I hadn't really started reviewing anime until this past season, at least not regularly, and only picked up anime as they caught my interest. But now that I've been doing reviews of anime more regularly, I figured I'd check out a few of the shows I was sleeping on this year, and I am so glad this is one I decided to sit down and watch.
Violet Evergarden follows around Violet as she is attempting to live a life outside of the army. Having never had a family, she ended up spending a soldier and that basically became her whole life. The last words said to her by her superior officer are words she didn't understand, specifically, he said 'I love you'.
This isn't really a spoiler since it's made clear to the audience early on what happened, but Major Gilbert died, and Violet was essentially put in the care of Claudia Hodgins, a former colleague of Gilbert. Giving Violet a job at his letter writing company, he has her delivering letters before expressing interest in becoming a Doll. A Doll writes letters for people, as most people in this world don't know how to write. She wants to do this to understand what Gilbert said to her before he died, his last words being 'I Love You'.
The premise behind the show should be pretty self-explanatory from here. As each episode goes by, Violet slowly begins uncovering her emotions through interactions with various clients in need of letters. Each little arc lasts for an episode or two, and all of them do a fantastic job at showing just how emotionally stunted Violet is as well as doing a fantastic job at showing her start to understand what it is to live like a normal person.
The show does this largely by how it Violet, despite how vastly different her life has been, is able to draw connections between herself and those she writes letters for. Circumstances vary, yes, but there is always some kind of common ground she is able to meet them on. It gives the show a sense of realism and sincerity a lot of other shows don't have, as well as doing wonders for making you care about not only Violet but those she comes across.
The shows use of visual design in relation to its themes are amazing, and I'll highlight my favorite example. Violet Evergarden lost her arms, and they had been replaced with mechanical ones. Every time she has to type something out, she needs to take her gloves off and reveal her mechanical hands. The show places a lot of emphasis on the importance of letters and revealing your feelings to people through them, hence why the Dolls Job is so important in this world. In order to write these letters, Violet herself has to expose that part of her to those around her. I'll let you draw your own conclusions on further meaning from here on out, but this is one of many things the show does to express ideas and themes through its visuals.
That isn't to say the show is without fault. There are three things about the show that work against it. The first one is something that isn't stated until episode three when you find out Violet is only fourteen years old and has been in the army since she was ten. She is a hardened war veteran after only four years, and the few times you do see flashbacks to her fighting in the war she is pogo-ing off peoples heads, and at times physically holding off attacks from full-grown men with just as much combat training, if not more. All of this clashes with the somber and more realistic tone the show had been building up, it starts to feel a bit absurd and can make the story feel a bit on the artificial side. The times where the show focus's on the actual fighting that took place during the war really is where it's at it's worse, despite how wonderful the visuals look.
There is also an issue that is rather infrequent, though does come up later when she is writing for a playwright. She does a lot to act out of character by suddenly deciding to be this guys maid for a day and clean his house, and digs through things to find a Parasol that belonged to his daughter and take it outside in the sun, causing the playwright to suddenly see his daughter in Violet. This may be the worst example, but there are times scenes can feel a bit forcefully set up.
The last one is that the climax of the show really was at episode nine. You get the biggest emotional pay off the show had been building for since the first episode when she was told that 'her body was burning, and someday she will realize it'. I'm paraphrasing here of course, but there really was nowhere to go from there. The next few episodes are good and worth watching, don't get me wrong, but it feels like it climaxes a bit early.
Despite the early climax and the show trying to pull you out of the narrative with some poorly set up scenes and a fourteen-year-old girl super soldier, they don't stop the show from being both incredibly sad and heartwarming. It is a touching tale of someone trying to discover their emotions, and it pulls at your heart in just the right ways that the flaws are easy to overlook. If you're down for a show like that, defiantly check out Violet Evergarden.