A Silent Voice - Reviews

A love story of a girl who thinks she is a burden and a boy who regret his burden.

I will always love this anime to my heart. It still aches in my memories. They both deserves the best; even though Shouya(male lead) was wrong he still tried his best for forgiveness. Shouko(female lead) needs to be like everyone she don't want to be a exception. 

Have you noticed the matching in their names- Shouya and Shouko

Shouya: the character development from a irritating annoying bully who hurts the weak to claim as the cool kid to a sweet kind regratful gentlemen who wants to get everything back to normal; back to the way it was. He regrets his past so much that it made him depressed. All he wanted to do was a sincere forgivness. Shouya sacrifice was the worst thing i could have imagined in this anime. I can't say that sacrifice was for the sake of his regret; no never. He suffered enough for his wrongdoing. He wanted to get a forgivness that he can be satisfied with. Maybe he had never realised while he was seeking for forgivness he has already fallen for her and He has already become someone special for her.

Shouko: She is a character without any development; she is always a girl who think she is a burden. Her existence itself was her biggest fear. She was aways scared of the society. She was like a rabbit trapped in a predator region. She was always running away even after she was hurt. She always smiled; because she don't want her feelings to hurt anyone. Even after she fall for him she still refuses her feelings because she always thinks her feeling will be a burden for other. The way she consider of Shouko as her friend even when he bullied her. Shouko deserved way better. I can never forget the scene when Shouya's mother beats Shouko and she crys and apologises. It still means that she was taking everything to her own fault. She thoughts that she was the reason; she got bullied; for everything.

Always will be my favourite Anime movie i have ever watched. I don't know if their is anyother Anime to cover this.

I enjoyed the animation and the message. I feel like everyone can ideantify with Shouko Nishimiya as a victim of bullying or Shoya Ishida as the person that did the bullying and learned its not okay when it was too late. I enjoyed the fact that Shouko and Shoya became to forgive each other and accept thier past by talking about it and not ignoring it. I just didnt like Naoka Ueno and Miki Kawai becuase Miki plays the victim and Naoka doesnt admit that her actions were toxic.  

I watched it after reading some very good reviews about the anime. 

It ended up, well, a bit disappoint me. In some ways. The anime brought up good theme and very relatable characters (oh, admit it, we do have bunch of asshole friends) which are so real. But the storyline was too slow and got me bored. This is based on my personal preference, so I give it a so-so score. The anime has way too much flashbacks and I don't really enjoy that kind of stuffs. It was touching, but not so heartwarming. 

I hate all of the characters here lol because they were so real. 

My heart hurts so much after seeing this! I loved this so much. I felt so bad for Shoko and Shoya. Seeing them endure all that pain hurt so much. The ending was so beautiful though, it made my heart ache.

This review contains spoilers.

Koe no Katachi did have the potential to become a masterpiece - the concept was fascinating and promised a tearjerker experience.   The movie starts off touching on the subject of bullying and does so exceptionally well, showcasing the bullying in a very matter-of-fact way instead of showing it conceptually.   The great start is however interrupted by a short moment of jolly music accompanying a three second bullying montage at one point. I have been thinking a lot about this because it really broke my immersion when it happened and I still do not understand why the director chose to do this.   But with that being said, if that was the only thing in there that broke my immersion, I would have been happy.   But with the whole concept of Nishimiya being put into a class where the teachers teach through speaking, and as a result forcing her to having to rely on 12-year-old classmates..., not to mention the implementation of sign language lessons for the entire class just to accommodate the needs of one student, yeah, I would take the montage over those any day of the week.

I think the movie did an overall good job at portraying both Ishida's and Nishimiya's internal feelings through its animation and directing.   But once we zoom out and take a few looks at the characters that surround them, everything turns into an abomination from a believability standpoint.   "I heard that Mashiba wants to be your friend."   I could just leave the quote alone, because you must be either a horrible writer, or one targeting your writing at 5-year-old kids for the inclusion of this line to make any sense, but let me elaborate on why this is such a bad inclusion, the cringiness of that line aside.   Ishida's first real step out of his lonely hell happens when his friendship with The Fat Guy begins.   Yes, I am going to be calling him 'The Fat Guy', I bet that is what most of you remember him as anyway.   The symbolic 'X' on his face takes a while to disappear.   Ishida first pays attention to him when he realizes someone might be similar to himself and choose the same place for eating lunch alone, but there's no interaction between them at that time.   We then get the whole bike scene, where Ishida offers his bike to be 'stolen' to help The Fat Guy out, but even then, the X stays on all the same.   Only when The Fat Guy stops Ishida in the middle of the street and reveals to him that he has been putting in effort to get Ishida's bike back, does the X disappear and Ishida is ready to open up to him.   Now back to the quote scene - right before that stupid line is said, all it takes for the X to disappear from Kawai's face is Ishida asking her why she did her hair differently, and suddenly, badum tss, yay all these 6 years of having an X on basically everybody's face seems like it did not matter after all.   Mashiba's X disappears after the whole ordeal as well of course, immediately too.   We've been shown zero reason for their X's to disappear this quickly up to this point, and it therefore makes zero sense for their relationship to have developed equally as fast.   It does appear that some significant material that showed interactions justifying the development of their relationship were cut for the purpose of containing everything in a two-hour movie – but that is even more worthy of criticism, as it means whoever made this film had the crucial material to adapt available to them, and yet deliberately chose not to adapt it.

After the 'accident' there is a scene featuring Ishida and Nishimiya which I felt like was overly dramatized, and I am sure that Ishida “waking up” at the exact right time greatly contributed to this feeling, but honestly, at that point I was already so disillusioned due to the inconsistent and unrealistic structure of this world that I did not even care all that much.

I think the story would have worked a lot better as a series.   The movie’s end goal lied in Ishida's personal development, but the lack of apparent development among the other characters made his own development feel so much shallower.   We are getting to see Ishida developing in an outside world so superficial and unrealistic, compared to Ishida himself, that even when disregarding the rushed way in which the development was presented, his personal development, no matter how powerful on its surface, fails to make a lasting impression that cuts deep.

Also, fuck no-consequence happy endings, Ishida or Nishimiya should've died after the balcony scene.