I made myself finish watching the anime series "Violet Evergarden," but it was pretty rough going. I was curious about "Violet" because it was billed as a slower, more thoughtful show that looked very pretty and relaxing. Unfortunately, the aesthetics of "Violet" don't appeal to me at all, and I had a lot of trouble with the premise. Violet Evergarden (Yui Ishikawa) is a teenaged girl who lives in a steampunk-ish world with technology from roughly WWI. A former soldier, she comes to the country of Leiden after losing limbs and her beloved Major Gilbert (Daisuke Namikawa). She wants to learn to be an "auto memories doll," someone who ghostwrites letters. And eventually, she pens many thoughtful letters for her various clients, and learns more about the human experience in the process.
I had some major problems with the basic construction of Violet and her universe. Violet is one of those curious anime creatures who is an almost total blank slate aside from somehow also being a perfect killing machine. Because Major Gilbert rescued and cared about her, Violet loves him, but only knows how to behave like an automaton. Her arc in the series is learning how to become a real girl with her own drives and wants. However, there's so much contradictory information about who Violet is. When she's found, she's clearly a child, but treated by those around her as a weapon, as though this is commonplace. No attempt is made to explain or investigate her real origins. I can see why the show's creators preferred to put more emphasis on who Violet is, as opposed to what Violet is, but the sketchy backstory just feels too tenuous and not thought through.
And I found myself constantly rolling my eyes at the show's other conceits. The featured "dolls" are all flamboyantly designed and costumed like options in a dating simulator. Several of the romantic relationships involve wildly inappropriate age gaps, including a fourteen year-old who commissions love letters to a 24 year-old fiancee. Several of the stand-alone stories are decent enough, though heavy on the sentiment and melodrama. I tried to be patient, but I couldn't get away from the feeling that the show was leaning way too hard into a bundle of bad character tropes and outdated, fetishy ideas that I had seen done better before. Violet herself does eventually become an admirable heroine, but getting there was not worth the trip.
Now onward, to something better. "Promised Neverland" is easily the most entertaining anime series I've watched in a long while. It also features a very high concept premise, but does a lot of good things with it, and the execution is note perfect. "Promised Neverland" is a twelve-episode horror/thriller series, about a group of orphan children who discover they're in danger and need to escape from their home and caretakers. The oldest and sharpest of the group are a trio of eleven year-olds: Emma (Sumire Morohoshi), Ray (Mariya Ise), and Norman (Maaya Uchida), who serve as our leads. The story is tightly serialized, with most episodes ending on cliffhangers. Only the premiere has any disturbing images and gore, but there's plenty of child endangerment throughout to keep viewers on the edges of their seats.
Most of "Promised Neverland" is a tense game of cat and mouse between the three children and the woman who looks after them, Isabella (Yuko Kaida), who is hiding a lot of secrets. I expected the series to be very action-oriented, but the writers are more interested in mind games and interpersonal conflicts. The kids don't agree on how the escape should be carried out, and there are all sorts of complications with scouting missions, getting supplies, shifting loyalties, and the interference of a second adult, Sister Krone (Nao Fujita). The show ends up having more in common with something like "Death Note" than the usual shonen action fodder. The fantasy worldbuilding is also very clever, giving solid reasons for why we have super-smart eleven year-olds in this universe who are capable of plotting out all these intricate machinations against their adult enemies.
The series boasts excellent production values with great character designs and impressively nuanced animation. I'm also impressed that it's just the right length at twelve episodes, and ends exactly where it should. "Promised Neverland" is based on the first few arcs of a much longer-running manga, and there is a second season that's just been released. However, because the subsequent stories move beyond the original horror premise into broader genre fare, I don't know that it'll be able to keep up the same level of quality moving forward. I mean, remember what happened with those later seasons of "Prison Break" after the prison break?
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