Avex Pictures has announced that Naoko Yamada’s upcoming short anime film Garden of Remembrance will screen at the Scotland Love Animation film festival. The event usually runs during October weekends in Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Aberdeen.
The short film will run for an estimated 20 minutes and premiere sometime in 2023. Shortly after its premiere at Scotland Love Animation, Yamada (Liz and the Blue Bird, A Silent Voice, K-On!) and producer Eunyoung Choi will be participating in a Q&A session to discuss their latest work together.
The Garden of Remembrance features original character designs by manga artist Etsuko Mizusawa (Moshimoshi, Terumi desu; Hana no Zubora Meshi) and animation production from Science Saru.
According to Comic Natlaie, Yamada was approached by Choi to create a short film centered around music. During its creation, both Yamada and Choi used specific keywords to create a poem, from which Yamada began creating the anime’s concept. Singer-songwriter Lovely Summer-Chan, who knew nothing about Yamada’s latest project at the time, got to work on the music soon after.
Garden of Remembrance is Yamada’s second work with Science Saru after the 2021 anime series The Heike Story.
Scotland Loves Animation has screened numerous anime films since the festival first began in 2010. Some of their most recent anime screenings include Goodbye, Don Glees!, Inu-Oh, Hula Fulla Dance, and The Tunnel to Summer, the Exit of Goodbyes.
Annecy Film Festival describes the short film as:
An untidy room. Empty beer tins, empty wine bottles, a half-empty glass of whisky…
A girl is getting up absent-mindedly and starts preparing herself. YOUR morning starts. Lazy and hard-to-wake-up YOU. The emoticon is ME watching over YOU. I play tricks on YOU, while YOU are playing the guitar and drinking. 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. Opened, YOU see MY garden right in front of YOU. Overflowing emotions of ME and YOU.
When exiting from the room with memories, a picture of the Anemone that YOU painted is displayed in YOUR new room.
Source: Avex Pictures