Super Official Anime Discussion Thread

[Farsala]

Super_Boom said:

Farsala said: 

Violet Evergarden- A highly rated show, but I am unsure why. I really liked the atmosphere of the show with war and the consequences of such. Letters basically being a lifeline of old wars for many people, and thus smooth letter writers are quite valued or Auto Memory Dolls in this show. I liked the plot between Gilbert, Dietfried, and Violet, but many of the other plot lines were boring and episodic. The side story that I really did enjoy were between a sick mother and her child. However Violet is a very similar character to Sabre from the Fate series. As much as I disliked the original, I did like Violet a bit more but she was pretty strong in the later episodes despite her major life changes. One of the worst offenders was the amateur music direction, the OPs and EDs were okay, but the actual anime music was quite poor in my view. So many scenes where they just insert the random music, when the effect would have been greater without.

I want to say I liked this one...but I honestly don't remember much about it other than a few strong episodes. I suppose it looked super nice, but that's never been a problem with Kyo-Ani stuff. Violet's character arc towards the end was well done, though that action heavy finale was kinda weird. Why was that blonde boy James Bond all of a sudden?

Overall it felt really episodic, which isn't really a good or bad thing, just the type of story they wanted to do. My favorite episodes were probably the one with the princess writing letters to her fiance, the playwright who lost his daughter, and the dying mom writing letters for her daughter for years to come. Some of those might have been cheap hits to the feels, but got dang if they weren't really well done. Especially that last one...holy crap that had me bawling.

Episodic isn't a problem as long as it is done well. I recently watched Kino no Tabi, and it is entirely episodic but still quite entertaining.

Violet Evergarden does it in an odd way with half the episodes being about the main story, and the other half being episodic. I liked the side stories and all the lands along with it, but it really took away from the main experience, just like the weird last episode did. Essentially I would call the episodic episodes as filler, which is just plain ridiculous in a 12 episode series. In longer series I often skip filler, but there was no way of knowing that in such a short series.