me of ReLIFE (and Zelda: Breath of The Wild): Piano tracks that are soft and do not bother the scene. Anything more complex would take away from the scene itself, so they decide to save the big track for the post-climax, with a really good song by Motohiro Hata, a strategy that would later be a common trademark for Makoto Shinkai's works.

Under the amazing photography direction of Makoto Shinkai, the scenes feel vivid and fresh, and the teams extremely impressive artstyle (this is a 2013 movie!), you can feel the passion put in this project, which would also shadow the passion of future projects, such as Kimi No Na Wa and Tenki No Ko. The art is magnificent and you can see they don't save any resources on making sure the scene looks as pretty as it can be.

The Garden of Words is a simple but impactful romance, with a lot of Sakuga to please our eyes, it tells a short story and doesn't leave a big mark, much like a short love, where you will soon forget, or maybe sometimes you'll think about it as a nice experience.