'Violet Evergarden'—Episode 2

This episode starts with Violet being introduced to the three other Doll’s that she will be working with when it comes to writing letters. Each one of the dolls has a distinct personality and distinct character design that helps them stand out in their own way. Cattleya is the mature, mentor figure that helps her juniors. She is confident and extremely good at what she does. Erica is the timid, shy, and reserved one, and Iris is the boisterous one that is not afraid to speak her mind. Added to that, you have the combination of Major Payne and Drax the Destroyer being taken seriously in the form of Violet herself, and you get a very interesting group of women working together.

It may seem slightly left field that I compared Violet to both Major Payne and Drax; however, that is how she starts as a character prior to the fantastic character progression that she receives throughout the show. She is still incredibly militaristic, stringent in her behaviour, and perceives her obligations as a doll as orders when in the workplace. Add to that the fact that she takes everything that is said to her in a very literal sense. As it was portrayed by the way she wrote the letter for the woman in this episode. While the other dolls try their best to interpret the emotions of their customers into the letters that are requested of them, Violet wrote what the customer said word for word.

This event leads to one of the most interesting conversations that I have listened to. It takes place in a beautiful cafe that I would love to frequent if it actually existed, and is between Violet and Cattleya, simply talking about the contradictory nature of human emotions and how we tend to behave with others. With these thoughts being conveyed through words, it is evident just how complicated the thoughts and emotions of a person are, while at the same time being quite simple to read by the way people behave and act around each other. Much like how Violet’s customer was. Someone in love that is willing to open up her heart and accept her love’s proposal, while her mind says things that are to the contrary. It just goes to show that while taking things literally like Violet does make things simpler in a lot of ways, at the same time, we as a race desire the passion that comes from being wanted.

This sentiment is repeated once more with Erica as she herself behaves in a way that contradicts what she says with what she does. Only when it comes to Erica is this used to develop her character, and draw out the similarities that are present between herself and Violet. In many ways, out of all the Doll’s, Erica is the closest to Violet from a personality perspective, as she too has a hard time when it comes to interpreting the emotions of a person, and writing the true meaning of what they say. These are two characters that both failed in this regard in this episode and are the better for it.

We are shown in this episode just how good humanity can be by the way Claudia and his employees are. How they are willing to set what matters to them aside for the sake of someone else. For example, by the way Claudia found Violet the pendant that was given to her by Gilbert. What this show is doing is portraying the very best that humanity has to offer to itself by being incredibly honest, by showing our flaws, by showing just how far we are willing to go so that we can protect those who are close to us, and by showing the contradictions of our feelings. Once again, this episode had me incredibly emotional by the time it ended, even more so than the previous episode. The first time I watched this series, I was crying through 10 of the 13 episodes, and I fear I will once more be an emotional wreck by the end to an even greater degree.