I think him being alive changes the genre of the first season from being a serious look at suffering to suffering porn; the storytelling of the first season exposes us to a broken woman who desperately wants one thing and has to come to terms with the impossibility of getting it, while here she gets what she wanted the whole time as a seeming reward for becoming a better person. She goes on an emotional arc of accepting death but that all gets thrown out the window when the past returns. It turns out that all her realizations about love aren't preparing her to live as an individual in the post-war world, but to prepare her for her reunion and romance with the Major. Because what happens to her letter-writing career when she finds him? She's done--romance is the end of her life and the end of her story. Her happily ever after isn't accepting and loving herself, it's essentially necrophilia.
I like romance, I like Violet as a character, but not every story or character needs romance. The story is 1000x more poignant and meaningful with the Major dead. The people who made this are too cowardly to stand by the tragedy of the original which is the emotional heart of VE. Romeo and Juliet is timeless because the fake death at the end is experienced as real death, leading to real suicides. The story would be infinitely worse if both lovers came into full knowledge and there was a happily ever after. It is THE romance because Shakespeare wasn't a coward and didn't feel the need to wrap up every romance with a forced happily ever after. It's more romantic if they die because death gives the story stakes and weight. The Montague-Capulet beef killed them, thus working as an indictment of that political reality. Shakespeare didn't think, oh Romeo/Juliet is so nice, they deserve happiness so I can't let them go through with it. However, that's the logic in this movie. This is a story about WWI-era brutality; season 1 is true to that setting, while this movie Disneyfies that world and betrays its other themes for a totally unnecessary romance that works as pure fan-service plotting.
In addition, Violet being in love with the Major makes sense and has a charm because he's the only one who showed her affection and care in her terrible life. Him being dead eliminates all the weird age-inappropriate stuff of a real relationship while giving her an idea to live by. Him being alive and someone she can be in a relationship with makes you reckon with the fact that they met when she was a child and he benefited from using her as a human weapon (no matter his kindness). The Major is better as an idea (i.e. a personal idealization) and not a living person. Honestly, him being romantically attracted to her is extremely creepy and wrong. It turns a tragic story of a platonic, basically paternal/filial love into something that falls into anime trope cliche territory. Rather than a heartbreaking and then heartwarming acceptance of death and herself, the story becomes human weapon marries pedophile/groomer after an asspull to bring a man back from the dead. I think while the usual beautiful cinematography, music, animation exists in this, it would be better off not existing because it cancels out the core themes of the original. As it is, this movie feels like it rewards us and Violet for suffering while repudiating everything else about the original series. The Major alive plot line and subsequent romance cheapens the whole thing, even if the reunion with the Major is a definite emotional gutpunch.
