Erica Brown

Violet Evergarden began as a light novel by Kana Akatsuki, with art by Akiko Takase. In 2014 it became the first work ever to win the grand prize at the Kyoto Animation Award, a contest the studio runs to find new stories. Kyoto Animation then made it into a 13-episode TV anime directed by Taichi Ishidate. It aired in Japan from January to April 2018. Netflix streamed it around the world, which helped it find a large audience outside Japan. The show is set in an imagined land that looks a lot like Europe in the early 1900s. There are steam trains, old stone towns, and typewriters. A long war between the northern and southern parts of the continent has just ended. People are trying to rebuild their lives, and many of them still carry deep sadness. Violet is a teenage girl who spent her childhood as a soldier. She was trained only to fight and to follow orders, and she did it very well. In the war she lost both of her arms, so she now has metal ones. The person she cared about most was Major Gilbert Bougainvillea, the officer who took her in. Before they were separated, he said words to her that she did not understand: "I love you." Violet does not know what love is. She wants to learn what he meant. With the fighting over, Gilbert's old friend Claudia Hodgins gives her a place to go. He runs the CH Postal Company, a mail business in the city of Leiden. Some of the workers there are called Auto Memory Dolls. In this world, many people cannot write well, so they hire these women to write letters for them. A good Doll listens closely and turns a person's true feelings into the right words. At first Violet is bad at the job. She writes like a soldier giving a report, and she says exactly what she thinks, which can hurt people. Most episodes follow Violet as she goes to a new client. She writes for a young princess, a tired playwright, a mother who is very ill, and many others. Each person has something they find hard to say. By helping them, Violet slowly starts to understand feelings like grief, love and regret. She also has to face what she did in the war, and what it means to live with it. Her coworkers, such as Cattleya and Benedict, and fellow Dolls Erica and Iris, are part of her new daily life. The series is famous for how beautiful it looks. Kyoto Animation filled each scene with small details, soft light and careful movement. The music by Evan Call adds to the gentle, emotional mood. Many viewers say the show made them cry, especially in its stand-alone stories about families. The anime won awards from IGN and at the Crunchyroll Anime Awards. A special episode came out later in 2018, followed by two films in 2019 and 2020. The TV series is the best place to begin, since it shows the start of Violet's quiet journey from a tool of war to a person who can feel.