"Violet Evergarden" by Akatsuki Kana. Stories of a superhuman soldier and writer, and how she came to understand the meaning of love.
The first book opens with a typical assignment for Violet, where she nominally served as a scribe for a playwright. Her appearance matches what one might expect from a beautiful life-sized doll, an appearance that, in combination with her mechanical hands and expressionless face, makes people wonder whether she is really human until near the end of the first chapter. Despite her cool demeanor, she manages to bring out all the loss emotions in this playwright and all subsequent clients to follow. Violet appears to be the perfect scribe.
More and more of Violet's past is revealed to the readers as the story progresses, and the image of the perfect scribe is gradually augmented by the image of a skilled soldier. Starting with chapter 3, we have Violet wielding a large axe named "Witchcraft", followed by Violet's large collection of concealed weapons in chapter 5, and first volume ends with the backstory of Violet's past in the army. The second volume starts by finishing off the backstory, with more mail delivery jobs that turned into rescue missions. By the time we got to the end of the extra volume, it was pretty much mafia wars in full force. Violet is more than a scribe, she is a top secret weapon who never lost her wartime lifestyle.
Between all the writing and fighting, there is a love story to be found, and that is the story between Violet and Gilbert. This central story linked the otherwise mostly independent chapters together and provided a sense of completeness, by showing readers how Violet developed from one only understood the "kill" command to one who felt she had some understanding of "love" in the end. This was a well arranged work that can be enjoyed both piecemeal and as a whole.
This feeling of completeness might be very different for people who saw the TV series first. It's probably a better idea to watch the TV series first because then you can hear Ishikawa Yui's voice as you read Violet's dialogues. Better yet, if you have watched the TV series and played NieR Automata, Violet holding a large axe definitely conjures up an image of 2B (also voiced by Ishikawa Yui). But the TV series is not quite complete, and this has to do with the differences in Gilbert's treatment. It might feel like a proper ending by the end of the second book, whereas the TV series left things open-ended.
There were many other differences, like how the novel series started with Violet as a scribe and further developed her background as a soldier, starting in what would become episode 7 of the TV series followed by episodes 10 and 11. In comparison, the TV series started with Violet as an army veteran and developed her new job as a writer, starting based on what was first chapter of the second book followed by mostly original episodes. Also, Erica and Iris are characters new to the TV series, replacing the demigoddess Lux. Both the books and the anime are enjoyable on their own, and since they are sufficiently different, you should follow both to get a double dose of Violet Evergarden.
Because Violet's story is one about writing, this was one of the novels that I have wanted to read for a long time, but had a hard time getting the original novels due to Kyoto Animation's distribution channels. Having finally read it all, it was totally worth it. I would read it again after I am done reviewing all the TV episodes :)
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