review: Violet Evergarden

A couple of years ago, we anime geeks started seeing a trailer for an upcoming series called Violet Evergarden, and though this trailer was only a half-minute long, there was more than enough in it to catch our interest, as it hinted at a very moving story with art and animation quality usually reserved for anime movies. More news and a few more trailers slowly came our way, until, earlier this year, that series was released.

Summary

After years of war, the people of Leidenshaftlich are ready for peace. In this post-war time, many educated young women want to begin work as Auto Memory Dolls, people who can type and take dictation, even writing personal letters, for their clients.

Having known little except war and life in the military, Violet Evergarden finds her new peaceful life to be difficult and confusing. But instead of retreating from society, she chooses instead to train to work as a Doll, and as time passes and she meets more and more people, she learns to understand them and the things they really want to communicate.

The series has a very episodic feel to it, especially in the middle of the season, as most of the episodes are like vignettes of Violet traveling to a certain location so she can type for her company's clients. Her job often involves writing letters, but there are other writing assignments, too, such as when she is hired to help a playwright finish his most recent work. But there is also an overall story, much of it involving her desire to understand the last thing her former commanding officer, Major Gilbert Bougainvillea, said to her during the war's last battler, before he went missing and she was hospitalized and had to be given artificial arms and hands.

Emotional Devastation

My summary of the series may have seemed a bit dry, so let's get this one great truth about it stated now: if you're the type of person who likes stories that shred your heart into a million sobbing pieces, Violet Evergarden is very much the show you have been waiting for and training for. It's the series you deserve, and the one you need right now.

No, I'm not exaggerating one bit.

Storytellers like to think that our stories can accomplish many things, including being emotionally moving when it comes time for it. This really isn't an easy thing to do, though.

Getting a reader to care for a character is tricky business. Some stories I've come on seem to act on an assumption that, if a character is crying, then that's suppose to mean that the reader or viewer will find that scene very moving. Maybe I'm rather hard-hearted as a reader or viewer, but I usually don't find that kind of thing very moving. It feels less like the storyteller is inviting me to care for these characters, as that they are kinda trying to wring my neck while shouting at me “You will care about this character!”

One thing that makes it even trickier in Violet Evergarden is that in many episodes it is the people Violet is sent to write for, people who usually appear for just one episode, who are the main emotional focus of the story at that time. Yet the story is able to pull this off very well, while also giving the viewer glimpses of how being around these people is affecting Violet herself, as her personality becomes less distant and mechanical and more able to feel along with the people around her.

Even outside of enjoying and appreciating the series, one could learn a thing or two about emotions and storytelling from this series. After, of course, you've recovered from the emotional devastation this series will cause you.

Whatever Happened To...

I can't help but consider it a very bad sign that many of the anime that I watch take the concept of sin even more seriously than far too many places that are called churches. Violet Evergarden is one of those series.

When she was in the military, Violet was essentially a killing machine, feared by the enemy, but also by those on her own side, too. In the second half of the series, Violet begins to deal with the things she'd done as a soldier, the many lives she'd taken, and how those actions have affected her, even in ways she had not previously been aware of.

But it is here that the story's main weakness also shows up. All the hope that she can be given is that her work as a Doll, the things she's written for other people that have been helpful to them and to the people they've written to, is also important,that it will be remembered, too.

The weakness of this view should be made plain: who has decided how many good works we must do to make up for any one bad deed we have done? If Violet writes 100 letters, will that make up for 1 person she killed as a soldier? Will she need to write fewer letters than that, or, most likely, many, many more to pay for that 1 life? And what about all the others she either killed herself, or had a part in killing?

(I don't want to get sidetracked, but maybe a bit of something should be said here. I do not think that a soldier killing another soldier in combat is a violation of the command to not murder. Even after God gave Israel that command, they will fought wars, and their warriors still killed the warriors of their enemies, and even did so a God's command.)

But even if we could somehow do enough good deeds to make up for one sin, what about all the sins we commit, even the innumerable ones we committed while we were doing all those good deeds? The truth is, as the Bible rightly says, even the works we consider righteous deeds are no better than soiled rags.

Though to some degree Violet Evergarden takes sin seriously, it still does not take it seriously enough. Perhaps the thing it misses most is the question, if we have sinned, who have we sinned against, whose laws have we violated?

It is here that a church that takes sin seriously can also offer a real hope, a serious hope. It can point at each of us and say, “Yes, you have sinned, you have broken God's laws”, and it can also point to the cross and say, “Here is God's response to your sins, the sacrificial death of his son Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, forgiveness He gives to those who repent and believe the good news of Christ's death for them.”

Conclusion

If you've read all that, what are you waiting for! Go get whatever you need for those times when a story hurts your heart, get double for when you reach episode 10 (no, I'm not exaggerating, you'll need double for this episode), then go watch this series!