10 Best Anime ONLY On Netflix
1. Violet Evergarden
Leave it to Kyoto Animation to leave you lying in a pool of your own tears, and thanking them for the experience.
One of the most profound emotional experiences this author has ever had has been watching Violet Evergarden, the story of a child soldier named Violet surviving the war she was bred specifically to fight, and having to come to terms with her own trauma as she adapts to something no one ever felt the need to prepare this young girl for: a life after combat.
What follows are 13 of the most moving stories ever put to animation, as Violet - now a professional letter writer called an Auto Memory Doll - travels the country for her assignments and explores the complex, uplifting, soul crushing, human stories of her clients. While at the same time slowly regaining the humanity that the military worked so hard to beat out of her.
Make no mistake, you WILL cry at some point in this show, it is a question of If not When. But at no point does it feel manipulative. Violet Evergarden earns every emotion it gets out of you, with mature, nuanced writing, and complex themes of PTSD, childhood trauma, grief and the overcoming thereof, and how life can be painful, but how that pain is always worth it.
Violet Evergarden is the best Netflix exclusive anime. Period.