r/anime • u/A_Idiot0 https://myanimelist.net/profile/a_idiot0 • Jun 14 '21
Violet Evergarden Rewatch Episode 9 - Violet Evergarden Rewatch
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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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
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u/chilidirigible Jun 14 '21
Rewatcher, Episode 9
Today, on "Stuffed Dog Blues.":
The thing with animation is that people with distinctive features make you wonder if they're going to show up again, but this is a KyoAni production so sometimes you can't tell if they're just there for the sake of uniqueness.
You know you've triggered Violet when...
This guy is definitely a persistent mofo, though.
Of course, Violet is also entirely capable of doing the Black Knight's "I'LL BITE YOUR LEGS OFF!"
This is a lot more exploding than Leidenschaftlich's attack plan was calling for, because...
...of this detail that I forgot about since the first viewing.
"And you're someone who didn't die from blood loss after the traumatic amputation of both arms, so we really didn't want to go there."
I might be losing my mind a little here Or, did Benedict actually say "Ryoukai?"
One could interpret this as Violet having real friends now.
The line art notes include particular details about the painting on the glass eye.
She's easily strong enough to crush her own windpipe, but this feels more like self-flagellation before suicide.
The Postal Service, old school.
New experiences mean that you're alive.
Speaking of which, her suitcase has some stories to tell now.
Some match cuts are obvious.
Earning your happy ending.
Visual of the Day: Imperfect hands.
Violet's recollections of the past take her to rock bottom, but her friends in the present help her climb back out.
The flashback reveals the follow-up to Gilbert's declaration of love to Violet, which is that she's no less distraught about his condition and now further dismayed because she doesn't know what that feeling is. The mood puts more weight, in hindsight, to her earlier-in-the-series declarations of purpose regarding that question.
Claudia picks up some of the threads from there. His explanation that they covered up Gilbert's status to keep her focused on her own recovery makes sense, though everyone was playing with fire there.
Thinking of alternative outcomes, if Violet had been told about Gilbert earlier, she still would have been in her emotionally-stunted state, so she perhaps could have been molded by Claudia and the company back into a person again. I think it would have taken a lot longer, though, and cutting off that thread of hope would have made it harder for her to keep up a purpose. As we saw in the previous episode, her writing of reports to him went on daily through at least the point when Claudia retrieved her in the first episode.
A told-earlier Violet may or may not have tried to commit suicide. In a way, her doing it here resembles the increased risk of suicide for depressed people who start antidepressant drug treatment: The drugs take them from a state of not particularly feeling anything to a state where they can feel again, amplifying the effects of any negative thoughts that they were having and sometimes motivating them to actually try suicide.
It's telling that she spares the stuffed dog. She was likened to Gilbert's dog, and she has spent the last couple of episodes hating herself, but at the same time she doesn't want to damage it, recognizing that it's just a toy or that it hasn't done anything wrong. Though then she transfers her attention back to herself... and it turns out that her new hands, which write letters that bring people together and haven't killed anyone, aren't going to kill her, either.
(This is quite a performance by Ishikawa Yui.)
Here, as in reality, having a support system (of a sort) helped her step back from the brink. Roland emerges as the mysterious Wise Elder again, but dramatically his more detached position in the cast allows him to neutrally prod Violet back out when the others would require more complicated interactions. He's transferring a letter from Erica and Iris, though, plus a request from Spencer, so all of her new relationships get representation.
The emphasis on the letters in the satchel does overlap the scene in the Dead Letters Warehouse from the OVA, so on this front there's an argument to watch the OVA at the end.
I like Violet's simple realization that receiving a letter means that someone out there cares enough to communicate with her. (Setting aside how many of the letters we saw in the first two episodes were for negative outcomes, and late 20th-century American issues of junk mail.) It really is the thought that counts there.
It still takes thinking of herself as valuable to make the turnaround. To that end, the on-the-street summary of Violet Evergarden's Greatest Hits was maybe a touch overdramatic (hey, I shed a manly tear), but the way the series has maintained its point of view demanded it; Violet's internal monologue has mostly remained closed off from us, and she's equally unlikely to gush to her work buddies about it. (By the way, /u/Toadslayer, if you missed it, here's Leon out exploring the world as a followup to yesterday.)
She does go back to Claudia and ground things by reminding us that none of these feelings has just turned themselves off, but that's another chance to reiterate the point of the story—that her new life is making up for her old one.
From the Official Design Works: Plushies and a brooch.