Violet Evergarden: Eternity and the Auto Memory Doll

A Japanese animated film set in a boarding school. Violet writes letters. That is her work: putting into writing what people cannot say themselves. A commission comes. An aristocrat wants private tuition for his daughter. Isabella is at a boarding school. She was adopted into a noble family and must learn how to behave there. She speaks to no one. She rejects the school, the family and her own name. Violet becomes her roommate. From there the film is a story of approach. Dancing lessons, table manners, hair, dresses, and steadily more talk. Isabella tells her past. Her real name is different; she lived in a poor district and had a sister she had to look after. Taty. She had to leave the girl at an orphanage. The ball is held and the job ends. Violet leaves. The narrative moves to a second part here and jumps years. Taty has grown. She works at a postal company and has just learned to read. She does not look for her sister. She wants to write to her. What the narrative is interested in is not letters but the intermediary: its idea is that some things can only be said through a third person, and that the third person sees her own lack while doing it. Violet's own line stays in the background. She is still waiting for an answer and the narrative does not resolve it. The images are in Kyoto Animation's known craft. Light, cloth, hair and backgrounds are extremely detailed. It opened on 6 September 2019, a few weeks after the arson attack on the studio in July of that year. The running time is short; the film is built more like an extended episode than a feature. Yui Ishikawa, Minako Kotobuki and Aoi Yuuki are in the voice cast. Haruka Fujita directed. Who it is for: anyone who has watched the series and likes emotional Japanese animation. Who it is not for: anyone who does not know it; the narrative never explains who Violet is and most of the weight sits in the series' accumulation.