Suto Avdoyan

The Expendables—led by Barney Ross and formed by Lee Christmas, Gunner Jensen, and Toll Road—extract former member Doctor Death, a knives specialist, and team medic, from a military prison during his transfer on a train. They recruit Doctor Death to assist them in intercepting a shipment of bombs meant to be delivered to a warlord in Somalia. Arriving there, they reunite with Hale Caesar, who directs them to the drop point, where Ross is surprised to find out that the arms trader providing the bombs is Conrad Stonebanks, a former co-founder of the Expendables who went rogue and was presumed dead. In the ensuing firefight, The Expendables kill all but Stonebanks, who shoots Caesar. They are forced to retreat when Stonebanks drops a glide bomb on them from his helicopter, and Caesar is severely injured.

Back in the United States, CIA operative Max Drummer, the Expendables' new missions manager, gives Ross a mission to capture Stonebanks to bring him to the International Criminal Court to be tried for war crimes. Blaming himself for Caesar's injuries, Ross disbands the Expendables and leaves for Las Vegas, where he enlists retired mercenary-turned-recruiter Bonaparte to help him find a new team of younger mercenaries. The recruits include former U.S. Marine John Smilee, nightclub bouncer Luna, computer expert Thorn, and weapons expert Mars. Skilled sharpshooter Galgo asks to be included in the team, but Ross turns him down.

The four new team members rendezvous with Ross's rival Trench Mauser, returning a favor for Ross. Drummer has traced Stonebanks to Bucharest, where he is set to make an arms deal. Ross and the new recruits infiltrate an office building Stonebanks is using and, having to kill a few men in the process including arms buyer Goran Vata, capture Stonebanks. In transit, Stonebanks taunts Ross and explains why he betrayed The Expendables. Ross nearly kills him to shut him up but, despite Stonebanks egging him on, he stands down. Stonebanks' men catch up to them, with the aid of his GPS Tracker, and fire a missile at the team's van. Ross is thrown into a river, while Smilee, Luna, Thorn, and Mars are captured by Stonebanks' crew. Ross kills Stonebanks' retrieval team and escapes.

Stonebanks sends Ross a video, challenging Ross to come after him and giving him his location in Azmenistan. While preparing to leave and mount a rescue alone, Ross is found by Galgo, who offers his services again. Ross accepts, later accompanied by the veteran Expendables. They rescue the young mercenaries, only to learn from Stonebanks that he has rigged the place with explosives with only 45 seconds left for them to explode. As both the young and veteran Expendables fight one another, Ross convinces them to work together to take down Stonebanks. As the final battle begins, Thorn uses a jammer device to delay the countdown, giving them just under half an hour before detonation. Stonebanks orders the Azmenistan army to attack the building with full force, including tanks and attack helicopters. Drummer and Trench arrive in a helicopter to help, alongside returning Expendables member Yin Yang.

The new and veteran members of the Expendables work together to kill Stonebanks' men. When a second wave moves in, Drummer lands on the building to evacuate the team. As everyone makes it to Drummer's chopper, Stonebanks personally attacks Ross after shooting him down. Having been forced to remove the armor and his weapon, Ross and Stonebanks engage in hand-to-hand combat. Both are evenly matched, but Ross knocks down Stonebanks before they both reach for their guns. Stonebanks shoots, but Ross gets the better of him. At his mercy, Stonebanks questions Ross about delivering him to the International Criminal Court. Ross coldly shoots Stonebanks in response. Seconds after Stonebanks' death, the batteries of Thorn's device run out, causing the building to explode and collapse. The team makes it to Drummer's helicopter and flies away to safety, as Ross clings to it from the outside. In the aftermath, Caesar recovers from his wounds, and Ross officially accepts Galgo, Smilee, Luna, Thorn, and Mars into the team. They all celebrate at a bar together.

Honda, after establishing itself as a leading manufacturer of motorcycles during the 1950s, began production of automobiles in 1963. Honda introduced its N360 minicar, compliant with Kei car specifications for the Japanese market, for the 1967 model year. The car had a transverse-mounted front-engine, front-wheel-drive (FF) layout, which would be adopted for the later Honda 1300 (1970) and Civic (1972) models. The Civic gave Honda their first market success competing with manufacturers of standard compact cars, which was a growth segment as sales of kei cars plateaued and waned in the early 1970s.

It was Honda's first model to have an impact in the export market. It became one of the most influential automotive designs of the 1970s, with the Volkswagen Golf (1974), Ford Fiesta (1976), and Fiat Ritmo (1978) showing similarities as transverse-FF, truncated-trapezoidal hatchbacks occupying a size niche between minicars and compact sedans. The Renault 5 was introduced six months before the Honda Civic which appeared later in July. Honda would later expand the Civic's FF-compact design to produce the larger and more upmarket Accord (1976) and Prelude (1978) models. In Japan, the Civic was the first fully modern compact car in the European style, offering a level of prestige never before seen in this class in the market. The Civic quickly inspired Japanese domestic manufacturers to respond in kind, with models like the Mazda Familia AP, Daihatsu Charade, and Mitsubishi Mirage.

Previously a subcompact, since 2000 the Civic has been categorized as a compact car. US EPA guidelines for vehicle size class stipulate a car having combined passenger and cargo room of 110 to 119.9 cubic feet (3,110 to 3,400 L) is considered a mid-size car, and as such the tenth generation Civic sedan is technically a small-end mid-size car, although it still competes in the compact class.

In Japan, as customers increasingly shifted to minivans and compact cars like the Fit, production of the non-hybrid Civic ended in August 2010. However, the Civic was reintroduced into the Japanese market with the launch of the tenth generation model in 2017.

The film consists of three segments: "Cherry Blossom", "Cosmonaut", and "5 Centimeters per Second", each following a period in Takaki Tōno's life and his relationships with the girls around him.

The film was awarded Best Animated Feature Film at the 2007 Asia Pacific Screen Awards. It received a novelization in November 2007, and a manga adaption illustrated by Seike Yukiko in 2010.

Plot

The story is set in Japan, beginning in the early 1990s up until the present day (2008), with each act centered on a boy named Takaki Tōno.

In June 2021, first year high schooler Hodaka Morishima escapes Kōzu-shima in order to get away from his troubled home life to Tokyo. When his ferry to the city is hit by a rainstorm, he is saved by Keisuke Suga, who gives Hodaka his business card. As Hodaka becomes broke and struggles to find work, he meets Hina Amano, an employee of a McDonald's restaurant. She takes pity on him and gives him food. Later on, Hodaka finds an abandoned Makarov PM handgun in a waste bin he fell onto. After arriving at Suga's business location, he meets him there and his niece, Natsumi. Suga hires him as his assistant at a small occult magazine publishing company, where they investigate urban legends related to the unusually rainy weather in Tokyo. From a psychic, they hear the legend of a "sunshine girl" who can control the weather.

Hodaka sees Hina being intimidated into working at a back-alley club. After a brief chase, he scares off the club owners by firing his gun into the air, thinking it was a toy. He and Hina escape; she takes him to Yoyogi Kaikan, an abandoned building with a shrine on the roof, where he throws the gun away. Hina astonishes Hodaka by demonstrating her ability to clear the sky by praying. Hodaka finds out that Hina lives alone with her brother Nagi, and they have no adult guardian. Seeing how they are in a financial trouble, Hodaka proposes to start a business with Hina with the ability of sunshine girl: a job to clear the weather for events such as weddings and parties. They create a website to accept orders and their business quickly becomes a success. However, when clearing the sky for the Jingu Fireworks Festival, Hina is shown on television and their site gets flooded with requests, so they decide to close their business.

A detective with the police search for Hodaka, as his family filed a missing person report. They find out that Hodaka was caught using the gun on a security camera. Officers arrive at the apartment where Hina lives with Nagi and interrogate her while Hodaka hides; Hina realizes that because they have no legal guardians, with their mother having died recently, social services are going to take them into custody and separate them. Right after the police leave, Suga visits Hodaka, having also been visited by the police. Suga fires Hodaka and gives him his severance pay, explaining that the police suspect him of kidnapping Hodaka. Hodaka, Hina and Nagi try to run away, but they are halted by the worsening weather. They take shelter in a hotel, and spend the night with instant food and doing karaoke. As midnight passes, Hina reveals that her body is slowly turning into water the more she uses her power. She explains that she is the cause of the abnormal weather and is intended to be a human sacrifice, and her disappearance will return the weather to normal. Hodaka promises to protect her, but the next morning, Hina has vanished into the sky and the rain has stopped.

In the morning, the police track Hodaka to the hotel room. Nagi is sent to the children's counseling center and Hodaka is taken to the police station. Having already fallen in love with Hina, Hodaka decides to bring her back to Earth and escapes from the police custody with the help of Natsumi and her Honda Super Cub. After her motorcycle is immobilized, Hodaka resumes on-foot to Yoyogi Kaikan building to reach the shrine. Inside, he encounters Suga, who attempts to stop him. The police surround Hodaka, but Suga, now inspired by Hodaka's desperation to see Hina, helps him escape. At the roof-top shrine, Hodaka jumps through the shrine gate and is transported into the sky, where he finds Hina and asks her to leave with him, insisting that Hina let go of her worries about the weather and start living for herself. As soon as they come back to the rooftop shrine, Hina, Hodaka, Natsumi, Nagi, and Suga are all arrested, and the heavy rains resume. Hodaka is sentenced to a three-year probation and sent back to his home in Kōzu-shima.

Three years later, the rain has been falling without end in Tokyo, submerging much of the city. In the spring of 2024, having finished his probation, Hodaka graduates from high school and returns to Tokyo to start college. He meets with Suga, who has expanded his business. After Suga encourages him to find Hina, Hodaka finds her praying on a street overlooking the drowned city. They reunite, with Hodaka promising her that they will be alright.

Asuna Watase is a young elementary school girl who has been forced to grow up quickly ever since her father had died, while her mother, a nurse, works long shifts at a hospital. Asuna spends her solitary days listening to the mysterious music emanating from the cat's-whisker receiver her father gave to her as a memento, accompanied by pet cat Mimi, who bears strange red markings on her fur.

One day, while walking to her clubhouse across a bridge, she is attacked by a fearsome creature and saved by a mysterious teenage boy who calls himself Shun. Asuna treats Shun's wound from fighting the creature and later they both listen to Asuna's radio. Shun tells Asuna he is from another country called Agartha and that he came to this place to find something. He then gives Asuna a blessing in the form of a kiss to the forehead. Asuna leaves hurriedly and tells Shun she'll be back tomorrow. Shun, now alone, looks up at the stars and falls from the ledge to his death.

The next morning, Asuna hears from her mother that a boy was found dead in the river, but refuses to believe it's Shun. In school, Mr. Morisaki, a substitute teacher, is giving a lecture on a book which grabs Asuna's attention when he mentions Agartha, the land of the dead. After school, she visits Morisaki and asks him about Agartha. Morisaki explains that long ago when humankind was young, it needed the guidance of Quetzalcoatls, keepers of the dead, until humans matured and no longer needed them. They went underground along with a few humans who joined them.

Afterwards, Asuna goes to her hideout to find another mysterious boy who looks like Shun standing on the ledge. Just then, a group of armed men called the Arch Angels appear, and attack both of them. The mysterious boy hides in the underground entrance with Asuna, and the two proceed further into the cave when the cave's entrance is bombed. The two meet a Quetzacoatl who has apparently lost its physical senses and attacks the boy. He refuses to kill the gatekeeper, giving Asuna his clavis, a crystal, and fights back. The Arch Angels interfere, killing the gatekeeper. The Arch Angel commander captures Asuna and uses the clavis to open a gateway to Agartha. The commander and Asuna enter the gateway followed by the boy. Once inside the commander reveals himself to be Morisaki and the boy also reveals himself to be Shin, Shun's younger brother. Morisaki tells Shin that all he wants is to bring back his late wife from the dead. Shin leaves Asuna and Morisaki.

Morisaki tells Asuna that she can go back but she decides to accompany him. They both go into the realm via an underwater entrance. Once inside, they journey to the Gate of Life and Death which can bring the souls of people back from the dead, along with Mimi (who had snuck inside Asuna's backpack).

Upon arriving in his village, Shin is told he failed his mission to retrieve the clavis, because Asuna has unknowingly returned with a fragment of one. Shin re-embarks to stop Asuna and Morisaki from wreaking havoc in Agartha.

Along the way, Asuna is kidnapped by a race of monsters called the Izoku. She awakens in a closed area and meets a young girl named Manna; they both try to escape but are not able to. The day begins to darken and the Izoku begin to appear, but they can only move in the shadows. In their escape attempt they encounter Shin, who helps them but is wounded by an Izoku during the escape. Morisaki finds Asuna and Manna down the river as well as Shin with the help of Mimi. Shin tries to retrieve the clavis crystal fragment that belongs to Asuna. However, he is too weak to put up a fight and Morisaki easily defeats him. Asuna convinces Morisaki to take him with them while Manna leads them to her village.

Once there, the villagers are at first reluctant to help the "top-dwellers" but the village elder convinces the guards to let them in. The elder allows them to stay one night at the village because they have brought Manna back but they cannot stay more than that due to past history in that top-dwellers always bring bad luck to Agartha. Meanwhile, Asuna checks up on Shin but he yells at her to leave him alone.

The next morning, Asuna and Morisaki depart from Amaurot by boat, but Mimi no longer wants to accompany them. Shin wakes up later and finds that Mimi has passed; Shin, Manna, and the elder proceed to offer Mimi's corpse to the Quetzacoatl. When Shin sees the villagers riding away to kill them, he decides to follow, in order to protect Asuna. Morisaki and Asuna are walking towards a steep cliff when they are attacked by the villagers but they are saved by Shin. Asuna tries to climb down but is too scared, while Morisaki continues on, after trading his gun for her clavis shard and telling her to go back to the surface.

Meanwhile, Shin is fighting the villagers and is about to be killed when the villagers sense that the clavis crystal has reached the Gate of Life and Death. They leave Shin to let him wander aimlessly, having betrayed his country.

Asuna, following Morisaki's instructions to stay in the water during nighttime because of the Izoku, walks aimlessly and asks herself why she came to Agartha; she finally accepts that she came to Agartha because she was feeling lonely. When the water dries up, she is attacked by the Izoku but is saved by Shin again. The two return to the cliff after seeing the Ark of Life descending. They encounter a Quetzalcoatl who is about to die. Before he dies, the Quetzalcoatl sings its song to send all its memories into the world; Asuna now understands that the last song she heard in her world was Shun's song before he was to die. The Quetzacoatl offers to take them to the bottom of the cliff.

At the bottom of the cliff, they both find the Gate of Life and Death and enter it. Morisaki has already made a wish for his late wife Lisa to return, however, her soul requires a vessel. Asuna and Shin find Morisaki, who tells Asuna she shouldn't have come; she is soon possessed by the soul of Morisaki’s wife. But this price is insufficient; Morisaki also pays with the loss of an eye. To undo Asuna’s possession, Shin destroys the clavis crystal, despite Morisaki having a knife to his throat. Breaking the clavis brings Asuna's soul back to her body, after she has had a short reunion with Mimi and Shun. Before Lisa leaves Asuna's body, she tells Morisaki to find happiness without her. Asuna is now back to her normal self but Morisaki is devastated and asks Shin to kill him. Shin tells him that carrying the burden of a deceased loved one is humanity's curse, telling Morisaki to live on. Asuna heads back to the surface and is seen making her farewell to Shin and Morisaki, who chose to stay behind. The film ends with an older Asuna looking out her window at the cliff side where she had met Shun and Shin. She then says her goodbyes to her mother as she hurries to her graduation ceremony.

The film focuses on Takao Akizuki, an aspiring 15-year-old shoemaker, and Yukari Yukino, a mysterious 27-year-old woman he keeps meeting at Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden on rainy mornings. While Takao is skipping his morning class to design shoes, Yukari is avoiding work due to personal problems in her professional life. Yukari tells Takao nothing about herself, including her name, while Takao opens up to her, sharing his passion for shoes by offering to make a pair for her. When Takao learns Yukari's identity, emotions come to a head as both learn that they have been teaching each other "how to walk". Shinkai wrote the story as a tale of "lonely sadness", based on the meaning of the traditional Japanese word for "love", and uses shoes as a metaphor for life. The story's motifs include rain, Man'yōshū poetry, and the Japanese garden. The age difference between the two main characters and their character traits demonstrate how awkwardly and disjointedly people mature, where even adults sometimes feel no more mature than teenagers, according to Shinkai.

The Garden of Words premiered at the Gold Coast Film Festival in Australia on April 28, 2013 and had its general release on May 31, 2013 in Japan. For the Japanese premiere, the film was screened with an animated short called Dareka no Manazashi (だれかのまなざし, lit. Someone's Gaze), also directed by Shinkai. The Garden of Words had an unusual release schedule since it was released digitally on iTunes the same day as the Japanese theatrical premier, and its DVD and Blu-ray were released while the film was still in theaters, on June 21. The film has been licensed by Sentai Filmworks in North America, Anime Limited in the UK, and Madman Entertainment in Australia. The film performed well in theaters for an extended period of time and was hosted at many local and international film events. It ranked highly on iTunes Store during 2013 and was selected as the Year's Best Animation in iTunes' Best of 2013. It won the 2013 Kobe Theatrical Film Award and awards at the Fantasia International Film Festival and the Stuttgart Festival of Animated Film. Online reviews were generally favorable with universal praise of the art, though opinions were mixed regarding the story's length, plot and emotional climax.