I almost feel like I’m cheating while making this video.
I’m here, going to spend the next few minutes trying to show you, explain to you, why you
need to watch this series called Violet Evergarden.
But really, the show should do a lot of that for me.
That’s what worked on me.
I was sold from the initial Promotional Trailer that was released far over a year ago.
But maybe I’m just that easily impressed.
I feel like as long as I have this show’s gorgeous animation playing over my words,
with some of the show’s beautiful sounding music behind me, I can sell this show without
really trying.
If anything, my voice might be the worst part of what you’re watching right now.
But I’m doing it anyway because of how important this show has become to me over the past year,
how much I love it, despite waiting for so long to actually get around to finishing it,
because I didn’t want it to end.
This is one of those types of shows that I get to watch maybe once a year.
It’s a series that reminds me why I do what I do, a series that I can hopefully show you
the best parts of, so that you might enjoy it just as much as I have.
So, ladies, gentlemen, and others, my name is Arkada and today on Glass Reflection,
we are taking a look at the 2018 anime series from Kyoto Animation: Violet Evergarden.
Let’s jam.
Violet Evergarden is an anime series produced by Kyoto Animation, directed by Taichi Ishidate,
and adapted from the light novel of the same name by author Kana Akatsuki.
It follows the story of Violet, a young girl of the emotionally distant persuasion, who
is forced to adapt to a civilian lifestyle after spending the last several years as a
military “tool”.
I want to emphasize the word tool, as her personality and decision making process is
far more logical and mechanical than empathetic and emotional.
After losing both her arms during the recent war in an alternate version of Europe, her
new handler Hodgins (a former soldier himself) hires Violet to work at his company where
she eventually decides to train to become an “Auto Memory Doll”.
This is a writer of sorts, someone who listens to the desires of various customers and produces
written letters for them to send to their loved ones.
The time period of this anime is one when a decent chunk of the population does not
possess the ability to write.
While Violet is mechanically capable of writing
letters, operating the typewriter with insane levels of speed, accuracy, and grammatical
ability, the letters she produces are…less emotional than people would like.
Her personality is much like that of a doll and one of her few desires is to be able to
understand the emotions of those around her and to get better at conveying those emotions
on paper.
"I read your letter."
"However, I do not have feelings for you now."
"Furthermore, your commitment to love is insufficient to me. However, I fully encourage you to try again
once you have procured proper gifts as well as funds."
"Is there some kind of problem with this letter?"
As she slowly becomes able to do that, she starts
to piece together her own thoughts and feelings about a variety of things from her past.
But that’s something the show keeps on a slow burn.
After the first initial episodes of introducing both Violet and the world to the audience,
the plot takes a bit of a sidetrack to follow Violet around the country as she meets with
a variety of interesting characters and learns about their stories as she writes letters
for them.
She deals with love letters, letters to family who were left behind, letters for people who
will never see the sender again.
At first I was disappointed at this change of pace, as these individual stories do nothing
to progress that one plotline that I originally became interested in, that being Violet’s
backstory.
But as each of these one-off stories had their moment to shine, it became apparent to me
that these were what makes Evergarden a fantastic series to watch.
A lot of us watch anime that tell a story over a cour of episodes, which then culminates
in one large gigantic emotional moment for the audience.
It's something that’s built up over time, which comes crashing down on our heads and makes
most of us bawl our eyes out for one reason or another.
Violet Evergarden is a series that’s able to condense all of that buildup and payoff
into single episodes.
These one-shot plots contain more heart in them than most other full shows that I’m
used to watching.
Remember that first 15 minutes in the Pixar film Up?
How they fit an entire character’s emotional life into that small segment?
Evergarden manages to do that on a regular basis with most of its episodes.
Sure, there are varying degrees of success, but it hits more than it misses.
Even when the core of the episode’s plot, that inevitable emotional twisting of the
knife is so obvious from the get go, it still manages to land itself expertly by the end
just purely based on the way that the tales are told.
It’s not all from Violet’s perspective either.
She’s still the main character, sure, and she’s heavily involved in all of the stories,
but when necessary she can and does become a secondary character to the plot of any given
episode.
It’s very much similar to the episodic nature of shows like Mushishi in that way.
Yes, the plots further Violet’s personal development by giving her new experiences,
but sometimes that’s not the main purpose and the show knows when to stop focusing on that.
Of course, Violet is just a really interesting character because it takes a while to learn
what her deal is.
Her personality makes it very easy for one to just brush her off as yet another Rei Ayanami
clone, one whose emotionless state is such a part of her character that it will never
be changed.
But the plot sets up her personal story in such a way that it becomes a journey for her,
a journey to eventually come out of that emotionless shell.
Near the end of the war, she was told by her previous handler Gilbert that he loves her
and she is desperate to understand what exactly those words mean.
She starts off emotionless in the vast majority of her interactions, yes, but she quite obviously
has the desire and drive to want to understand emotion, which is a far cry from your regular
Rei clone.
The emotionless presentation of her character though will change depending on what voice
track you are using.
In English, Erika Harlacher’s portrayal of the character does admittedly have far
more emotion put into Violet’s voice than Yui Ishikawa’s version in Japanese.
This, on the one hand, does help to distance the character from others of similar disposition
that have been filling up the anime lexicon over the years, but on the other hand, some
that emotionless doll like presentation becomes part of the character itself which makes it
odd at times when it’s not present.
So when picking which version to listen to, it’s a bit more involved than usual.
I do want to stress though that both the English dub and Erika’s performance specifically
is not wrong or bad, it’s just different, so I felt I should point that out.
The music for Evergarden was composed by American-born Evan Call.
I’ve only spoken about his music once before on the channel, as he did the music for an
anime called Big Order, though in full honesty his music was literally only good thing about
that particular series and you’d be better off listening to it online than within the
show itself.
But what I was worried about with Evan’s music is that, prior to this, I didn’t feel
like his music would fit the tone of what the series was trying to show or portray.
This of course was something I thought before realising that the music used in the show’s
promotional material, the very thing that set me on the path of falling in love with
this series, was also composed by Evan.
So I really was worried for nothing.
The music for this series holds just as much emotion as the animation and the story.
It helps to both elevate the show and move you far more than a traditional soundtrack.
It’s this beautiful mix of classical music that’s well suited to this series taking
place in an alternate version of the early twentieth century.
For me, like with all good anime soundtracks, not only does it fill you with emotion while
you listen to it in the context of the show, but it also sounds just as good on its own.
Lastly, I suppose I should talk about the animation for the series, though admittedly
I find it hard to come up with words that would do better justice than the clips I’ve
been showing you over the course of this video.
The level of detail used for this series far exceeds what we have become used to in a television
anime, but it’s something that Kyoto Ani has been building up to.
There are many moments that the animation is reminiscent of very specific scenes from
their reccent works.
For example, I’m reminded of those brief flashes of animation excellence in some Kyoto Ani
shows like Hyouka or Sound! Euphonium, where the quality of the production just spiked...
if only for a moment.
But those moments were still scattered throughout the show as a whole.
The level of quality in the production here I’d pretty much put on the same level as
Kyoto Ani’s theatrical works, A Silent Voice being the most recent, this makes Evergarden one
of the few times where a series breaks that barrier in production quality normally reserved
for said theatrical films.
The backgrounds used in this series are breathtaking and look like something out of a Shinkai film.
The characters are able to additionally help the story along due to the amount of extra
detail in their movements.
Their body language, specifically, allows for a much more refined way to portray these
characters just with the animation alone.
There are so many times in this series when a character is stopping themselves from saying
something that either they want to say or at least are internally thinking, and the
animation here is able to reflect that which adds just that extra bit of oomph to the gravity
of any given scene.
You can tell so much more this way without having to actually have the characters speak.
This is the concept of “show, don’t tell” in its purest form.
Now, by the end of the series, one of the disappointments I had is that the story does
not fully complete.
Thankfully, this first season both leaves off at a comfortable stopping point for the
narrative, as well as actually announcing the production of a season two in the final
moments of the show.
The original material for the series already completed before the show aired, so I was
hopeful that we’d get a fully complete story in just these 13 episodes.
But I can live with how things turned out, as long as season two turns out just as well
as this initial season did.
Sure, there’s the chance they’ll screw it up and ruin everything, but I’m trying
to be optimistic.
There’s still plenty of ground that can be covered by an additional cour.
For one, the episodic nature of at least half of this show can simply continue on unabated.
The world of Evergarden is still so vast and there are plenty of stories there that could
still be told.
Even as far as Violet is concerned, there are still some avenues available to the plot.
Most of the story here was her dealing with her relationship with Gilbert.
But even with that portion of the story resolved, there’s still everything about her backstory
before she met Gilbert that’s never been touched on.
She’s referred to as a doll and a tool countless time in the series, but she is still biologically
a young girl, and if they so choose the story of both her birth and childhood could be explored.
This is just an example of course, coming from someone who hasn’t read the original
novel.
Perhaps the actual path they will take will be something quite different.
The culmination of my thoughts on this series is simply thus: watch Violet Evergarden.
I should clarify that this is not a suggestion, this is not me saying “You SHOULD watch
Violet Evergarden” or that “Violet Evergarden is worth watching”, despite both being true.
I am normally not this forceful with my thoughts.
I usually like to be coy.
I like to show you the good and the bad enough so that you can make your own decisions on
if you think this might be to your tastes.
Not today.
Why?
Because if I leave the option open, there is the chance, however small, that someone
who would love this series would mistakenly choose not to watch it.
This series is more than just a story with beautiful visuals and audio; it’s a story
about trying to understand the concept and significance of love, at a time when it might
possibly be already lost.
It’s about how things may never be like what they once were, but that life and love
can still flourish even after seemingly all has been lost.
So, I say again, watch Violet Evergarden.
What do you think I would rate a series that I like SO MUCH that I am going out of my way
to absolutely make sure you don’t misunderstand me?
Well, obviously, I would like to present Violet Evergarden with the rating of Certified Frosty,
a rating I reserve for only the best of the best or those shows too important to ignore.
Normally I give these out sparingly to shows less than a year old.
I like to only do it once a year and this year isn’t over yet.
Also, there are a lot of extremely good anime that have been released in the last few months
and it’s quite possible that several of those shows will also deserve that rating.
But I’ll get to those shows when I get to them.
For now, I would not forgive myself if I gave Evergarden anything less.
I’ll hold off until the end of the year to say if it’s my best of year, but at the
very least I will say that it’s definitely a contender.
At the time of this video, Violet Evergarden is available only on Netflix, currently in
both sub and dub.
At present, there doesn’t seem to be any plans to have the series come out with a physical
release, but Netflix licensed shows have had physical releases before, so it’s not out
of the question.
We just don’t know when.
We also don’t know if those physical releases will include the bonus 14th episode OVA of
the series that came out on Japanese Blu-rays.
With luck, we’ll get both, but I’m not going to hold out hope just yet.
A very special thank you to my patrons, who not only support my work in general, but allow
me to do videos where I’m passionate about it, and I want to talk about it....ALOT.
and then I'm able to do so!
So I thank you and appreciate you all.
Specifically though, as I like to do, I want to give particular shout-outs to patrons Joshua
Garcia, Calhoonboy, Siri Yamiko, Victor Ekmark, Ryefan Boneapart and Rune Jachobson for being
especially awesome.
You guys are great!
And until next time – ladies, gentlemen, and others – watch more anime…and stay
frosty.