It's An Anime Thing

A Silent Voice

I am so very excited for this book! And to celebrate this, I will start with the perfect first anime. If you have never watched anime before, I have the perfect anime for your first time. Koe No Katachi also known as 'A Silent Voice' is a beautiful movie with stunning art and a brilliant story. The story is about a bully named Shoya and a bullied girl named Shoko. It is about accepting differences, the effects bullying can have, as well as raw emotions.

Summary- Shoko is a deaf girl who joins an elementary school in hopes of making new friends. At first everyone is nice to her but slowly that changes when an obnoxious boy named Shoya begins bullying her. It got so bad that the kind hearted Shoko ends up leaving school. Then when the blame for Shoko's absence starts floating around, Shoya's friends turn on him and the bully ends up becoming the bullied.

My thoughts-

When it comes to any story let alone anime, all shows come down to a couple important factors. For me, those include art, characters, plot, production, and voice actors. So here were some of the highlights.

Art- First off the art was beautiful. I read some of the manga before the movie came out and they used a lot from the manga doing an amazing job with interpreting what the original artists and writers had done. Then as for the art, the art was breathtaking. There were so many beautiful shots! I still can't get over a lot of the symbolism. They truly brought the manga to life! It gave me chills! Ugh! This is the perfect first anime for anyone! Beautiful story, beautiful plot, and beautiful characters.

Characters- The character development was brilliant! I have said it before and will say it again, as a character developer myself, I am a sucker for good characters. The main characters were my favorite. Shoya (the boy) was overall a touching character. Through the movie, you could see the growth but you could also see the flaws! Flaws in a character are rare but so important. Not many people dare give their characters weaknesses or flaws but that is in fact what makes us human.

As for Shoko, her character development was beautiful. You could see how much the bullying and her differences effected her as a person. How it was slowly breaking her down. The growth and the raw emotions were so touching and emotional.

Plot- The plot had a nice speed to it. It was engaging and truly captured the Manga's essence. The characters made sense, it was logical, and it kept you intrigued until the end. To top it off, there was a pretty intense bomb shell that had me stunned man. Just watch it. Please just watch it!

Production- Over all it was super well done. There isn't much else to say. Nothing really annoyed me and it all flowed well.

Voice Actors- *I only watched it subbed (Japanese voice actors and English subtitles) so I cannot speak for a dubbed if there is one.*

So having read the manga first, I was sort of skeptical about who they would choose to voice the characters. Over all though, I loved the actors. They all did a wonderful job and it made my heart skip a few beats! The girl who played Shoko was exceptionally good as she had to talk as if she were deaf.

Mature content?- This is one of the cleaner animes. I don't really recall any cursing and there wasn't even any characters wearing suggestive clothing. It was super clean super good but it does cover some darker content like depression, anxiety, and suicide. I would say you should be at least 12 or 13 and up to watch.

*SPOILERS*

One of my favorite things in this anime was the use of X's over the faces. So since Shoya had become so scared of other people, he had walls up to everyone. People he had walls up to had x's over their faces. This to me was a beautiful use of symbolism.

Also can we talk about Shoya's character? Oh my gosh he was so adorable and so perfect! I loved that he had a weakness he had walls up he pushed people away and it took a lot for him to trust people. So well done! The best moment was the moment on the bridge when he was upset about everyone finding out he had bullied Shoko as a kid. (My mind is a bit fuzzy on that one) but he began shutting everyone down. He had come so far and made friends for the first time since elementary school! Then he back peddled and that was so excruciating to watch but well done.

Then can we talk about the big climax where Shoko nearly leaped to her death? I was so stunned, anyone else? I normally don't like scenes where a main character pulls the hero move and ends up getting hurt instead of the other person but I thought this one was well done. My one problem was that the scene where Shoya fell from the balcony wasn't really explained well. The Manga explained what happened better but it was still really touching.

My only problem with the anime was that the manga revealed more with the mother but that wasn't too big of a deal for me. The manga is obviously gonna have more to it but it was an interesting part of the story.

Anyways those were my thoughts. If you have any, please feel free to tell me in the comments.