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Halex

  • USA
  • Joined Aug 18, 2013
  • ? / M

Violet Evergarden

May 15, 2020

This show is not for everyone, it is mostly about communication while using empathy in order to convey the meaning of what people feel, but often can't quite put into words by themselves.

Violet represents different roles through her character:

  • For one part she represents the children who have lost their childhood and with that, the ability to understand and convey their own feelings as well the feelings of others.
  • She also represents the people who have been traumatized by war.
  • And though her innocence, the point of view of little children that is yet to understand what they feel and how to convey that properly.
  • Her character is meant to be a point of reference to say "if Violet can, everybody can learn to do this".

They did a fair job of cramming all these roles into her character, but I'll have to question if this was really the best approach? They could have leveraged all her roles into different characters to make it more realistic because, in the end, she is a super-intelligent genius assassin that is able to do anything better and faster than anybody else, while still being completely naive & incompetent, not even able to take care of herself. So obviously, because of all of these traits, her character is hard to relate, the situations she gets in seem forced and unrealistic, while the plot advancement seems contrived, trying to forcing you, the viewer, into feeling something; instead of those feelings developing naturally through the story.

So from that point of view, her story is a failure, just look at what other reviewers are saying about it:

"Just to make certain that I'm being clear, Violet Evergarden is a person who transitioned from lovelorn, autistic mass-murderer into depressed, paraplegic postal transcriptionist. She's only slightly more clever than her typewriter, and this is why I find it more than mildly dissatisfying that what could easily be interesting explorations of pathos are instead hand-wavingly anti-resolved just because there's a blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl waifing around the place." -Mayobe

LoL, at the end of the show you'll see how true those words are, however, I'll have to argue that is not the intent of the show.

Clearly the show is trying to teach empathy & assertiveness, with each episode being a lesson trying to prepare you for different aspects of life, like the loss of a child, a mortal disease, not knowing if a loved person is alive or dead, etc. Each chapter has a different story.  The show also places a lot of focus into pointing out that the words that people say are not often what they mean, and the importance of being able to decipher those true feelings.

I can only applaud the efforts of the author as there are not many shows like this around. But this requires you to have an active role by placing yourself into the shoes of Violet and ask yourself what would you say to those people? What would you write? What are they trying to say in that letter? If you can do that, then the show will be interesting, meaningful, and appreciated.

From this point of view, another reviewer wrote:

"I was actually impressed by this new anime. It hit me on personal levels. You have to really pay attention to the main character, Violet, to really understand whats happening. I can't wait for when the rest of it comes on, on netflix, since I watched it on kissanime. Violet is still trying to understand what she is going through, she doesnt understand human emotion. She doesn't understand love and sadness. It's truly a beautiful and remarkable story of her trying to find the meaning of love and face her past." -Wavessss

So in the end, your enjoyment of this show will largely depend in your point of view, do you see it as soap opera storytelling that is just there to show you some melodrama, or as a collection of life lessons that need your active attention & empathy?

The animation & music are an excellent feast for the senses, nothing to complain about those departments.

Character development is shown through the transcendence of the letters to convey their meaning to others, enough to make them change.

The Dub is great.

8/10 story
10/10 animation
10/10 sound
8/10 characters
8/10 overall

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