New: Violet Evergarden Review

After a bloody war Violet chooses to become a “doll of automatic memories”. These dolls are rented to transcribe the word and the feelings of the customers in letters. Violet will soon realize that feelings are complex to grasp and shape. It will be all the more lost as it has known only the war and the army so far. She will explore different places and meet a variety of clients to find meaning in her life.

In this world of bullies where the same franchises sell again and again, originality is rare. And yet Kyoani embarks on a small original series with a sweet name not evocative at all, but which seems to have resource under the pen. No need to pit here, the heroine would probably have done better than me, I type slower than she on a keyboard. Violet is going to make you live her second life, that of an automatic souvenir doll. Even if she would be deprived of chocolate in a real world, our little Violet is endearing as a character, gradually we end up loving and empathize for this very atypical character. It made me think a bit about “Madlax” in the eponymous series of Beetrain a long time ago, but in addition class after its military period.

Where we can find the main defect of the series, it is in the structure of the narration. The episodes are very similar and always seem to be built to arrive at this final emotion (with the princely wedding, with the author and his little girl etc …) and it is an annoying hair to feel that the series tells you where to cry . Sincerely there was no need to mark the story with music or visual cues, because history is self-sufficient. It’s a shame to have a little stereotyped all. Nevertheless we must make a parenthesis on an episode, the number 10. In the Japanese animation, an episode emerges from time to time and even when the work is good. Here is the famous number 10. The overall level of the series is very good, but this one is an example of everything that must be done in this kind of work. I rank it in the same level as a certain episode of Clannad that is just as upsetting.

That’s not all, even if there is a lack of rhythm and stereotype, damn that this series is visually irreproachable. It’s fantastic beauty, we are at the level of what the animation does best. Everything is beautiful, everything is right. We are very far from the beginnings of Kyoani’s studio, we are in the standards of the most beautiful Japanese animated films. The music is very in the tone, I do not adhere especially because it reinforces this little effect “pathos on demand”, even if objectively it is difficult to stick something to the series on this point. And in conclusion, simply Violet Evergarden is a small nugget of 13 episodes, a brilliant storyline singularity in a world of nags, a purple flower in a warrior bloodbath. You will not be disappointed and will consume some paper tissues, and personally this is my first animated series for a long time (Rewrite last, I loved the VN and the series had angry with the genre). She reconciled me with these works, so thanks to Violet.