badrandy666

[badrandy666]

Violet Evergarden: Initial thoughts

I don't know if my anime bullshit meter has become more sensitive or what, but right off the bat, there's a few things that I can't really wrap my head around, or that irk me.

First, we have a female child soldier, who is in a setting that doesn't seem to have any other female or child soldiers. She works under a major. There's also the implication that she's been raised as such, since childhood. She was found by the major's brother and given to the major to be used as a weapon...as if there's no one else qualified enough to be a bodyguard/weapon for this guy than a little kid. And even if she is really good at fighting/being a soldier...Is the army down that bad that they need to recruit children??? Or that they're okay with that? It doesn't really make a lot of sense to me, and that disbelief makes it difficult to keep watching. I'm sure they'll explain it later on, but I also can't think of an explanation that would be satisfactory enough for this. I initially thought Violet was going to be revealed as some sort of robot, or a weird government experiment, but this doesn't seem to be the case. She's just a kid that's good at killing?

Two: The setting is vaguely European, heavily leaning German, with the country and city names, but the characters have English names and French surnames for whatever reason. It feels like the author just wanted to do whatever looked and sounded cool, which doesn't really lend itself to a cohesive setting. I'm not going to touch on the palm trees, but there are palm trees. Picture Europe but in the tropics ( lowkey reminds me of western colonies in the Caribbean and latin america >_> I don't think it's intentional, so I'm not adding it on the negatives list, but it's a little funny)

Three: Clothing/time period. As prev. mentioned, settling is vaguely European, Edwardian era-ish. Yet the clothing is wildly inconsistent. First, we have the front desk girls at the post office, wearing sleeveless shirts and pencil skirts that feel late 1950's, and the men also wearing similar shirts with short sleeves and shorts. It's giving modern mailmen clothing 😑. And then...the auto memory dolls.

Cattleya is probably the worst offender on the list. Miss is walking around in thigh highs, microskirt, and an unbuttoned corset hanging on for dear life...in the early 1900s. And a thigh tattoo for funsies. It looks a little pirate-ish, which I can see the vision for, being in the tropics and all, but no one else dresses like this. It is just her. Nearly every other character wear skirts that at least cover their knees.

Glasses girl is sort of there in spirit, so I won't touch on her, but girl on the right is a straight up Pokemon trainer.

This is a class Violet attends later on. I can't emphasize enough how out of place the Auto Memory doll clothing is. They also don't wear uniforms despite everyone else in the company using them.

Lastly: In the second episode, Violet decides she wants to be an Auto Memory doll so she can understand what the major's last words, "I love you" means after watching Cattleya help a client. Pokemon trainer girl, who just finished her training, complains that it's not easy to become a doll and that she's stuck writing addresses all day. She also laments that people only request Cattleya. Later on Violet is shadowing Glasses and after a rough day of Violet fucking up, Glasses decides it's okay to let Violet handle a client request.

Violet fucks this up, and the client shows up the next day to lament that Violet fucked up so bad, she's now lost the man she loved. I don't understand this company. If the dolls are writing on typewriters, why would they not show the client what they're writing, or read it out loud to them to confirm that the letter is okay? Earlier, Cattleya was shown reading the letter out loud to the client, so why is no one else doing that? 😭 Is that the reason why everyone wants Cattleya???

This anime's been hyped as hell, but I really can't stand dumb things happening in the plot, like Violet fucking up that client's letter. Hodgins, no offense, but I think I know why your company's not doing too good. The animation and soundtracks are beautiful-no complaints there.

From what I understand, the anime was based on a light novel, so I won't blame the author for the clothing choices, but I will blame them for the plot. While I'm sure there's rewarding character growth and relationships later on, I doubt it'll differ all that much from the usual cold character learns to express their feelings route. And if dumb things are already happening in the first two episodes, I'm not that interested in the rest of the series. I'm just going to mark this as a "I tried," on my end.

Bonus: Blond guy that upstaged Cattleya with his knee high, lace up, stiletto boots