Her latest assignment leads the taciturn Violet Evergarden to a posh girls' boarding school: Here, the young girls of the highest pedigrees are to be trained to become fine ladies with the appropriate etiquette before they start their way to the nobility with their marriage. The former streetwalker Amy is also part of the young elite, but she doesn't agree with the strict rules of the house any more than with her predetermined future as the bride of a rich snob - not exactly conducive to Violet's plan to teach the tomboy how to behave like a lady. But although the callous girl is anything but impressed with her new teacher at first, Violet gradually manages to penetrate her young heart and gradually make the shadows of the past disappear...

I think with this film I partly realized that several years pass during the Violet series alone. After all, this happens sometime in the meantime, but Amy is actually not such an uninteresting character. The fact that her past is linked to a drama should be clear to everyone after the synopsis. Amy used to be a very impoverished soul and eventually found a little child in the cold winter - probably around the time when all the war was going on in this world. This kid (Taylor) is taken in by Amy, they become like real sisters and have a good time together, but I don't think it lasted more than a year. At some point, however, Amy is separated from this child because she is brought into this rich family and in return Taylor also gets a real future. So the first half is primarily about Amy, who then writes a letter to Taylor with Violet, and there's a nice dance scene with Violet and Amy. So a few years go by after that, in between the blond runaway boy from Violet's post office brings a letter to an orphanage and the part with Taylor starts.

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The Taylor part then starts a bit after that, although you already saw her at the beginning of the film. So she lived in the orphanage for a few years, can't actually read yet, but still wants to work in the post office and is then allowed to go with the blond delivery boy, later she also accompanies Violet. Of course, Taylor also writes a letter for Amy, who is now a married noble lady, and when she is delivered there is an emotional explosion again. As an adult, it's a bit difficult for me to fully put myself in the place of this child, but of course the whole situation was still clear to me. Taylor was only able to write a sentence like "I'm Taylor [insert last name here]" on the letter, she couldn't write anything else herself yet. Seriously though, Violet Evergarden's writer is able to create drama and plenty of tears without coming across as too cheesy (to me). But I should write a bit of an opinion next to my long explanation.

First of all, I can understand why exactly this story of the "siblings" and also the friendship between Amy and Violet was put into such a film. One episode might not have been enough for that, how important that would have been for the series is also questionable. Here Kyoto Animation probably just had to figure out which chapters are important for the anime - but there is also a side story for the novel. I can't tell you whether this is exactly the one here. My only criticism of the story is that Taylor ended up just watching her sister open the letter from her. They will certainly see each other again in the future, but we as viewers certainly won't get to see that. The film made good use of the time, but what do you expect from a side story? In terms of quality, the film is of course again above the series in terms of its animations, but not as blatantly as one would be used to from other series.