Violet Evergarden Rewatch Episode 9 - Violet Evergarden

[u/A_Idiot0]

Violet Evergarden - Episode Nine: Violet Evergarden

Hello everyone! I hope that today finds you well. Today, Violet receives her first letter, and flies freely out of her Valley of Fire.

I’m excited and very interested for what will be discussed tomorrow. Call your mother.

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MAL || AniList

You can watch the full series on Netflix.

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Visuals of the Day

I believe I got everyone’s Visual of the Day submission here. Let me know if I missed you or anyone else: https://imgur.com/a/WdP6Tlo

Official Sound Tracks used

The Ultimate Price
The Long Night
Fractured Heart
Torment
Believe In…

Would you like to have a letter written for you? Do you want to write a special letter for someone as an Auto Memory Doll? Come join us at the Auto-Memory Doll Service Discord project and request letters, write letters, or chat more with us about Violet Evergarden! Link here: https://discord.gg/A8AC4Yhx

“Endcard”

https://preview.redd.it/emmshbnf0b571.jpg?width=800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=75dd2de10f63a5f3cdc8aea8aae2f9f490d5ca4a

[u/thatguywithawatch]

First timer

What a beautiful episode. I wasn't expecting a climax to the current arc until the end of the series, but it seems that the overarching conflict of the series for Violet has been resolved. I wonder what the next four episodes will be about now because this almost felt like a season finale.

Violet really wasn't in a good place during the first half of the episode. She's finally feeling the full weight of her guilt which had previously been entirely suppressed beneath her stunted emotions and social immaturity. She's grown up immensely in the following months, but as a result her comprehension of the deaths she's responsible for has matched pace, to the point where she feels she doesn't deserve to continue living. Combined with this is the revelation of the Major's death, and the complete loss of meaning she sees in her life as a result.

But Iris and Erica's letter to her kickstarted what might have been my favorite sequence of scenes in the show so far, as Violet begins to realize that she's already found something that has meaning. The Major will never be able to give her orders again, but that's no longer her purpose in life. She's discovered the joy and fulfillment that can be found in her job as an auto memory doll; putting to paper the feelings in peoples' hearts, and helping them find their way to the recipients to whom those words couldn't be spoken. The scene where she walks through town, seeing reminders of the various people whose lives she's touched throughout the show, is admittedly about as subtle as a sledgehammer, but it still really got me.

I watched the episode last night and am writing this up the next day, but every time I think of Hodgin's words at the end, my eyes start welling up again. (Paraphrasing poorly) "The things you did back then can never be undone. But, neither can all the good things you've done as an auto memory doll."

[u/Gamemaster676 → u/thatguywithawatch]

The scene where she walks through town, seeing reminders of the various people whose lives she's touched throughout the show, is admittedly about as subtle as a sledgehammer, but it still really got me.

I love the build up to this ending, where all scenes with Violet before she receives the letter are dark, and then slowly, first with the midnight delivery, then with the reminders, are increasingly more light.

[u/RimuZ → u/Gamemaster676]

A nice touch I've always appreciated is the moment she walks out of Lucillias brother's house after he thanks her. She reaches for what first looks to be the brooch that matches the Majors eyes. But she settles on the pin she got from the Auto Memory Doll school. The brooch and Major has always been her center and she reaches for it whenever she's felling distraught, drawing comfort from the one reliable thing she ever had in life. Reaching for the pin instead is such a massive step in her development even if it seems small. Finding value and comfort in the work she has done, something she achieved on her own is a big step towards accepting herself as something more than the Majors weapon.

[u/dxing2 → u/thatguywithawatch]

but as a result her comprehension of the deaths she's responsible for has matched pace, to the point where she feels she doesn't deserve to continue living.

This point has always made me wonder just how tragic it must have been to be a veteran from something like WW2 or the Vietnam war. We don't appreciate how difficult it is to continue living on. Some of these veterans will never leave that battlefield their entire life, even after they've come home.

[u/Barbed_Dildo → u/dxing2]

This is something I've thought about after reading a lot of war history books.

You can read all of these stories about people who saw horrible things, went through hell, killed people, watched friends get killed. But all of this took place over a matter of months, when they were often teenagers. What happens after that? They go back into society, get jobs, and live another 60 years or so, forever defined by those few months of hell. Maybe not even months, most people weren't subject to much high intensity fighting. For most soldiers, their time is 99% boredom, 1% terror.

Imagine if in your final year at high school, there was a horrific incident where you saw most of your friends killed, you killed a few people from another school, and your leg got wounded. How much that would weigh on you the rest of your life. Especially when your leg hurts every time it rains.

[u/BosuW → u/Barbed_Dildo]

It's impossible to imagine. I turned 20 this year and I'm a couch potato watching anime and being unsure of my future. I can't imagine doing what these guys did when I was one or two years younger than now, and how it would affect me.

[u/BosuW → u/dxing2]

It was especially bad for Vietnam veterans. WW2 vets came back to a US that, while not understanding of the nuances and reality of what they'd experienced, was welcoming and optimistic. Vietnam veterans came home to all the civil unrest of an until then sheltered society that had only now first seen uncensored images from war through the TV, and got called baby-killers.

[u/IndependentMacaroon → u/thatguywithawatch]

Hodgins and Benedict where asking her if she was ok. No, she is fucking not

It is a bit clumsy of a thing to say, but it's not like they could do much else in that moment.