Violet Evergarden is one of KyoAni’s most critically acclaimed series ever. It’s a show that represents harsh truths told to people who aren’t aware of what’s happening (or what happened) until now. It’s been loved for its drama and storytelling. While I completely understand the hype revolving around it, I personally cannot say the same as others did. Aside from the admittedly amazing art and sound, I just can’t bring myself to resonate with or like what the show offered in practice.
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Before we dive into my personal problems with the series, I’ll first explain what Violet Evergarden is about. Violet Evergarden is an episodic story about a stoic girl who roughly fought in a war and now works for a postal company as an Auto Memory Doll, basically sending letters to people she’s assigned to. Her goal is to write letters and send them to her clients to make them resonate and feel with what happened to their pasts and/or relatives. The premise behind this is actually really good. It’s not too amazing or anything but it can show how characters connect to recent events and relating to them is an art of creating melodrama. Of course, you make that premise better if you combine it with a very consistent pace of character build-up and show you when the drama will occur.
Sadly, however, this isn’t the case for how the show turned out. You see, the show had a pretty decent start with Violet Evergarden herself learning about a beautiful-looking world covered with harsh truths and how she starts her job to inform her assigned clients about how everything created nicely will never be the same. This series really had potential, it’s just that it’s been reduced with how rushed its scriptwriting was. Like we keep needing to come back to, the show’s attempt at showing a harsh reality to people who didn’t know they lost something/someone valuable until now is really nice. The dialogue and drama together, on the other hand, are the biggest cause of this.
The biggest issue with this series is that the build-up for character interactions and such is surface-level which isn’t too bad until the series unironically triggers a big shock just because. This is honestly embarrassing, to say the least. The characters when Violet Evergarden is around don’t really have much going for them aside from displaying great ideas in mind. All they do is do a lot of talking which doesn’t carry the storytelling and the next few moments, they cry and feel very story. This is more comedic than emotional. Let me clue you in again, the dialogue in this series is as wide as an ocean but deep as a puddle, and yet, we immediately get ourselves to a big drama that doesn’t really compensate for shallow build-up. If you want to make heavy and good drama, at least make the characters have interesting chemistry with each other before you start a crying party.
The story for the most part is just too melodramatic for its own good. I’m not saying have minimal drama but don’t add too much drama. It’s not remotely bad if you’re very melodramatic but because Violet Evergarden draws more quantity of drama than Rohan Kishibe draws manga panels, it’s hard to tell if the show even makes a point. The intentions behind it make sense, sure, but they’re executed poorly. One of the most infamous examples is episode 11 where Violet beats up a bunch of bad guys and writes a letter to a dying innocent soldier and his family. We don’t really know much about the soldier aside from being Violet’s next client and a few minutes later the other characters cry so much for him. I don’t think I’ll elaborate further on how laughable this is. Again, very surface-level interactions and big drama occur when some random-ass soldier who doesn’t add up dies.
Speaking of soldiers, let’s talk about this show’s other important feature: its iterations of war… Yeah, it’s also mid at that. The war aspect in Violet Evergarden is actually very interesting. Y’all know how Violet was once raised by soldiers, most notably Gilbert, and was commissioned to be one. When the War technically ended, Violet left while being armless as well as leaving Gilbert dead. Violet then lost most of her emotions and as an Auto Memory Doll, she would be traumatized or even sadder every time someone near her mentions something about war. This would be a nice edition if not for the fact that this series has the tone shift from a tale of ghostwriting clients to a silly save-the-world plot. Stopping bad guys is definitely understandable but why would you add save the world elements to your story if you’re starting to run out of ideas? That kind of defeats the purpose of showing people sad truths. You’re not really ghostwriting for your clients anymore, you nearly effortlessly became a hero held by people you met after defeating some evil soldiers. Not only does it feel like filler but because this is implemented for the last 2 (3 if you count the notorious moment where an innocent soldier dies) episodes, this makes for a bad ending.
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Okay, enough of that. Let’s move on to characters. Starting with Violet Evergarden, the protagonist who sends letters to clients she’s assigned to. Violet is not a good MC. In fact, she’s probably the worst part of the whole show. The purpose of the story is her ghostwriting for certain characters to resonate or feel with what’s going on. While this looks like it would make her a compelling main character at first glance, in practice, she’s very dull and only shows gimmicks to keep the plot going. She’s essentially a plot device who presents interesting ideals only to leave them on the floor, never having them touched ever again. It doesn’t really help that she became a save-the-world hero archetype at the end where evil soldiers are brought up as we mentioned earlier. Such a shame because she actually has a really interesting backstory, just that her entire character falls depressingly short.
The side characters are better written than the show’s protagonist by default but they’re yet another flock of mannequins with admittedly functioning brains that I don’t really care for. They do their stuff but they don’t add enough to their character. Like Violet, they exist solely to keep the series moving forward. Most of the side characters are used for either the sake of showing what Violet does on a minimum level or outright comedic purposes just to keep the show far from being too boring (it’s still boring, to be honest). The villains are all ass and don’t do anything to the story despite what they did in Violet’s backstory.
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Despite this show’s shortcomings, there are some things I think we can all agree on. For starters, the art direction and production value are amazing. I’d say this show is on the levels of Kara no Kyoukai, Fate, Liz and the Blue Bird, and Revue Starlight for the best animation and visuals in anime ever. Violet’s art has a perfect blend of simplicity and complexity. The details are shiny without making things look like plastic. Of course, it only gets better in episode 7 where we see the lake scene. The sound design is also great. The music is calm while also connecting to the plot very nicely. The voice acting is my personal favorite part of the series barring the visuals and production value, with the best amongst the cast being of course, the iconic Ishikawa Yui as Violet.
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Although I dislike the whole series, I don’t really hate it either. In my eyes, it’s a bland and boring show that tries too hard to be deep and philosophical. I’ll admit that I occasionally had fun with how silly the drama was but for the most part, the show’s approach to its premise isn’t really the best. It wants to present something really interesting but most of it is filled with weak drama and some parts feel like filler despite the intentions behind them. However, it’s saving grace besides the amazing art and animation while it’s really dry, it’s not practically offensive either. Despite the inconsistencies, it doesn’t necessarily take the farthest things possible. Even some of the most absurd episodes don’t really try to overstay their welcome. Because of its relatively short runtime, it’s not very painful to watch so there isn’t too much trouble going on. Regardless, this series sucks. 
