This show was beautiful... And that's the only thing I can think about to talk.

It felt like the studio, known best for their astounding animations made their best ever mannequin dressing it up with the most expensive dress they could find. So here too, we end up comparing it to a real life doll.

But the truth is, if you want more than just a beautiful doll to look at, I mean the actual content, then sorry you are in the wrong place.

The show is a slice of life with drama mixed in and the everyday stories presented here are meant to be relating to us, each having their own unique theme to tackle in, but the execution from a novel to an anime end up being strange and bland from a storytelling point of view and the development needed of the characters to show in regards to the settings they're put up against is short lived. I could not help but feel the show was held back with the mechanical-like writing just like Violet herself.

I can only think of one such episode which thought to do something other than giving us a pair of characters who are simply in the story to provide with a tear in the end. We go through with their journey and how they end up dealing with their feelings towards one another.

Now coming to the main drawback of the show, we travel in the Victorian style of world with our main character Violet Evergarden. It's funny how the studio decided to animate this show with such precision but failed to give us a main character who can give us emotions to accompany with.

I would argue that humans are that receptive to their surrounding and can be that flat to begin with. We already are familiar with similar apathetic characters who have gone through war with nothing but being a weapon to be used such as Jin-Roh and Fullmetal Alchemist. PTSD should not be used as an excuse for such an underwritten performance as one given by the main character. And the irony being, this flaw is shown by the pristine art where everyone and everything is made beautiful.

Last but not the least, I would like to talk about the one thing I didn't actually like in the show. The sound.
Given such a breathtaking animations with the subjects at address, you would've expected the studio to let the show carry itself with ample amount of silence, enough emotions and the powerful dialogues to do the work. But playing music at every scene eventually drowning the impact of the words hands you the irony of a show about letters and the power of words. It feels amateurish how quickly the piano starts playing accompanied by the violin strings without any concerns to the actual scene and what it tries to convey.

I would go on to say that what Violet lacks of her own, she compensates by showing the characters on the receiving end the feelings behind the letter she writes. And through the act of such unfiltered emotions we get some glimpses to her moments spent with her Major throughout the series. What I would've liked more was the focus on the dynamics between her character and that of her precious companion/support and get their story to be a parallel to the current world she lives in and the different sort of emotions she encounters.

I would like to end this with what I started with, Violet Evergarden is a beautifully dressed up mannequin with no worries of decay and going on for years without any difference to its beauty. Also, never trying to achieve various spectrum of life and content with being "perfect" just like how the creators wanted it to be.