With Netflix as its partner and distributor, one can expect some high quality craftsmanship must be involved. And that is exactly the sort of quality one gets from Violet Evergarden, animated by the same studio that made Kyoukai no Kanata, Violet Evergarden is the latest anime to be distributed by Netflix.
Taking place after a major war, the story spins around Violet Evergarden who has an unappeasable desire to find the meaning of ‘I love you’– the three words uttered by her former Commanding Officer; Major Gilbert — whom she has grown attached to — before she woke up wounded in a hospital. Discharged from the military with the lost of both her hands, she aspires to work as a Doll: essentially typewriter that conveys people’s messages and feelings into letters.
Piece by piece, with the clever use of flashbacks, the story looks at Violet from the perspectives of different characters; minor characters whose inner worlds are upended as they orbit unwittingly into Violet’s. Growing up as child soldier, Violet displays a stoical lack of understanding of human emotions; Even ones she feels. Every episode was scintillatingly executed, leaving the audiences with more than just a fuzzy warmth on the inside. At the end, audiences would resonate with the poignant message that feelings and emotions are as fickle as they come, easier to hide than to express through words.
Violet Evergarden is exhilaratingly beautiful. The anime is almost like a fresh series out of Ghibli. The colossal amount of painstaking detail compressed into the series is breathtaking. Every single scene is brought to life on the screen. In the short 20 minutes, the anime manages to pack a serious amount of gut-wrenching scenes that impart a satiny gossamer to it. Unlike the normal sprawling, sentimental emotional anime, Violet tugs powerfully at the heartstrings without the formulaic contrivance.
It’s definitely a must-watch for anime lovers. At this point, her past remains a mystery and her future shrouded in uncertainty. Despite lacking in tempestuous actions and roiling fights, the anime does not languish in lacklustre. In a season of exciting but almost repetitive themes, Violet Evergarden is refreshing.
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