It's impossible to know how I would have rated this if I hadn't seen the film first. I love Shinkai's work and will go where he leads - from film to novel to manga. Reading this with an overlay of the film's deep atmosphere isn't at all the same as reading without it although the heart of the story remains and one moves beyond the ending in much the same way. It almost seems from a few of the reviews here that the story is uncomfortable for some readers. Huh.

I love the short film of this story, so I decided to read the manga. There is that missing beauty of Shinkai's animation, yet the emotions come across just the same. Shinkai's stories do so well at taking any simple story, something very realistic and relatable even, and tying it in with every detail-- from the weather and other parts of the environment, to what is focused on in each frame-- to create a connection between two people that can transcend the simplicity of a single moment. A beautifully woven tale of a bond formed in the rain, of hope and how to latch on to it, of shoes and being able to walk in them, of needing help even when the sun is shinning, of taking steps until you reach a tough decision, take a leap of faith, and are finally able to move forward.

The drawing style might not be as captivating as the final animated version of this story, however, basing it against it's medium, the drawing is beautifully done. The speech bubbles were a bit confusing at times since there are many scenes in which people are not shown in frame with their words and all the bubbles from different people look the same. This makes it a bit difficult at times to pinpoint which character is saying what, though mostly I think I was able to figure this out from context. I also love the way this one ends, the last page seems like a perfect culmination of the many pieces that were spread throughout the book that connected these two characters and what sparked from this connection. This is a quick read, just a single volume of manga, and I would certainly recommend it to fans of Shinkai, as well as the animated short film for it. I would also recommend for those who love seeing a story slowly come together from bits and pieces collecting and sparking off one another.

'The pleasure of novels is in the strings of letters themselves' (Shinkai, 2014).

Intertwoven with bits of [b:Man'yoshu]'s poetry* at the beginning and end of each chapter, this is 'the novelisation of the 2013 animated film Garden of Words, which I directed' (Shinkai, Afterword section, 2014).


*In Man'yoshu, "love" was written with characters that mean "lonely sorrow".
In Shinkai's words, this is 'a tale of "lonely sorrow"'– filled with unrequited love, lyrical prose and atmospheric-yet-ephemeral settings. (Skyscape lovers, this story is a must!).


It is a fast-paced read, but I highly recommend you to really indulge in it and let "the strings of letters" be your sensorial tour guides.

'Thank you very much for picking up this book, and for reading it' (Shinkai, Feb 2014). Thank you for making a film on this concept, and for novelising it afterwards.

DNF
non ce la faccio

The Garden of Words had an interesting idea that really sort of fizzled out and then went somewhere uncomfortable. I picked this up after hearing a lot of good things about Shinkai but I have to say I don’t like contemporary fiction so this really wasn’t the manga for me. The tag line “Can a poem save your life?’ was intriguing. This story isn’t.

A young man likes to skip school when it rains (I don’t remember the names, that’s how uninteresting this was to me). He meets a woman drinking morning beers in the park. They talk some and she leaves him with a tanka poem to which he spends many weeks trying to come up with the right response. Over the next several weeks they meet in the park.

They help each other by just being a friend to each other. She encourages him to follow his dream (making women’s shoes) and he helps her heal from the anxiety/nervous breakdown she had after she was accused of something at her last job (but we don’t know what it was)

And now for what really ruined this for me (spoilers ahead) was this beers in the morning woman wasn’t guilty of what she was accused of….until she meets him. Now she starts that she’s only twelve years older than him and we learn she was a high school teacher accused of seducing a student and now she’s considering it with him. This manga wasn’t helped by the fact I read it while there was a nation-wide manhunt for a teacher who did just that. It’s not romantic. It’s an abuse of power by an adult over a teen in their control. To me it’s not even a trope, it’s a crime. So yeah, totally the wrong audience for this one. I need to go pull it off my netflix queue while I’m at it.

I had a lot of trouble following the text bubbles, honestly. And it seemed pretty insta-love.