A Show That Taught Me Empathy, Violet Evergarden

*Disclaimer: Spoiler alert, throughout the entire review!*

(You could play this while reading the post)

I have one thing to tell you. That one thing is the regret of not watching this show sooner. If I had known about this show sooner. One day I was looking for a good anime to watch and I ended up asking my friend about it. He says that the anime 'Violet Evergarden' is the one anime that he can't forget. I ask him why, but he didn't have the time to respond about it. His friend already took him away to play basketball or something.

Throughout the anime that I've watched, Violet Evergarden was the anime that taught me the most about life. Granted, Wonder Egg Priority also taught me a lot, but this show taught me more about life than Wonder Egg Priority.

Wonder Egg Priority is an anime that taught you about teenagers and their behavior. While this show tells us about empathy and how much feeling could affect us in our daily lives. In each episode of the anime, I cried my eyes off. When I realized just how much a single letter could be worth to somebody else, I was speechless. The number of emotions that this anime show is enough to fill an entire skyscraper with manly tears.

Looking back, I want to know just how much does this anime taught me throughout my time watching it. I could just sit here and ramble around about this anime forever and I will not get tired of it. My first thought in writing this review is that I want to talk about each episode of this anime and what does it teach us. But when I think about it again, I think that'll be too long, so I decided to pack all of that up in just 6 minutes' read.

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Violet Evergarden

It's a show about war. More specifically, post-war. It's a story about a teenager that was forced to participate in a war. The story starts with Violet waking up on a hospital bed. And at the start of the story, we don't know anything about her yet. One thing we know for sure is that she's in the military and her social skill is lacking. The thing that I like about this show is that in each episode, we get to know more about this character and this 'major' character that seems to be a really important person to her.

Going back to the main story, Violet Evergarden is a show that revolves around the aftermath of war. In a later episode, we finally get to know more about Violet. She's a teenager that was born in a warzone. Because of that, she only developed the ability to do self-defense. She's a 'Killing Machine' that was born in a warzone. Because of that fact, she cannot feel empathy and human emotion. One thing she only knows is 'order' from her major. Because of that fact, her major is the only light that guides Violet throughout her life as a soldier.

When the war ended and her major died, the light that was guiding her vanished. When Violet wakes up on her hospital bed in episode one, the first thing she remembers is her major. Her major's name is Gilbert Bougainvillea. He supposedly dies when the final war happened, at least that's what the other member of the army believe.

In episode 1, one of Gilbert's friends, Hodgins, decided to visit Violet. He's a former lieutenant of the army, he retired from his position as a lieutenant and lives off his normal life. When he met Violet, he was immediately asked about her major, Gilbert.

As a viewer, I don't know who's Violet's major is at the moment, but by just looking from his tone of voice, I could already tell that it's not something good. And the looks of hope that were set on Violet's pure face adds to the feeling that something bad has happened to her major. To top it all of, the one thing Violet remember about him at the battlefield is her major saying "I love you (Aishiteiru)" to her before everything goes to black. And when Violet asks Hodgins, she asks him what does "I Love You" means.

The fact that Violet asks that to Hodgins symbolizes that she's a soldier. She lacks human emotion and empathy, hell, the way she salutes on every greeting, and doing something like it's an order, symbolizes that she's a former soldier. But on top of her disciplinary trait, she has such a soft and naive face. And because of that exact fact, it's hard for somebody to believe that Violet is actually an ex-soldier.

When you watched back Violet Evergarden from the start of the anime, you could tell the difference between her from episode one and her from episode nine or so.

Fast forward a couple of episodes after she learns about and how to be the auto memoir doll, we then got greeted by her first-ever letter to somebody else. The letter that shows true emotion, the first letter that makes me cry. Never would I believe that a robot-like person like Violet could ever write such a beautiful letter. From then, I fall in love with this show. Through just simple dialogs and words, this show could make me ball out my tears. And from then on we follow our story with Violet on her journey on finding out the truth of her major and his "I Love You" by writing one letter at a time.

What's My Favorite Episode?

This is a hard question. The first couple of episodes of this show focuses on Violet's character development, while the rest of them focuses on the surrounding character that becomes Violet's clients. Each one of the episodes has its unique factor to it. But I gotta say, the episode where Violet finally found out about her major's (Gilbert) death is my favorite.

Knowing that something had happened to Gilbert, I was preparing myself for the worst, even after preparing myself for this episode to come, I still couldn't hold back my tears. That's why that is my favorite episode.

Why I Love Violet Evergarden

For a show to be loved or liked by someone, the show needs to create an impact on the person. And Violet Evergarden did that to me. As I said earlier, this anime thought me a lot of things, and one of them is empathy and how to feel human emotion. I consider myself as someone that lacks human emotion and lacks the ability to feel that emotion, so by watching this anime, I really learned a lot about life in general. And the fact that every single episode makes me ugly cry shows me that I still have a sliver of human emotion inside of me.

This anime is also friendly with the 'Three episodes' rule. In the first three episodes, we could really learn about Violet and the setting of the world. And by the end of the three episodes, we are set to follow our journey with Violet.

The fact that Violet's world crumbles after knowing that her major is dead is also why I love this show. When she realizes that she did all of that killing for nothing, and when she realizes that each one of that killing meant that there's a letter full of emotion that can't be sent, she cannot hold back her tears anymore. That episode really breaks me (Literally every episode breaks me).

Finally, the one thing I like the most about this show is that, the word "I Love You (Aishiteiru)" that major Gilbert said to Violet before he died. Because major Gilbert is the first only person that treats Violet like a person and not a weapon, Violet actually grew love towards Gilbert. But because back then Violet doesn't understand human emotion, she doesn't know about love. Therefore she cannot express that 'love' towards her major. Until her last journey in Violet Evergarden the Movie 2 (And let's just ignored the fact that Violet is 14 and Gilbert is 29)

Final Thoughts

Before going more deeply into this discussion, I will just end it here. I don't want to spoil more stuff from this anime. One thing I will say is that, if you haven't watched both of the Violet Evergarden movies, you could watch them here: (Movie 1, Movie 2). Both of them is a masterpiece, but the first movie doesn't really have an impact to the second one, so you could skip it.

This show is a must-watch for everyone that likes slice-of-life anime. I could even claim that this show is a must-watch for everyone. It's just that beautiful of a show. Especially if you're a writer that wants to have some inspiration to write into your stories.

This show also has a super satisfying ending whether that's the ending of the anime or the ending of both movies, especially the second one. So I'm sure that you will get your money's worth.