"Monotone robo ninja girl learns to write letters"
More or less, I've just described the entire first half of this anime and it's every bit as riveting as it sounds. I was hoping this anime would make me fight off tears, but more often than not it made me fight off sleep.
Main character violet is a one woman army and can kick ass and take names like a superhero, but no explanation whatsoever is ever given as to why. She just can. It feels unbelievably convenient, lazy and cheap. The pacing in the first half is brutal. Watching Violet learn to write letters and then *gasp* actually write them just isn't entertaining.
There are also many moments where Violet is written as being unrealistic levels of naive and unaware. She was in the military and around death constantly, and her work sees her be around death all the time to, and yet it absolutely never occurs to her that the one person she cares about could be dead too. I'd be a lot more accepting of it if internally she knows it and simply cannot accept it, but it's instead presented in a way to where this being possible does not even occur to her, which is just stupid.
On the plus side, the animation is gorgeous throughout. They did an excellent job here. The soundtrack is reasonably good but it definitely gets repetitive. The second half is definitely better than the first with improved pacing and a couple of borderline emotional moments, but this anime never escapes from its lack of entertainment value as a whole and plot problems.
I love love love Kyoto Animation and have thoroughly enjoyed what I've seen of their previous work so I am very disappointed to say this is the first piece of theirs I've seen that I quite frankly didn't overly care for. It wasn't bad, but, I really didn't think it was especially good either.
Glad I watched it once (I guess), wouldn't watch again and wouldn't recommend.
OBJECTIVE RATING- 6.75-7
PERSONAL ENJOYMENT RATING- 6.5-7
