My Complicated Relationship with Violet Evergarden: The Movie

Extremely spoiler heavy. Written in 2023.

There is an unfinished 1500 word draft that I wrote about this show, Violet Evergarden, about six months ago. That draft will never be finished. I wrote it when I had only seen the series of Violet Evergarden and before I had watched the feature-length film that followed the show’s conclusion. I made the silly decision of assuming that the film would only reinforce the themes, ideas and character arcs that I had latched onto within the episodic presentation, and believed that I could tweak the original piece after seeing the film, adding in analysis to that as an addendum before posting the essay. That obviously didn’t happen. I wouldn’t normally share my frustrating creative process in an essay. While I’m often happy to bring the personal circumstances of my life into media criticism, it feels different when imprinting my own creative frustrations onto a review or an essay. Self-indulgent is a phrase I wouldn’t normally use but in these instances, it definitely feels like it, at least for my own sensibilities as a writer and a reader. But for Violet Evergarden, it feels important to understand my struggles and my limitations with analysing it as a complete text, because that complication is the primary lens for my analysis. Some self-indulgence is the only way I’ll be able to write this essay with as much clarity as I normally provide, because Violet Evergarden is no longer the same text that it was for me when I finished the final episode of the show. It is one of the rare works of art to have been radically transformed for me upon its conclusion, to the point where all of the things I’d latched onto in the series were now irrevocably different. 

The film is a radical re-contextualisation of the material it’s following up. A somewhat close comparison is End of Evangelion, which also brutally re-writes the ending of the television show, but Evangelion’s initial climax was more thematically and tonally similar to its follow-up. The disturbing, low-budget and existential final few episodes of the show’s original run are exploring different ideas in a different manner than the film, but there is clearly a natural link between the explorations of personal and societal apocalypse. Yet, Violet Evergarden: The Movie doesn’t radically subvert aesthetics or plunge into nightmarish pessimism. It doesn’t lose many core tenets of Violet Evergarden’s ethos or change from the visual or narrative style of the show. The film is still a gorgeously animated, achingly tender melodrama designed to make audiences weep. It actively pays off trends and arcs established in the show, making the framing device a continuation of the central arc of the show’s best episode. Violet Evergarden: The Movie is not a work that burns its predecessor to the ground, it is designed to provide that final beat of closure to the viewers who invested in the show, and by most accounts, it succeeded at doing that. 

So why is Violet Evergarden so complicated for me now? Why has it taken me six months to go back and try another draft, not even bothering to attempt to salvage some of the words that I’d already typed? Why did the film change everything? The answer is simple, although expressing it isn’t. To me, the show was about living with grief, and the film proved that it wasn’t. My analysis of the show was built around it being a perfect example of life after grief. Violet has a desperation to prove that her love isn’t gone, that the man she’s built her life around (the Major) has got to be somewhere, but she is eventually is forced to reckon with the fact that he’s not coming home again. Instead of breaking down entirely, she channels herself to figuring out what love truly means, devotes herself to being an arbiter of other people’s thoughts and emotions, and uses her pain to create some goodness in the world. Violet finally understands love because she has lost it, and she uses her abilities to not magically heal herself, but to provide guidance and poetry for those who are also reckoning with similar feelings of pain. 

That was extremely healing and rewarding to me. I lost my partner almost three years ago now, and I still sometimes get the feeling that she’s going to come back to me, and all of the past few years have been a surreal dream. My purpose since those blackout months of emotional despair following her death has been to try and be good to people, to support people who are going through loss, who are facing it head-on and don’t know what to do, to give myself to my friends and family so that they don’t feel alone during the times of despair that happen to us all. I haven’t always succeeded and I can still be selfish, but Violet Evergarden felt like a reflection of where I was and also where I could be, it was a beacon of (emotionally exhausting) light that I could absorb myself into. 

Violet Evergarden’s episodes would capture broad ranges of human suffering and fear, without ever pivoting into cruelty or emotional manipulation, as Violet’s character always ensured that it couldn’t. The show’s core thematic message (to me) was that life is hard, painful and there is sometimes nothing you can do to avoid unimaginable suffering and torment, but that there are still ways to experience love and tenderness amidst this anguish. The key example of this is the show’s aforementioned best episode, where Violet is tasked with writing the letters of a dying mother to her young daughter, who is old enough to realise that her mother isn’t going to be on this world for much longer. The episode balances suffocating, heartbreaking feelings immaculately. The mother is both afraid of dying and of leaving her young daughter without the support of her parent, on top of being filled with despair that she’s not going to see her little girl grow up to be a woman. The daughter is scared about what’s happening to her mother, angry that she’s going to leave her, angry at everyone else for not stopping her from dying, and filled with terror about the future without her mother being in it. It is devastating to even think about, and the show handles the varying emotional turmoils with an unflinching approach. The episode has no interest in glossing over or hiding the hardest experiences in human life. It is unafraid to alienate audiences through its depiction of the depths of despair. 

Yet, there is sublime grace and beauty within this tragedy, as the mother tasks Violet to write and send letters for her daughter for decades every year on her birthday, so that her little girl will still have something to look forward to from her mother. The ending of the episode is devoted to a montage of those letters being read as the daughter grows up before our eyes, and it is a truly profound ending sequence. It manages to provide immense sadness and immense joy within two minutes of spellbinding television. The mother gets the opportunity to raise her daughter from beyond, the daughter gets to grow up with her mother’s voice and guidance alongside her, even though the two will never touch hands or exchange cuddles ever again. This was Violet Evergarden in a nutshell for me; there is nothing you can do to bring your loved one back from the dead, but there will always be pieces of them left that can provide you grace and comfort. In this instance, Violet gets to be the arbiter of that connection, to do something that will make a little girl feel less scared about living the rest of her life without her mother. The film’s greatest strength is how it builds upon the lingering repercussions of that episodic arc, crafting a narrative about the granddaughter of the woman who Violet wrote all those letters for, being central to the film’s intro and its coda. It shows how kindness and the power of beautiful words can transcend generations and continue to have meaning for centuries. Those words that were designed to make a daughter feel like her mother is still with her, have now helped a granddaughter understand a side of her grandmother that she never truly got to know.

The episode will always work, the re-contextualisation that the film provides does not take the power of those minutes away, and the additions make the ending even more poignant since both characters are now deceased. However, the larger thematic significance of what it represents to Violet Evergarden is a bit different now. While once it embodied the entirety of the show’s thematic ambitions, it no longer does, at least not in the way that I initially perceived it. The film’s key decision that changed everything about Violet Evergarden as a property is that the one true love that Violet has lost, the Major, who she’s grieved for since the start of the pilot episode is still alive. The arc between those characters no longer exists solely within Violet’s memories as she comes to terms with his loss, but a present-day dynamic. Violet’s pain transforms from grief to betrayal, and the work experiences its own transformation, going from a work about grieving and healing to becoming an extravagant romantic melodrama. The pain that she’s going through in the show, which does not have a solution in real life, has been solved in the film. In the end, she gets her happy ending, her grief was a facsimile and the last grasps of its pain is eradicated by the beauty of the romantic reunion. In my head, Violet Evergarden was a beautiful television show about what to do after losing a love of your life, and the fact that there was no solution beyond taking care of yourself and expressing true kindness to others. So having that grief and that journey be taken away from her wasn’t rewarding or fulfilling on a narrative level, in fact, it undermined so much of my investment and the significance I felt towards the entire property. Instead of being swept away by this character I cared about getting to have her love back with her, I felt sorrow over the reminder that mine would never return to me. 

I didn’t see what the film was doing until much later. It would be wrong to say that I don’t still ache for the interpretation I had of the show’s original run, as it connected with me on such a personal level. I preferred my experience with the show before I saw the film, and I don’t know how I’d view Violet Evergarden as a television series when I rewatch it down the road with that broad re-contextualisation. However, I inadvertently closed myself to what the film was doing because of my own experiences and interpretations. While I liked many things about it, I found myself more detached from the emotional crescendos because of that expectation, because of my own fixation on the narrative of grief I thought I was seeing. But Violet Evergarden isn’t about grief, at least not fundamentally. It isn’t about death or even romance. The hint is in Violet’s job description, it is a text about memory. 

Memories re-contextualise when provided with new experiences. Singing Bob Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone in the car with my father as we headed home from the movies a decade ago was a fun moment at the time, it’s a tender one in hindsight that shows how strong our relationship has been, and it’s something I’ll cry over when he passes away sometime in the future. That moment never changes but the way I approach it has and will continue to. The ending of How I Met Your Mother is so bad that it changed my viewpoint on the seasons that came beforehand, even though I enjoyed most of them greatly and had a lot of fun watching the earlier seasons with my mum. Re-contextualisation of memories is one of the most natural, tragic, frustrating and occasionally beautiful parts of human existence. It hurts to realise that we can never truly place ourselves back in the shoes of our past selves, memory is often used (at least by me) as a comfort blanket and a transportation into moments where pain didn’t dominate my life. But they are gone, and even the warm feelings of the past are changing subconsciously, being influenced further and further by the actions and emotions of the present. That has already happened with Violet Evergarden. My approach to the show is fundamentally different now because of the film, but I seemingly missed the textual importance of re-contextualisation within Violet Evergarden: The Movie’s narrative arc. 

The journey of the entire text isn’t about Violet overcoming grief, but being able to understand the significance of her own memories. She doesn’t know what the major means by “I love you” at the start of the show, goes through the process of grieving in the pursuit of that meaning, and is then fortunate enough to experience that love firsthand and not just in memories. The film isn’t about the eradication of the grieving process. It is a work about how memory defines our relationships with those we love, and about the ways that we are remembered by those who we’ve affected across the course of our lives. 

Violet Evergarden: The Movie continues the show’s trend of exploring difficult, existential subjects with one of its supporting arcs. A young boy is terminally ill and needs Violet’s services to write letters for his family. He doesn’t get better, is continuously angry at his situation (and at Violet by proxy) and his death is absolutely destructive for everyone in his life. There is no catharsis to be found in the passing of a child. Violet’s ability to provide letters and messages does not make the pain of the child go away, or make the pain of the family bearable or beautiful. Her kindness is appreciated, her words cherished, but it’s not enough to provide any true consolation. The existence of an auto memory doll has its limits, and showing love is not always enough to help those who are grieving or facing the prospect of their own deaths. This arc initially struck me as strange, as it showcases a sense of enraged pessimism that the show never tackles. It is a peculiar contrast from the overt sentimentalism of Violet’s resumed arc with the Major and while it successfully drew tears from my eyes, I was unsure how to feel about its implementation in the broader narrative. 

The realisation that the film is purposefully about re-contextualisation helped me understand its purpose and power. It is not just a re-contextualisation of Violet’s romance and yearning for her love, but a re-contextualisation of her place in the world and the impact of her craft on others. Most episodes of the show have Violet’s words and presence be a source of inspiration, comfort and emotional release. She makes a difference in so many lives, sometimes a difference that ripples through generations, sometimes a difference that creates a perfect day for someone to remember forever. Violet’s own interior life is often relegated to the endings of episodes, placed to the side while she deals with the emotions of the human beings she’s assigned to. The arc with the dying child shows her that no matter what, Violet is not an arbiter of fate. She can’t save people with just words alone. There will always be unimaginable suffering and while she can provide a service, it’s not worth giving every aspect of herself towards trying to alleviate it. The film is somewhat about Violet realising that her existence doesn’t have to be about the servicing of other people, but about the happiness and purpose of her own life. She is no longer just a device or an employee, she is a person who understands love and who wants to feel it tangibly in the moment. This arc provides her with the understanding of her limitations, and in a sense, provides her with an ending to the path that helped her discover the truest essence of herself. 

While I’ve been able to come around on many of the aspects of the film that I wasn’t sold on before, the main hurdle for me in engaging with Violet Evergarden: The Movie is the romance. It was the element that provided me with the most discomfort on initial viewing because of my own experiences with romantic grief, but it has remained an unconvincing aspect of the production even after accepting the reasons for the implementation. My problem with the romantic arc stems from two major elements. The first being that if the arc around Violet in the film is a journey of self-realisation and an acceptance that she can be happy and no longer exist solely for others, then the romance undercuts that resonance through a dependency on the idea of the Major. The second is that the Major’s actions are far from likeable and so much of the narrative between them in the film positions him as selfish, withdrawn and the opposite of a traditional romantic hero. These two elements colliding together, mixed with the hesitancy I already felt towards the arc, have ensured a lack of connection with the film’s most important dynamic. 

I have no issues with making an unlikeable or complicated romantic protagonist. Some of the most influential and beloved romance stories ever written have centred on boorish, arrogant men or women who eventually let their guards down and show a loving, intimate side to their prospective partner. However, the Major’s character arc is reminiscent of fellow military man Sergeant Troy’s arc in Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd. In that novel, Troy is married to protagonist Bathsheba, and is presumed dead for a year. He is secretly alive, having abandoned his wife and lifestyle, and eventually returns to the site of his abandonment. Instead of being conveyed as a romantic hero, making amends for his transgressions, Troy is depicted as treacherous and conniving, and is quickly killed by another suitor of Bathsheba’s upon his grandiose return to his marital home. There is no glory or romanticism in Troy’s return, just the sorrow of anguish and misguided grief. The Major withdraws himself further and further because he feels guilt for the sorrow he’s inflicted upon Violet, and therefore inflicts more in the process. He made the decision to make Violet experience grief because of what he thought would be best for her, not giving her a say in her own life and causing traumatisation that will likely stay with her forever. Throughout the film, Violet is the one who continuously makes efforts to contact her returning love, and is shut out repeatedly. She experiences an emotional breakdown and the Major still does not progress through his nightmarish block to provide comfort or support. 

Instead of the surge of joy that should arise from discovering that your lost love is still alive, that joy is undercut by the Major’s temperament and the decisions made in the screenplay. The return of the Major should have been a euphoric rush to the souls of the audience, and to Violet, and instead that rush quickly peters out in favour of tedious withdrawn drama. The film doesn’t necessarily earn the big, grandiose melodramatic finale where the two embrace their love together after all the hardships of their recent lives. The big sequence is gorgeously animated, excellently performed (by both the Japanese and English voice actors) and did have an impact on me emotionally. The textures of the water and the expressions on Violet’s face in this climax are as gorgeous as I’ve ever seen from two-dimensional animation. It is the moment that the television series has been quietly building to from the pilot, and what the audience has been waiting for since the re-introduction of the Major into the Violet Evergarden universe. Yet, instead of this being a rush of catharsis, I still felt myself questioning the foundations and the health of their relationship, and feeling slightly unsatisfied with the direction that the film had taken this dynamic. 

Violet Evergarden: The Movie transforms its property from being about grief to being about pain, and uses the ending to let go of both of those struggles and exist in a temporary state of nirvana. I don’t think it succeeds at creating that nirvana because of the way it chooses to position the Major’s character. The pain that Violet’s gone through isn’t just disappearing because of a romantic reconciliation. I didn’t believe in the happily ever after, because the film made it so clear that this situation was not a clearcut reunion for most of Violet and the Major’s screentime together. Maybe it would have been more dramatically consistent and impactful if the two of them did depart on their separate way. The recent Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 chose not to reunite Peter Quill and Gamora romantically, despite the demand from fans, because they weren’t the same people who fell in love throughout the other two films. It was disappointing in the cinema, as I wanted that romantic reunion, but it has forged itself as the more dramatically complex and emotional decision. Their final scene where Quill accepts that he’s got to let go of the woman he loved, embrace their memories together and move on with his life is one of the very best scenes in any superhero film. If Violet Evergarden: The Movie wanted to be a simple romantic conclusion where the two end up happily ever after, then the earlier complications read as confusing. It would have been very interesting to see a film where Violet does realise that the process of her own individualisation means that she doesn’t have to spend her life with the Major, or waste her time trying to convince someone who keeps abandoning her to love her properly. The arc with the little boy proves that Violet has to prioritise herself sometimes, and not give all of herself to a cause that will tear her down piece by piece. It would be deflating for many audiences who held out hope for the two of them to reunite and live happily ever after, but sometimes a sadder ending is the more honest one.

I have come around on the arc in a theoretical sense because Violet being able to apply what she’s learned about love onto the relationship she thought she’d lost, and getting a second chance at a happily ever after is a beautiful concept. The epilogue with the granddaughter reflecting on the impact that Violet’s had and the happiness she was able to find is absolutely perfect, and as good as any part of the show or the movie. I have accepted that the property is not about grief, but about memory. I have accepted that it is not about the loss of your love, but about the rebirth of it. Violet has gained true sentience and true willpower over her decisions, using the beauty and the pain of her memories in order to forge a beautiful life for herself with the man she loves. It ends up being something powerful, something I can resonate with and something I’d have actively wished for at a certain point in my life. I just struggle with the journey to get there. It remains a clear possibility that I am once again misreading the beauty of their dynamic because of my own frustrations and previous connections with the text. I have tried to engage directly with the film for what it is, and not what I wanted it to be, and that is a difficult task which I’ve surely failed at. I have grown a fondness and an appreciation for its boldness and the way it transformed my initial perspective of the show, while struggling with the exact details of those changes. I wonder how I’d have processed Violet Evergarden if I was spoiled on the exact nature of the film beforehand. 

While I was writing this draft, Bray Wyatt, a WWE wrestler who was a part of so many key memories of my life, died at the age of 36. One of my best friends and I had bonded over his matches on countless occasions, the most notable being Election Night 2020, where we got ourselves through the depression of the evening by watching him vs Seth Rollins at Hell in a Cell 2019. His last ever match was an extremely silly “Mountain Dew Pitch Black” match that ended with a random clown man doing a 20 foot dive onto a table. It was hysterical and was certain to go down as my pick for the funniest wrestling moment of 2023, until he passed and it became preserved as the final showcase of a modern legend. Memory is a cruel thing. Nothing can be exactly the way it was. The memories that we rake over in our minds repeatedly change a little every time we remember them. Images and feelings of contentment in our past will always change depending on who passes away, which relationships change, what happens in the world to transform the present. A match that made me cry with laughter in January will certainly make me cry when I rewatch it in December. For all of the struggles I’ve had writing this essay and with Violet Evergarden as a property, it’s the first thing I think of now when I reflect upon the fallibility and the tragedy of remembering. In times like these, I become grateful for the film avoiding tragedy and choosing to preserve the essence of Violet as happiness. I still wish things could be different, that it took different paths to get to beautiful conclusions, but things are what they are. We can either choose to embrace what is, long for what was, or hope for what might be. For a long time, my approach to life and to art were the latter two. In the case of Violet Evergarden, I choose to embrace.