A Silent Voice Review

By Melissa Oates

A Silent Voice the movie or in Japanese is known as Koe No Katachi is directed by Naoko Yamada from the studio Kyoto Animation.

The movie tells a story about Shoko who after moving to a new school gets bullies and teased by her classmates, especially by a young boy called Shoya. Shoko is then forced to transfer after the bullying becomes more aggressive, thus turning Shoya’s friends and classmates away from him and his cruel behaviour.

Fast-forward and enters a young adult Shoya, after being friendless and everyone hating him from elementary school now leading up to high school Shoya is shamed with guilt over what he had done as a child and is now determined more than ever to set things right with Shoko.

The beginning of the movie made me confused as it started out with a young adult Shoya, selling his stuff, his calendar ripped from the rest of the month, closing his bank account and finally giving his sleeping mother money with it saying, ‘what I owe’ on the envelope. We then see Shoya on a bridge with the impression that he was going to jump as we see a small scene of him actually jump off the cliff, but this was just an image as we see him snap out of his thoughts as a few children set off fireworks down near the river under the bridge.

From there we are then taken into the past we enter what most anime’s have which is an opening, showing Shoya and his friends hanging out with My Generation by The Who playing in the background, this then switches to us seeing a young Shoko being introduced to the class, she takes out a notebook which she has written in to tell the class to use the book to speak to her.

This is when the bullying takes place, Shoya begins to torment her and make fun of her, at one point a girl called Naoka joins in and notices that Shoko is wearing hearing aids, and starts playing catch with the to Shoya, this whole scene in general makes me angry, even though it’s an anime to see that nobody helps Shoko, it’s even heart breaking to see that she just smiles at them and even asks Shoya to be her friend through the means of sign language.

After Shoko is transferred, Shoya is then ostracised by his classmates and his friends who also were the ones that bullied Shoko as well, this carried on from elementary school all through middle school as well although it’s not quite clear whether it was carried through to high school.

After seeing how it was all caused through elementary school the movie then stays consistent when Shoya is in high school, we see him change after his ‘suicide attempt’ I say this lightly as he luckily never went through with it. We see him change as a character to try and make amends with Shoko, even seeing that he started to take up sign language, and make new friends in the process

This movie is such a whirlwind of emotions, hating some characters but loving others, it deals with hard hitting subjects such as suicide and bullying, which educates viewers in these themes. The animation itself is gorgeous with a really nice setting in a small town of Japan, it is very aesthetically pleasing to the eye.

The only disappointing thing through this movie was some of the relationships building between the characters especially for Shoya and Kazuki after the end of the friendship I would have like to have seen them have more of an ending then they did. However I wouldn’t let one issue change my mind about this movie at all and I do highly recommend this too others to watch.