Garden of Remembrance

Yamada Naoko is a modern anime auteur. She started at Kyoto Animation, where she became one of the youngest directors in its history, helming TV series including K-On and Tamako Market, and movies including Tamako Love Story, Koe no Katachi (A Silent Voice), and Liz to Aoi Tori (Liz and the Blue Bird). In 2020, she went out on her own and directed several projects for Science Saru, including the TV series Heike Monogatari and the newly released movie The Colors Within. She's not yet 40.

Garden of Remembrance is an anime short just released in Japan. There is no dialog, just music and one song. The plot is abstract. Summarizing the program at the Annecy Film Festival, "In an untidy room, strewn with empty beer tins, empty wine bottles, and a half-empty glass of whisky, a girl is getting up and preparing herself for her day. YOUR morning starts.

One day, in town, YOU walk past THE CHILDHOOD FRIEND who is buying an Anemone I liked, and remembering that I liked them, YOU rush out to buy them. THE CHILDHOOD FRIEND displays the Anemone with care. 

One day, years after I died, YOU hear noise from the closet. Opening it, YOU see MY garden right in front of YOU. Overflowing emotions of ME and YOU. When exiting from the room of memories, a picture of the Anemone that YOU painted is displayed in YOUR new room."

Got that? You may not remember the plot, but you will remember the visuals: a riot of dazzling colors and designs. 

The action starts out repetitively: the girl's morning is shown seven times. However, the sequence gets faster each time, and the details vary slightly to show the passage of time: different T-shirts functioning as pajamas, different breakfasts and, because years are passing, not just days, different smartphones. 

The explosion of memories, when it occurs, jolts the film out of repetition into variability and even fantasy, accompanied by a melancholic song. It ends silently, on an up note... I think.

One translation note. The song includes this lyric:

I don't need a cucumber horse
Or an eggplant cow

This is a reference to Obon, the festival of remembrance for the dead. Participants carve a cucumber horse and an eggplant cow that allow the dead to come home and return, respectively.

Skr grabbed the video as soon as it started streaming in Japan. He timed and translated the song, typeset the credits, and asked me to typeset all smartphone screens. Perevodildo and onkeikun checked the song translation. Skr and I QCed.

Orphan is a not a real-time, or even real-decade, fansubbing group, except when a broadcast or streamed short catches Skr's attention. When you watch Garden of Remembrance, you'll see why this one did. You can get the show from the usual torrent site or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net.