A Silent Voice // Koe No Katachi
A Silent Voice is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Yoshitoki Ōima and became a Japanese animated film produced by Kyoto Animation, releasing on September 17, 2016. The movie is directed by Naoko Yamada and written by Reiko Yoshida.
A Silent Voice is a story about forgiveness, not just forgiving others, but forgiving yourself for the mistakes you have made in the past. Over the course of reading this series, you will cry, you will laugh, and you will hopefully gain a new perspective on some aspects of life. - Source
The movie starts with the main character, Shōya Ishida, counting down the down the days till he commits suicide. The day he decided to kill himself, he was standing on a bridge ready to jump off when he heard fireworks go off. This started a flashback to when he was in 6th grade, he was known as the class clown and had a group of friends. This was the day that he gets a new classmate.
She enters the room and her teacher introduces her as Shouko Nishimiya and asks her to tell the class more about herself. There's a pause in the room as no action is made by her or any of the other classmates. The teacher taps her shoulder and she takes out a notebook that was previously written on. The notebook explains that she is deaf, she cannot hear and she asks the class to communicate through the notebook.
At first, they're curious about her, wanting to know more, but after a while, they find her an easy target for bullying. After a year of bullying and throwing around her hearing aids, Shouko still wants to be friends with Shōya yet he doesn't want anything to do with her.
Shōya ends up paying for this tenfold. His so-called 'friends' had ratted on him for playing with Shouko's hearing aids, damaging or throwing them away. His mother, who wasn't in the best place financially, had to pay for the damages and she came back with a bleeding ear.
Since then Shōya learns to put up walls and to block other people out, this is shown by a big purple X on each of the characters faces. The only face that has never had an X was Shouko and her family. The X is shown throughout the movie as someone who Shoya does not wish to acknowledge or socialize with.
Flashback ending, he decides to go to Shouko's sign language class so he can feel clean of his conscience. He meets her for the first time since 6th grade and she's understandably scared. He tries to make peace with her, showing the same sign she showed him all those years ago asking - Can we be friends?
There's much more in this story but I truly do want you to watch and experience this movie for yourself. You can watch two adorable characters stumble their way across love meeting quite a few bumps on the road. Something that both me and my boyfriend adored was when she tried to confess her feelings but instead, she said 'I lub moo' and he thought she meant the moon. Although the second time we watched it, the words were changed to suki, meaning the moon.
One thing is known, both Shōya and Shouko hate themselves for their past. Shouko hates herself because she feels as though she's only been a burden to those she cares about. Shōya hates himself because he believes he can only bring bad to the world and hates himself even further because of what he did to Shouko.
During the night of a festival, there were fireworks that were burning bright in the sky. Shouko and Shōya had spent time together and talked a bit more, he had accidentally used the sign that meant 'together' but her response to it was that he would only be sad with her. She excused herself saying that she needed to study and departed, her younger sister, Yuzuru, asked him to grab her camera for her.
Making his way to their apartment he notices Shouko standing on the balcony railings. He quickly rushes towards her in hopes of stopping her but he stumbles and falls onto the ground. Looking up he sees that she's no longer there on the balcony. I don't want to spoil it, it's too good for that!
This was such a beautiful movie, the art, the characters, the story behind it all was just all very thought out. I haven't read the actual manga, but, as usual, the book is claimed to be better than the movie. I highly recommend this movie, it's a movie that you can go back to and still learn more about. The ending was a bit of a coin toss and you're left with an unsatisfying finale depending on your point of view, but the story in itself was breathtaking. I've barely scratched the surface of this movie and I truly hope I can encourage others to watch it also so they can form their own opinion on the movie.
Rating: 9.7/10
For those of you who may have already watched the movie, I found a great AMV on YouTube based on Koe no Katachi. The music in the background is called I'll be Good by Jaymes Young.
Sources:
A Silent Voice - Manga
A Silent Voice - Movie
Notebook
Can We Be Friends?
Purple X's
Hi @jewlzie!
I am (currently @quekery) a curator for AkibaSteem and this is just to let you know that I upvoted your post:
“Great review!”
Also, feel free to join our community on Discord!
https://discord.gg/7JQruwmWhat a beautiful and thorough review. It certainly compels me to look for the manga and anime :D.
Thank you! And please do, it’s such a beautifully animated movie that should have a lot of attention
Posted using Partiko iOS
One of the best manga/movies I ever seen, I even thought of buying the manga (real life) but couldn't because of shipping fees to my country.
In my opinion the manga is better than the movie because it's longer and has some loose points resolved. Watching the movie after reading all manga chapters will give you an awesome experience!
But the movie guys did a great job, few scenes were better than any manga could do. One of scenes, made so much impact on me I pressed replay more than tow times. Great movie!!
group I have a feeling that this post might win this contest.I think you should add the tag #AkibaSteem and change #blog tag into #anime. If you're not already join this
I just checked now since the Steem nodes were down but I don't have enough posts to qualify, but thank you for your recommendations and for reading! :)
Never heard of Silent voice, funny enough I've heard all about Koe no katachi, how did that get translated?
Koe no Katachi is really beatiful, it's a drama that touches you and plays with your fibers. For me it was somewhat personal as I had gone through some similar stuff in the pass, and it's true that forgiving myself is... well I still haven't forgived myself and it's been well over 12 years now :D
It's not uncommon for japanese anime to make word games, in this case tsuki and suki (moon, like).
Personally I'm a huge fan of anime, though more often than not I prefer watching stuff like this, that gets to me. Anohana, Clannad, Angel Beats!, and the recently aired movie: "Your name" all got to me :D
I've watched A Silent Voice and Your Name also! Both are great movies that left me holding my breath and questioning multiple things. At the end of Your Name I was literally screaming at both of the characters just hoping that they'd notice each other!! (Spoiler: Thank god they did)
I have to say that forgiving yourself takes a lot of time, and most often another person to help you get through. Just remember that time goes on, and it always will. Time is able to heal most things, although a bit of help from another is always nice. I hope that one day you're able to find a good friend who will help through :)