Caelin Bragg
Advertising & Distribution Manager
A Silent Voice brings something unique to the world of animated films and offers a realistic representation of the trials and tribulations of repenting for one’s mistakes.
A Silent Voice (sometimes translated as The Shape of Voice) is one of the latest movies by anime powerhouse Kyoto Animation, producers of series such as The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and Clannad, and is adapted from the manga of the same name by Yoshitoki Ooima.
The movie revolves around Shouya Ishida, who spent his elementary school days with friends bullying a new transfer student, Shouko Nishimiya, for being deaf, eventually forcing her transfer to a different school. The bulk of the film takes place years later with Ishida in his final year of high school, after being ostracized by his classmates for his prior bullying, trying to meet and atone for his treatment of Nishimiya.
A Silent Voice does a fantastic job of portraying the modern Ishida in a sympathetic light without fully forgiving his transgressions as a child. It could have easily taken his side and tried to normalize his bullying, but there’s never a point in the movie where his actions as a kid felt justified or okay, and he is constantly shown in a bad light when referencing back to it.
Being adapted from a manga, A Silent Voice had to cut content out in order to not be many hours long, but a lot of context and background information was cut from the movie, some plot points felt rushed and, as a result, didn’t land with the same emotional impact as they did in the manga and some plot threads were taken out entirely. It’s understandable as the movie is already over two hours long, and sometimes the manga did feel longwinded, but it ended up making the film feel incomplete in some spots.
A Silent Voice is a difficult movie to watch at times. It deals with extremely personal and serious subject matter as it works through Ishida and Nishimiya’s emotional baggage from their pasts that is rarely so blatant and laid out. Uncomfortable moments are aplenty throughout, but the film always handles them beautifully and with a care that understands all the dynamics behind the actions on display.
But even with the difficult and hopeless times shown throughout the film, A Silent Voice reminds viewers that, with any low point, high points are always somewhere on the horizon, and difficulties are a part of the journey there. It’s a fantastic movie that is now readily available to watch online and one that I highly recommend to anyone, with the caveat that the subject matter might be sensitive to some viewers.