Story: 3 - So much potential, so much wasted time dancing around trying to actually develop the plot and protagonist. It's a hodgepodge of short stories really, all extremely loosely correlated through the ruse of Violet being a Auto Memoire Doll. Short stories themselves are pretty good for the side characters themselves, but contribute nothing to the grand scheme of things.
Art: 10 - It's beautiful, simple as that, but you probably could've come up with that yourself.
Sound: 8 - Nothing too notably bad nor stands out as outstanding. Voice acting isn't a detriment, Violet has a very well performed monotone that fits her character... Which brings us to...
Character: 3 - There's simply been next to no character development for the one that matters, Violet. There's so much potential for development, but instead the producers try to "develop" Violet through the interactions and development of side characters in the individual episodes, or "short stories", but it's only the side characters that develop, leaving Violet in neutral, seldom moving forward.
Enjoyment: 4 - Oh, how I wanted to love this anime, but the lack of continuity and development is frustrating. One could literally watch episode 1, skip to episode 6, and miss nothing. There's that little development. It's like watching a sunflower grow, only to see 5 weeks later, it didn't really grow.
Overall: 5 - This is pretty generous, and mostly because of the outstanding work on the animation. Some may love the short story format, but personally, there is too little development of plot and Violet to rate this higher.
(Below is pretty rough edit of my initial feelings after watching episode 6. It's not particularly well articulated, but it is raw feelings and frustrations)
I don't know how to feel about this honestly. Everything screams at me that this is great, but I can't help that there's just no development of plot, or even characters aside from people we never see again. It's like a series of short stories after all, but I just can't bring myself to say it's great. Violet has had little character development, especially over the last couple episodes (5 & 6), no realizations about herself or anything. Instead, they spend so much time developing short story characters who, in the grand scheme of things, don't really matter. I want to love this, but I'm not looking for a series of unrelated short stories that don't develop the characters that really matter. I'm getting tired of the dance that they play around the Major's current status. I wanna see development, I want to see Violet work, struggle, and come out with new knowledge about herself, learn about how to cope with the grief of loss. So much wasted potential with the stellar animation. Do better. No more short stories. Development.
