[Guido]

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Today I finished watching for a second viewing Violet Evergarden, a story that got me fully immersed the first time I concluded it nine to 12 months ago in this year.

Honestly, I do respect each and everyone's opinions regarding their feelings for Violet's story. Some say it was a beautiful storytelling while others dismissed it as too overrated as there are other anime out there with better plot and more engaging characters. As for myself, having watched the series two times in this year I can confidently say with modesty that Violet Evergarden is the best anime of 2018.

The moment I laid my eyes on the first episode I was instantaneously drawn to both its world settings, interweaving plot, and, yes, Violet herself. I believe the core of this series lies at how the plot progresses with Violet's growth and maturing to finally become a real and flawed human being like each and everyone of us towards the course of her journey from a battle doll to an auto-memory doll, whose letters connected the hearts of others with friends, family, loved ones, and lost ones.

What I also liked about this show, at least upon its first viewing, was that, as an audience and in my case, I did not get sidetracked pondering such questions as to where Violet truly came from even before Diethard captured her, what her life was before she became a battle doll, why she didn't have memories of both her parents and her first years of life, what was about her abnormal prowess in battle, etc.
That was Not the point dwelling on Violet's origins. As I was enjoying the show, I began to realize that by the time Violet ever met for the first time Major Gilbert Bougainvillea the plot made it clear either her heart was dead inside or had yet to be born and then to grow to become human, hence, her lack of display of emotions at the start of her life.
Her frozen time truly began to move upon meeting Gilbert, and him acknowledging her as a human with feelings through his treatment. The real game changer for Violet was to move on with her life without the Majors' orders and support after he became missing in action towards the end of the war. And, that my fellow peers was the tale to be told and covered in both the LN source and the anime.

Honestly, Violets' reactions and behavior at the beginning of her new life employed as an auto-memory doll felt at times awkward and at other times embarrassing to watch, nonetheless, such moments also made a point: the audience following Violet as she slowly and steadily reintegrate into a different world and learning without the Major by her side. She learned to make friends in her new job, she learned how to make ends meet with her new job, but, most importantly, she learned at how to connect and empathize with people and her clients through her constant mistakes and learning from them, getting to know about the people she met, and learning more about herself. From those experiences in her quest to understand "I Love You" the words she last heard from Gilbert, her human heart slowly bloom and blossomed allowing her to learn new emotions and to express them gradually.

Tragedies were abundant in the story and the cruelest of them all came for Violet learning from Gilbert's possible death when randomly knowing about it. This was the moment I sincerely believe Violet needed to reach a milestone in her character growth, since her depression wallowing on the memories of that fateful day at Intense made her to shut off temporarily all contact from the rest of world and her coworkers.
She came to finally understand Claudias' words through her memories of Gilbert that the weight of her actions during the war scarred her with burns in the inside. She was not just a tool for battle but a person capable of feeling, as that was an undeniable truth that Gilbert wholeheartedly wished for Violet. Ultimately, her life and existence were hers alone and, eventually, a time would come to carry on the weight of her choices and actions but doing so alone and with the Major no longer present anymore to guide her.
Nevertheless, such beautiful friendships conveyed through a letter enabled Violet to wake up from her misery understanding that there were other people out there with even more sad misfortunes and her job was connecting their hearts with their loved ones through the letters they requested from her.
What I truly became thankful for this show was that they did not end the story at that milestone with Violet overcoming her initial shock from learning about Gilbert's MIA status and certain death but the story kept going on.
For the remainder of the last four episodes, Violet continued walking an uncertain path to overcome and then to make peace with her past and with Gilbert treading milestone upon milestone, until she eventually matured as a complete human with flaws and emotions and made her choice to carry on Gilberts' memories and his feelings with her, but also living a life of her choice with no need any longer for a guide or at somebody's else orders to tell her how to live.

This was better displayed at the end of the final episode when Diethard compassionately gave Violet a last order to live a long and prosperous life, and then after fulfilling that then to die. To which Violet tenderly and softly replied that she no longer needed orders.
That last scene alone was such a beautiful tearjerker, and whether or not was left up to the viewer's interpretation that Diethard may or not have forgiven Violet over Gilbert's death, nevertheless, to me I understood that on that moment Diethard, along with the rest of the audience, witnessed Violet's complete growth as a full-fledged human.
From then on, I theorized that Diethard learned:
1. To be able to make peace with Violet.
2. That the tool, standing before his presence, that he discarded to Gilbert was not a tool but a person with feelings all along, and in spite of experiencing the loss of her master she chose to live carrying Gilbert's will and heart with her.

Overall, to me Violet Evergarden enjoyed an almost flawless: structure, narrative, and execution. The characters were both believable and relatable, as well as Violet's development felt organic and natural. Finally, last praise goes to the soundtrack that did its job at capturing the surreal fantasy of the world's setting enabling the most beautiful moments to be frozen in time.

From here on, there'll be a little wait until the film comes out in 2020.