Why you should watch Violet Evergarden
Violet Evargarden is an anime created by Kyoto Animation who are known for creating visually beautiful and emotional anime, such as A Silent Voice, Clannad, and Sound! Euphonium. The video/blog post contains spoilers of the first episode and the premise of Violet Evergarden. The following is the edited-written version of the video “Why Violet Evergarden is the best Anime in the Universe.”
Violet Evergarden explores a child veteran, and how she learns how to be more human and be able to express her emotions. For four years, she was treated as a killing weapon by the military because of her exceptional fighting skills, except by her Major, Gilbert who treated her like a human being. He gave her the name “Violet”, taught her how to read, write, and speak, cared for her, and HE loved her. After the war, Gilbert is missing in action, Violet loses both of her arms, and throughout the anime, she attempts to find meaning without Gilbert. Violet Evergarden is the best anime in the universe because of the visuals and the human element.
Visuals
It is beautiful. You can tell how much work Kyoto Animation puts in the character’s facial expressions, backgrounds, and scenery. For example, look at Violet. She is supposed to have a blank face with no emotions, but this would look boring for the audience. So, the animators highlighted her eyes to make her face interesting to look at. Violet’s mechanical hands are remarkably animated as well. Hands are one of the most difficult things to animate, and adding mechanical parts makes it even more difficult. But they did a phenomenal job at displaying the physics.
In terms of the backgrounds, in episode 3, when Violet goes to school to become an Auto Memories Doll, the background characters only appear in this one episode. Even though this is their only appearance, all of them are unique and are not reused for other episodes. During Violet’s journey, we are presented with many regions across the world and it looks culturally and physically unique from each other, such as the countryside town Kazaly and the capital city Leiden. Kyoto Animation did not have to make background characters or the regions unique. They could have reused it to save time and costs, but they chose to go all out. They wanted to create a beautifully animated anime no matter the time and costs.
Stunning animation takes a long time and a lot of work. You can appreciate this and be star-structed on every SINGLE keyframe.
The Human Element
The anime does a great job of displaying Violet’s transformation. During the war, Violet relied on orders for everything. She wouldn’t eat, get dressed, or read without those orders. She didn’t understand emotions or know how to display them. After the war, Violet becomes an Auto Memories Doll to learn how to be human and the meaning of Gilbert’s last words to her, “From the bottom of my heart, I love you.”
Auto Memories Doll is a ghostwriter who writes for clients by deciphering their true feelings and expressing them in a letter, which pushes Violet to learn to understand people’s emotions and feelings. This part of the anime where Violet travels the world to write letters for people is the reason why people watch this anime. Even though the characters that Violet interacts with are only shown for one episode, these episodes still made me, my brother, and many other watchers have emotional attachment and cry, which is why I created the skit at the beginning of the video.
It is to symbolize how you would feel after watching this anime. You will cry! My brother usually doesn’t cry while watching anime, but this is the one time he dId. This tells you how powerfully written the story is. It also symbolizes how Violet travels around the world meeting new people and the transformation that she goes through.
If you only watch shounen anime or no anime at all, then you have to watch this. Trust me when you watch this, it will change your entire perspective of anime and what it can accomplish in terms of its human connection. All of these characters feel like real human beings. We are all just taking a glimpse of their lives.
I actually do wake up and think about Violet from time to time. I think about how Violet is best girl. She’s such a beautifully written character, and I am happy that she achieved her goals.
Conclusion
Once again, Violet Evergarden is the best anime in the universe because it’s beautifully animated and Violet’s transformation from being an “emotionless” tool to becoming more of an expressive human being is done phenomenally.
Be sure to check out Violet Evergarden and its final movie titled Violet Evergarden: The Movie on Netflix!
Brian Thao is the host of Reddit Stories, a talk and review show that airs on KSSU Sac State’s Student-Run Radio.
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