We all know there are many pretty anime out there and flowers, particularly cherry blossoms, show up in a lot of stories (and usually look gorgeous). Today I’m looking at my favourite gardens in anime series (I excluded movies deliberately but still ended up with far too many options). This is definitely a list of my favourite picks so please feel free to tell me which anime gardens you love in the comments below.
What are your favourite gardens in anime?
Number 5: Blue Exorcist
Rin first meets Shiemi when his brother takes him to visit the Garden of Amahara which ends up being important because Shiemi ends up being Rin’s first real friend in Blue Exorcist. However, the garden itself is beautiful even if it is a little bit hostile when we first arrive there.
What I love about it though is that it isn’t just decorative. The garden and plants in general play a fairly critical role in terms of exorcisms and healing throughout the story and so it seems right that this is where me meet Shiemi for the first time. That and it is really pretty.
Number 4: The Eccentric Family
The Eccentric Family takes place in Kyoto and a large part of it is showing the play between the human world, the natural world and the supernatural world. Needless to say we spend a lot of time outdoors and get to see some very nice looking gardens throughout the series. I love the garden that has the well in it where Yasaburo’s brother is for most of the first season transformed into a frog. However, we see a range of lovely gardens throughout the two seasons of the anime and visually this anime is worth noting.
Number 3: The World Is Still Beautiful
I’m not entirely sure this one fits in with the rest, but I really like the layout of the garden in this anime. It is incredibly tidy and sculptured compared to the others on this list, but I remember thinking how pretty the garden was the first time I watched the anime. And, given a lot of the story involves Nike trying to convince Livius that the world is beautiful, the garden features in quite a number of episodes in a variety of weather types.
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Number 2: The Ancient Magus’ Bride
Where do you even start with gardens in this story? The Ancient Magus’ Bride was gorgeous from start to finish and while I ultimately found the episode count a little too long and the story felt like it meandered too much, I cannot fault how beautiful they made the countryside look. Whether it is the garden Chise studies in or the rose garden where we meet the vampire character, there’s plenty of pretty sites to visit throughout the run of this anime and ever single scene is worth the effort.
Number 1: Snow White With The Red Hair
I absolutely love the hillside garden in Snow White With The Red Hair. There are so many plants, forests, and greenhouses in this story and they are all gorgeous, but that hill covered in flowers and medicinal herbs is beautiful to look at and so many key story moments take place on or near the hill. Honestly, let’s just have an OVA that involves all the herbalists working on the hill and I’ll happily watch it. This is the garden that immediately came to mind when I started thinking about this list.
And that’s my list for the week but as always I’d love to know your picks so be sure to let me know what your favourite anime garden is in the comments.
Thank-you for reading 100 Word Anime.
Join the discussion in the comments.
Karandi James
Literally, a gorgeous list! (While I was a bit put off by the muddled Fae lore in The Ancient Magus’ Bride, it was without doubt probably the single most beautifully drawn anime I’ve seen. Only Hakumei and Mikochi comes close–very close–but with a completely different artistic style. . .)
I really enjoyed putting this list together because it really was just about remembering all those super pretty garden scenes.
It’s not a traditional garden… But the first one that sprang to my mind was the bamboo grove in Rokuhoudou Yotsuiro Biyori. Having to walk through it to reach the restaurant must be incredibly relaxing, and it takes the restaurant out of the bustling city around it.
Good call. I would love to walk through that to go to a nice cafe.
Either I haven’t watched many TV anime with gardens or I’ve never paid much attention to them. I only watched Ancient Magus Bride out of these five, and ended up dropping it after maybe 5 or 6 episodes. I had to go scan my list of completed anime to see if there were any that had attractive gardens, and the only one that jumped off the page at me was the indoor garden in Wish Upon the Pleiades where Subaru always meets up with Minato.
Example images:
https://i2.wp.com/angryanimebitches.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Houkago-no-Pleiades-Ep-6-Img-0029.png
https://rabujoi.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/ple33.jpg
Pretty. Sorry, I haven’t seen that anime but thanks for sharing the pictures.
What a unique topic! All your choices have very beautiful gardens.
Thanks. Glad you liked them.
That is a creative list. I never really thought about gardens in anime too much. One that randomly sticks out is the one from Grenadier even though I wasn’t a fan of that series.
I still haven’t seen that.
That’s fine if you haven’t. It’s a short series, but I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea and there’s an aspect of it that gets ridiculous with the main character.
I am rather partial to the park in “The Garden of Words”.
I ruled that out because it wasn’t a series. Still beautiful though.
Nice to see you mention the spot where Rin met Shiemi. Like you said, the garden was functional _and_ beautiful.
I’d forgotten all about The World Is Still Beautiful. Now that you mention it, it did have a beautiful garden, didn’t it?
I might have placed The Ancient Magus’ Bride’s garden in #1 — but on sheer scale alone, I can’t argue with your pick.
I really liked this topic!
It was a little random but once I started thinking about it I came up with all sorts of gardens I wanted to mention.
Only garden I could even think of for a list like this is the garden in Nurarihyon no Mago, with that tree that the protagonist likes to sit in when he’s in his demon form.
It is a nice garden with the pond under the tree. Very simple and traditional but beautiful.
I’m glad you mentioned Blue Exorcist. That was the first garden that came to mind when I read the title of your post. It would definitely be #1 for me.
Useful as well as really pretty, it had to make the list.