It's the latest work from Makoto Shinkai(5cm Per Second, Voices of a Distant Star, The Place Promised in Our Early Days), an animator/director known for his extreme attention to detail and beautifully rendered, realistically lit backgrounds. He has a talent for making the mundane look beautiful. But don't just take my word for it, look at these images from the film:
Shinkai wrote on his website that this is the first time he is making a "love" story. He added that there were words long before there were characters to write them in this world. The Japanese language during the era when it had no written form is known as "Yamato kotoba." The language during this time had its own pronunciations, before the importation of kanji characters from China.
At the time, "love" was written as "lonely sadness" (koi). Moreover, according to Shinkai, the modern concept of "love" (ai) was imported from the West. While his new Kotonoha no Niwa film is set in the modern era, it will be about "koi" in the original "lonely sadness" meaning — of longing for someone in solitude, as opposed to the modern meaning.
And just as a story, it's probably Shinkai's best film. I appreciated that, rather than being a typical love story, it's much more about the psychological condition of the characters, how they think others view them, and how others actually do view them. And Shinkai is at his best as a visual filmmaker here; it's pleasing to see him move beyond just his typical visual metaphors and make skillful use of editing and montage as well.
Trailer:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udDIkl6z8X0