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| Violet Evergarden |
I don't really watch anime. But recently I've been recommended the award-winning anime series "Violet Evergarden". And boy, was I impressed.
The story is basically about a girl called Violet Evergarden, a soldier, later turned "Auto Memory Doll" (a ghostwriter writing letters for people) in a postal company, in order to understand what "I love you" means, which is said to her by her former commanding officer Major Gilbert in the army with his dying breath.
Now, I'm not gonna go into the story with too much detail so I don't spoil it for those of you that wants to watch the show and have yet to do so (The series is available on Netflix). But I'd like to talk about one of the things that made the entire story such a powerful "tear gas" - The words in the letters.
Violet was raised to be an emotionless killer. It wasn't until her transition into an "Auto Memory Doll" where she starts to learn and feel different emotions through writing letters for various people, conveying people's emotions on a piece of paper. No matter how complicated they might be, Violet always managed to get their emotions conveyed.
We now live in a world where we don't really do letters anymore. You either text, call or email your friends and family. You see, technology has made human connection so easy that we no longer have to fit a bunch of words in a letter following a specific format, paste a stamp and mail it off with Royal Mail. Yet, in this world where 1s and 0s are flying around constantly, people often feel disconnected. Why is that? It's because those digital pulses, shooting across cables and satellites, promise proximity but ultimately, deliver a hollow echo. A "like" button might boost our popularity, but it rarely warms the soul like a shared glance across a table. Emails stack up unread (literally me. Not the uni ones of course), texts blur into notifications we swipe away, and video calls flatten faces into pixels, stripping away the subtle cues of a sigh or a hesitant smile. Technology enables our boundless reach (Perhaps except North Korea), but it ultimately cannot simulate the intimacy, turning conversations into transactions: quick, convenient, and forgettable.
That's why I've always preferred a face-to-face dialogue over texting. An actual human interaction instead of typing or talking into an OLED screen. Regardless, the point I'm making is: it's just not the same as writing a letter. Not even emails. You pour your heart and soul onto a letter because you know that it's gonna take a while for the recipient to read it and eventually sends back a reply. In our world of 0s and 1s, we've traded that ritual for the dopamine hit of "sent", and chances are, you didn't even write that email or text yourself because of the emergence of AI. But on a piece of paper, it's all you. There isn't autocorrect or "read receipts" to spike your anxiety, just you and the words on your mind.
So, I guess, in a way, writing a letter isn't about perfection. It's about surrender. You sign off the page knowing it might arrive battered (Reminds you of Evri, no?), unread, or life changing, and within that risk lies the real power of you and your words, sitting on a piece of paper that'll last longer than your iPhone screen.
As always, let me know your thoughts on this by commenting below, and have a wonderful rest of your day.
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