Violet and Letters
On Monday night, I was looking for something to watch and I finally got around to watching Violet Evergarden. I kind of knew what I was getting into when I decided to do it, but damn if it wasn’t even more affecting that I thought it would be. If you can make it through the thirteen episodes of the main series without at least wanting to blubber like an infant, you have to hand in your humanity membership card.
Violet Evergarden is probably best known (in the West) as an anime series produced by Kyoto Animation. It was based on a light novel of the same name (except in Japanese) by Kana Akatsuki and illustrated by Akiko Takase. It tells the story of an orphan – Violet – raised as a living weapon to fight in a war and never really socialised. She’s essentially a sociopath without the negative aspects; she can’t empathise with others because she’s never been taught or shown what emotions really are. She loses her arms in the war but her world seems to have some fairly crazy technology because they manage to replace her lost arms with fully functional metal ones. Having known only life in the military, Violet now sets out to make her way as an ‘Auto Memory Doll,’ essentially a ghostwriter for the many people who can’t write or those who want a letter written that they don’t have to skills to write themselves. Violet has to learn emotions and empathy in order to do her job, and that’s basically the journey we go on with her as the series unfolds.
That dry synopsis does not do justice to the rollercoaster ride you go through when watching this series. Apparently, the novel handles the sequence of events differently, which is a bit of an issue for the series. In the novel, you uncover Violet’s backstory slowly; she starts out as a letter writer with metal arms, and only as the story progresses do you uncover why she is as she is. The series frontloads the backstory, at least to some extent. The first three episodes have Violet collected from hospital and set her up in the role of an Auto Memory Doll. Only in the third episode do we get a hint at the way the rest of the series will largely play out.
Most of the episodes in the series are technically told from the viewpoint of one of Violet’s clients. Violet is hired to write something for someone, and we are shown how she overcomes whatever hurdles she has to in completing her contract, how she develops as a person in doing so, and how what she does affects those around her. Simple, right? Nothing new. Stories of personal development are two-a-penny. True enough, but when you combine the writing, the animation, and the soundtrack, Kyoto Animation have elevated Violet Evergarden into a true masterpiece of emotional manipulation. I hate it when characters are given thorough development and background just so you’ll empathise with them when something terrible happens to them. That’s one of my pet peeves with season three of Overlord. I should probably hate Violet Evergarden, but the manipulation doesn’t seem forced this time and it will get you in the feels every single time. Episode 10, in particular, will pull out your heart, stuff it in a blender, and reduce it to mush. I’m tearing up writing this because it’s giving me flashbacks. One of the reviews I’ve seen online said (paraphrased), ‘What it took Clannad forty episodes to do, Violet Evergarden can manage in twenty-three minutes.’ Clannad is one of those famously tear-jerking anime I refuse to watch. I guess I was kind of suckered into Violet…
Anyway… It’s pushed me to try to make this recurring idea I’ve had work. I want to write a book about a truly inhuman character; a character who doesn’t think like a human. Violet’s not really like that, but that’s the story I wanted to make work after watching it and I might have figured out a way to make it work. We’ll see. It’s going to take some development. The current working title, by the way, is Professor Orson’s Mechanical Daughter. So, make of that what you will.
And if you’d like to have your heart torn out by a cute anime girl with metal arms, Violet Evergarden is available on Netflix in all regions (I think). Look for the ‘Violet Evergarden Collection,’ which includes the series, a 35-minute ‘special’, and ‘Eternity and the Auto Memory Doll,’ a 90-minute movie. There is also another movie which was put out in cinemas and will hopefully turn up on Netflix eventually (though having read the synopsis on Wikipedia, I don’t think I want to put myself through that!). I do recommend watching at least the main series and the special unless you really do only read my books for the action and sex scenes. But have a box of tissues nearby when you do.
