The Garden of Words

With it's short length of only 45 minutes, it's hard to call this a full movie - although don't let that deter you, as it's still better than most that I have seen, anime or otherwise.

When you hear about this movie one of the things that get repeated mention is it's visuals, and I concur. It's probably the most well made anime from a visuals standpoint.

The story isn't bad either, for only 45 minutes it sets up and tell a surprisingly deep and moving story. It is simplistic storytelling, but still very powerful. It is somewhat reminiscent of one of the director's previous films, 5 Centimetres Per Second, in that it uses a similarly "simple" story but one that relates strongly to emotions and situations felt by normal human beings. I also think this is a great movie to show people who normally don't like anime, as anime very often have different storytelling than I think many are used to. This one is more grounded without many of the "fantasy" elements that most anime's have.

The plot summary on IMDb do just fine setting up the story so I wont bother explaining it, it would just be redundant.