The official website of Kyoto Animation’s Violet Evergarden franchise has announced on Friday that the upcoming anime film’s release will now be delayed.
The anime film was scheduled to be released in Japanese cinemas on January 10, 2020.
In a statement, the franchise’s production committee says that the production work for the upcoming film will continue, but the new release date will be announced at a later date.
The announcement comes almost two months after the arson attack at Kyoto Animation’s Studio 1 building last July 18, which killed 36 people and severely injured 33 more.
The animation studio has opened a bank account for donations, which they plan to use for the victims of the attack, as well as the rebuilding the company. North American anime licensor Sentai Filmworks has opened a GoFundMe crowdfunding page for the anime studio.
Violet Evergarden: Eternity and the Auto Memories Doll, which serves as a “side-story” of the franchise had opened the film in Japanese cinemas on Friday.
The anime film was initially scheduled to screen for two weeks, but has now been extended to three weeks, until September 26, due to public demand.
The film made its world premiere during the AnimagiC convention in Mannheim, Germany, which happened last August 2-4, just two weeks after the attack. The organizers had said that the premiere screening had pushed through “at the express request of the studio.”
Violet Evergarden is an anime series based on a Japanese light novel series, written by Kana Akatsuki and illustrated by Akiko Takase.
The novel has won the grand prize in the fifth Kyoto Animation Award competition in 2014, marking the first time that any submitted work has earned the grand prize on any of its three categories, which are the novel, scenario and manga.
KA Esuma Bunko, which is the light novel imprint of the anime studio, had published two volumes of the novel in December 2015 and December 2016.
The anime adaptation was aired on Japanese television during the Winter 2020 season, which was streamed by Netflix on a simulcast basis in select countries, including the Philippines.
