I am… puzzled. I genuinely do enjoy those anime original episodes. However, I just don’t get why Kyoani is deviating so much from the original work. The novel was really well paced, and adjustments had to be made to fit an anime format, but they are completely changing the dynamic. The novel is like “This is Violet, try to understand how’s she’s lived and how she evolves through ghostwriting”, while the anime is more “This is Violet. She’s a blank page, but please watch her grow”.
I think they’ve failed in trying to portray Violet then. Seems like almost every episode goes back to the major telling her “I love you”. But there’s not really any development from that, and we’ve learned practically nothing new about Violet. So far she’s learned a bit about words and ghostwriting but that’s it, and that’s really all we’ve got in four episodes. Plus the “I love you” just isn’t very interesting. The omnibus stuff and seeing the other characters is fine, but Violet herself is not very interesting, and her story is being dragged out. They need to shift the focus back to the episodic stories and the other characters more.
I think this is the main problem – Violet just doesn’t work really well as a POV character. It just seems like it would be much more fitting if Violet was portrayed more as an enigma of sorts that we as viewers get to try and understand through the eyes of her clients. By going straight to her backstory and thoughts, I feel like we lose a lot of the mysticism I felt from the first chapter of the LN. However, it feels like the story is about the people around Violet and not herself. You can see clearly Iris maturing emotionally throughout the episode but its frustrating to see Violet basically the same. Her demeanor and way of speaking like a robot is just getting to me now.
「The Only Shinyuu Site」 
I really agree with what you’re saying here – the whole “this is Violet, she is a blank page” thing. I haven’t read the LN, but I am hoping to see more of its content soon!
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Violet’s quite an annoying character, to be honest—I think this approach to her is softening the Violet we meet in episodes one and two, and may be finally working. But I don’t think it’ll be the format throughout the series (and I’m just guessing here)—we only have three other supporting characters, after all, and quite a few episodes more than that.
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Well…KyoAni is no stranger to producing meaningless anime-original content that just pad out episodes and/or series.
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Haha, yeah a lot of people have been going hard on Dragon Ball FighterZ Cory, no worries, lol. And I enjoyed this anime episode, even though Iris’s acts kind of stuck up, both she and Violet definitely developed this episode. Violet actually sent letters that were more heartfelt, and Iris learned from Violet and decided to finally get over the guy she was trying to get with. And a nice moment at the end where we learn how Violet gets her name from Major Gilbert. No surprise it was from a flower just like Iris. Now we can move on to the actual story like you said Cory, I think the characters have been developed quite nicely through 4 episodes. And obviously, the animation is incredible.
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