Violet Evergarden

The Great War finally came to an end after four long years of conflict; fractured in two, the continent of Telesis slowly began to flourish once again. Caught up in the bloodshed was Violet Evergarden, a young girl raised for the sole purpose of decimating enemy lines. Hospitalized and maimed in a bloody skirmish during the War's final leg, she was left with only words from the person she held dearest, but with no understanding of their meaning.

Recovering from her wounds, Violet starts a new life working at CH Postal Services after a falling out with her new intended guardian family. There, she witnesses by pure chance the work of an "Auto Memory Doll," amanuenses that transcribe people's thoughts and feelings into words on paper. Moved by the notion, Violet begins work as an Auto Memory Doll, a trade that will take her on an adventure, one that will reshape the lives of her clients and hopefully lead to self-discovery.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Evergarden, Violet Main

Ishikawa, Yui Japanese

Bougainvillea, Gilbert Supporting

Namikawa, Daisuke Japanese

Blue, Benedict Supporting

Uchiyama, Kouki Japanese

Baudelaire, Cattleya Supporting

Endou, Aya Japanese

Hodgins, Claudia Supporting

Koyasu, Takehito Japanese

Marlborough, Luculia Supporting

Tadokoro, Azusa Japanese

Stephanotis, Leon Supporting

Uemura, Yuuto Japanese

Bougainvillea, Dietfried Supporting

Kiuchi, Hidenobu Japanese

Cannary, Iris Supporting

Tomatsu, Haruka Japanese

Abelfreyja Drossel, Charlotte Supporting

Nakajima, Megumi Japanese

Cook, Justin Producer

Nakamura, Shinichi Producer

Saitou, Shigeru Producer

Umeda, Kazusa Producer

Reviews

Feb 3, 2026

SrirachaHotSauce

Recommended

Violet Evergarden

I found Violet Evergarden to be a story about self-discovery and connection, following Violet as she sets upon her journey in her new life as herself. She is an orphan who knew nothing of normalcy, unable to understand beyond her life as a living weapon on the battlefield. Now in peacetime, she must find her place in the world and at the same time learn about the connections that tie people together all while understanding what it means to be human, to have a heart.

Story/Writing:
The overall story is broken down into multiple smaller subplots, typically spanning a single episode focusing on a particular event/side ... character. They serve to guide Violet through her journey of self-discovery and progress her understanding of human emotion. It is easy to follow the events that are happening as the plots themselves are simple by design, serving primarily as vehicles for Violet’s inner development. These subplots typically have their own focus, looking into surface level human emotions from others, feelings, such as anger, frustration and happiness but also sometimes looking into more complex themes such as confronting trauma, handling loss, and closure. The episodes always involve understanding love in some of the many ways it can be seen such as through family, lovers, aspirations and most importantly, within oneself.
The worldbuilding in the series is established in episode 1 and gradually built upon throughout the course of the story. The pacing of the subplots throughout the series is in my opinion one of the strongest aspects of the series, it understands how to gradually build emotional capital within characters throughout the story which makes the events of each climax have a heightened impact.
The themes and moods of the series do occasionally shift between the episodes. Some are happy, bittersweet, melancholic, gratifying, or fulfilling, so while the mood can vary between episodes, the series is still grounded in emotional sincerity. And through the combination of storytelling, music and cinematography the series delivers some of the strongest emotions that I have personally experienced watching anything.

Characters:
It is my own opinion that any form of media, be it music, movies, TV shows, anime, and paintings, all serve the purpose of inciting emotion. Violet Evergarden captures feelings of loneliness, relief, sadness and closure to name a few, and is delivered through Violet herself and the supporting cast. The characters within Violet Evergarden are built up, relying on direct, indirect, and non-verbal storytelling methods, which when combined provides subtle, dense, and natural feeling character progression.
The characters are complex, we as the audience are given the opportunity to know about them on their innermost level and the relations they have with others within the story, all the interactions between them feel in character and serve a purpose in forwarding the story. As a viewer, the emotional investment and attachment I felt towards Violet is incomparable to any other character I’ve ever seen. Being a first-hand witness to her growth through her journey and all she has gone through has developed an unparalleled attachment which persists during and after the series. The side characters in the series were also able to be effectively developed in their limited screentime, giving the audience a high level of emotional investment into them, before reaching their conclusions by the end of each episode. Overall, the characters share the trait of having significant emotional attachment to another character(s), and with the focus of the story being Violet’s emotional and inner growth, it’s the tragedy and mending of these inter-character relations that build upon her, providing us, the audience with a plethora of characters who all carry with them significant emotional weight for us to experience.

Animation/Sound Design:
Kyoto Animation delivered another in a long line of visual art wonders, the creative direction amplified the emotional magnitude of scenes, through the efforts of framing, composition, cinematic cuts, and subtle pauses. The quality of animation is also of the highest standard, fluid, articulating character motions and smooth camera movements, realistic wind, and fabric effects, consideration of foreground elements and soft lighting, all these elements put together make it a complete visual experience. The art style of the series is something I found very appealing, soft lines, in a semi-modern setting, filled with vibrant colours and beauty, every episode has multiple visually striking sceneries to take in and the visual design of the characters, especially Violet is nothing short of breathtaking. This combination of animation quality and art style are what make Violet Evergarden a visual masterpiece able to convey and amplify intense emotion through visuals alone.
The original voice acting is phenomenal, in every scene Violet’s emotions are being poured out and heightened by the voice acting, this could also be said about the voice acting of the supporting characters, especially the VA for Claudia Hodgins, Takehito Koyasu.
Evan Call deserves all the credit he receives for the Violet Evergarden soundtrack, it doesn’t simply support the emotional storytelling in front of us, but it enhances it, intensifies it across the wide range of emotions that are felt throughout the series.

Closing Statement:
Overall, the story of Violet Evergarden is beautiful from so many angles, it’s a visual masterpiece with the creative direction from Kyoto Animation elevating the story, bringing life to the world and Violet’s journey. Evan Call’s score for this series is nothing short of perfection. The storytelling knows how to set up characters and a narrative, build toward a climax garnering emotional investment from the audience, then execute, delivering waves of intense emotion each episode with devastating effect and consistency.
I personally have no caveats, this series is unimprovable to me. Nearly every aspect on its own can be seen to have been given meticulous attention and is a work to behold and appreciate in isolation, combined they all elevate each other and produce the masterpiece before us.
I would recommend this series to anyone who has a deep appreciation for aspects such as music, character development, and more advanced directing tools such as camera angles/framing etc. And I would strongly recommend this story to anyone who wants to experience emotional storytelling and soul-seeking.
Those viewers who find themselves seeking an action/spectacle-driven story, constant positive, feel-good moments or faster pacing might want to put this series on hold for the time being.

Thank you for reading.

Overall Score: 10/10

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Mar 16, 2025

BernieWu0812

Mixed Feelings

Funny

60/100

Felt like the writers were asleep for the first nine episodes, woke up for episode 10, and then immediately went back to sleep. Nothing actually happens, and Violet often takes a backseat to the main character of each episode (which I get is intentional to make her seem more human by the end, but still). The series devolves into "melodrama of the week," with forced emotional manipulation and shallow character development. The portrayal of a post-war world is overly idealistic, with characters depicted as excessively kind, lacking the depth expected from such a setting. The series often resolves complex conflicts too easily, undermining the gravity ... of the situations and leaving viewers unsatisfied. Biggest issue? The Major. They did NOT need to make it a romantic relationship. Seriously. It’s a big, big, big, did I say big? MISTAKE. I cannot stress this enough. Can they please stop forcing this Major nonsense? He is not a good character.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Aug 31, 2025

RemanTheArchean

Not Recommended

Funny

This series has very smooth animation, decent cinematography, and uses scene transitions in interesting ways. In terms of anime as an artistic craft, there's a lot to recommend here. It certainly looks very expensive, and it's easy to tell that there's been a lot of care put into each frame.

The big problem is with the story, you see. And the characters. And the pacing. They're just... not very good.

Admittedly, a lot of this is merely my own personal taste -- I don't like melodrama, and this is a Melodrama with a capital M. There's a character crying in almost every episode. There's *multiple* ... bouts of crying in over half the episodes. A few episodes had over half a dozen instances of crying, and in some cases it felt like the story was moving from one instance of characters busting out the waterworks to the next, like a chain-smoker that doesn't know how to quit.

Beyond my personal taste, I think episodic melodrama is especially hard to do well. Characters are introduced but typically only have a single episode (only 22 short minutes!) to work through their issues. This flatly isn't enough time to really do much, and the resolution often consists of just a single pep-talk, which leads to a double-bind:
Option 1) the issue is so facile that a single pep-talk really could realistically solve it, but that makes the characters seem like childish babies for having an issue in the first place.
Option 2) the issue is bigger, so it seems like a problem a real person could have, but then it's ludicrous for that type of thing to be resolved in a single pep talk.
The end result was that the melodrama felt somewhere between "fake" and "annoying". Maybe this type of show would be a tearjerker for teenage girls that score 100% Feeling on their MBTI tests, but for me it fell completely and utterly flat.

Furthermore, the show isn't helped by the protagonist Violet being unlikable. She starts out comically awful in a way that many anime protagonists do so the storywriter can easily show character progression. Her blundering in social situations verges on severe autism, then she "grows" into a regular human that can think for herself and who has normal emotions, but this is mostly expressed through crying. Ugh.

Not a fan.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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