I felt like this episode in particular had a lot of layers and I thought about a lot of things after watching it.
Dietfried Bougainvillea (Major Gilbert’s brother) is charged with protecting the envoy and Violet’s coworkers so they can get to the peace talks and negotiations.
Violet notices explosions and smoke along the proposed train route and decides to assist Dietfried.
One of the complex things is Violet and Dietfried’s relationship. He blames her for the death of his brother. She blames herself. But they have to work together to succeed against this enemy.
Linked to that is Violet’s refusal to kill anyone. In other anime (I’m thinking of Rurouni Kenshin and Black Cat in particular) when the main character decides not to kill anymore there is definitely conflict over that decision but the battles are presented differently. Their opponents stay down until the police come to arrest them, or they decide to reform themselves, or they self-destruct. In Violet’s case, in this episode, we see the deficits immediately. Her opponents get back up after she knocks them down. When she is saving one from falling off the train, she gets a blow to the back. It also gives Dietfried more work to do because he has to save her and he has to take out the people she won’t kill.
But I can’t fault her motivations, especially when she states that one of her motivations is that Gilbert ordered her to “live,” rather than “kill people.”
From the Deck of the Matcha Latte 