Violet Evergarden The Movie(2020)
Kyoto Animation's first work in a long time, following the horrendous attack that took place last year.
I was lucky enough to be able to see this on 10/12/20 in my local theaters.
As a general thought, this movie served well enough as a closure to its massively successful prequel.
# Story - 8/10
I'd like to think that I'm crazy lenient for giving this category as high as I did. I did not think the story was any more special/different from the prequel. It's mostly the same as what you'd get from watching the original.
The only difference is the conclusion, and also the main reason of why I think I'm crazy. The conclusion
(very important clarification. I don't mean the end as in the legit last shot of the movie, I meant the moments leading up to it, meaning ~30mins before the end.) SUCKED.
It was mostly a waste of a time and threw away a very cool underlying narrative the show might have been trying to build over the course of the movie. Otherwise it's a pretty standard Violet Evergarden-esque story. Which is to say, very good.
# Characters - 7/10
This score looks more likely to me. I'm still on the fence on whether it was the characters that sucked or the ending that sucked. I chose to go with the former here where everything fell apart near the end.
The whole movie was great as a whole, but character motivations were somewhat lost in the final act with many decisions leaving you confused as to why they would do that.
# Sound - 8/10
Really love the sound in this show. OST/BGM came on at the right times, were pleasant to listen to. Many atmospheric sounds.
Only complain was that it got loud out of nowhere sometimes (2 times?)
# Animation - 10/10
It's KyoAni. What more do I gotta say.
The rain and water animation towards the end of the show were impeccable and more than on par with Kotonoha no Niwa's.
# Direction - 9/10
Tempted to give this a 10 since I'm a total newb when it comes to recognizing directional talent.
Character (re)introductions were done superbly well, there's use of the classic emphasis, but not overdone like in the KNY movie and a very nice past/present type of storytelling as well, albeit cliché.
It is a well directed movie that won't ever bore you, despite it being a really slow burn SoL.
Overall
I liked this movie. The ending got me feeling all types of ehhhh but everything else was good.
The only other thing I'll mention is, and try not to let this affect your viewing experience, but pay close attention to the distance all the characters are apart from each other while speaking. It was funny as heck.
I still don't know what score to give it though as I totally suck at giving movie scores due to my low count so why not you tell me what I should give it based on what I said.
