Violet Evergarden: The Movie 2020

Daisy Magnolia, Sumire Morohoshi stumbles upon the birthday letters kept for her grandmother, Anne Magnolia, and grows curious about the enduring legend of Violet Evergarden, the celebrated letter-writer who helps people express their true feelings through words crafted for others.

More than fifty years earlier, Violet Evergarden, Yui Ishikawa receives a request from a terminally ill boy named Yuris to write letters for his family, a task that will leave a lasting imprint on many lives. As Violet contemplates the weight of that mission, the story widens to include a pivotal figure in Violet’s world: Claudia Hodgins, Takehito Koyasu, who uncovers a letter bearing a vague address and instantly recognizes the handwriting as that of Gilbert Bougainvillea, Daisuke Namikawa, a man they believed to be dead. Driven by a mix of duty and memory, Claudia decides to travel to the remote island of Ekarte with Violet, hoping to locate the source of the letter and perhaps uncover more about Gilbert’s fate.

On that remote island, Gilbert is very much alive but bears the visible sign of a brutal past: he has lost his right eye and arm. Despite the chance to reconnect, he keeps to himself and initially refuses to meet Violet, wrestling with guilt and a belief that her life would be better without him. Violet’s persistence meets a blunt wall, and her emotional resolve begins to fracture as she faces the prospect of a distance she cannot cross.

A fierce storm traps Violet and Claudia on the island just as a telegraph arrives with troubling news: Yuris’s condition has grown worse. Violet is faced with one last duty to fulfill for the boy—compose a letter for his friend Lucas—while Iris Cannary, Haruka Tomatsu, steps in to substitute for Violet. Benedict Blue, Koki Uchiyama, brings Iris to the hospital where Yuris lies unable to rise from his bed. The plan shifts to allowing Yuris to speak to Lucas by telephone so he can deliver his final, lingering message to those he cares about.

After Yuris’s passing, his parents take turns reading the letters he had asked Violet to write, a process that tenderly holds the family together in the wake of loss. With the island’s fate intertwined with Violet’s own story, she writes a final letter to Gilbert before she and Claudia depart. Touched by her words and bolstered by the support of his brother, Dietfried Bougainvillea, Gilbert pursues Violet as she boards a ship. In a moment of courage and confession, he catches up to her when she jumps into the sea, revealing his love and pledging to stay by her side from that day forward.

The couple’s resolution reshapes Violet’s path: she resigns from the CH Postal Company to start a new life with Gilbert on the island, where the work of words can be shared in a place built on memory and connection. And in the present, Daisy returns to the island to uncover the locals’ histories with Violet, culminating in her own letter written to her parents—an act that echoes Violet’s enduring legacy of communication across time and distance.