Sometimes the answer is to just listen. Don’t worry this isn’t a deep meaning article where you learn something about yourself, it’s a review on the 26th Japan Movie Critics’ Best animation of the year: “Koe no Katachi” or “A Silent Voice”. I had the opportunity to finally watch this film that I had on my radar since last April of 2016! The film was directed by Naoko Yamada leading the all-star team at Kyoto Animation whose works include “The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya”, “Clannad”, “Clannad: After Story”, and “Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid”. With such team, I had a lot of high hopes for this movie that lived up to my expectations. This films runs up to two hours and ten minutes, which is actually a longer than the average anime films that runs between an hour and an hour and one-half, but this is no average anime film to say the least. “A Silent Voice” was even praised by director of the box-office hit “Your Name”, Makoto Shinkai as a film so extraordinary that he even could not replicate in content. WOW! Simply amazes me. Before you go into this movie, it does touch upon some very delicate matters such as disability and bullying, two subjects that can never go well together. Without further to do, here’s a quick teaser.

Shoya Ishida is a young high school senior making his rounds at his job and selling off his property. However his days are coming to an end as he plans to commit suicide. He reflects back to his elementary school days where he met Shoko Nishimiya, a transfer student who is also deaf. As a naive boy, he starts to bully Shoko due to her disability, although he is not alone, but he is the main perpetrator. He scares her, throws her journal she uses to communicate with others, and worse: he broke and stole eight hearing aids from her. Things actually begin to get out of hand when Shoko never lashes out or retaliate; instead she tries even more to understand her classmates. Ultimately, she cracks and can’t stand Shoya’s bullying anymore; Shoko’s mother transfers her out to a new school. It doesn’t end there though, Shoya is forced to bite down on the karma sandwich and is bullied as well, by his ‘friends’ who also joined him in the bullying. He is casted out and labeled as a delinquent throughout elementary, junior high, and high school.

Coming back to the present, Shoya is about to head over to the bridge he plans to jump off from, he runs into Shoko Nishimiya, the deaf girl. Shoko is reluctant at first and runs away with Shoya chasing after her. They are at a stopping point and Shoya starts to sign to her. Surprised, Shoko is appreciative that Shoya learned how to do sign language and begins to respond back to him despite the awful things he has done to her in elementary school. Then Shoya does the one thing that even surprises himself where he asks the same thing she said to him all those years back, “Would you be my friend?” She says yes and they part ways. Shoya is on the edge of the bridge when he just remembered that he said if Shoko would like to be his friend and continues to live on. Over and over, Shoya starts to open up to the people that turned their backs on him and he starts to see Shoko day to day. Shoya begins a new path to redemption, all thanks to Shoko.

One of the most appealing thing that anime does is how it touches upon important themes that can concern everybody. Themes such as bullying, suicide, depression, disabilities, and forgiveness are just the main concepts that “A Silent Voice” is based around. As a person whose life have been severely affected bullying, this movie meant so much more to me. It accurately depicts the roles of the bully and victim, for example how Shoko doesn’t retaliate or even get angry at first, but when she does lash out, it is followed by a point where the bullying ends, but negatively. Every time I saw Shoko get hurt, she reminded a whole lot of me back when I was in elementary school and all I could think was how well a job that Kyoto Animation did. Which then I am reminded that the author of the manga, which came before the film, Yoshitoki Oima did an even more amazing job on the accuracy and portrayal of bullying and suicide contemplation. *Major Spoiler ahead* the concept of suicide was also impressively accurate and the reaction of the characters to it. Shoko left a fireworks festival that she was attending with her sister, mother, and Shoya to go back to her home. Shoko’s sister asks Shoya to go back to their apartment to get her camera. He goes back and finds the door unlocked and sees Shoko climbing on a railing. Shoya recognizes the situation and saves her, but as he is pulling her back up, he falls into the river and is comatose. The build up to this scene was quite true to the reality of suicide. If you were to watch this, you would never expect Shoko to plan to kill herself, but how that’s how it is in reality too. Too often do you hear people say, “I never expected him/her to commit suicide? They were always happy and smiling.” *End of Spoiler*

Just like in the manga, the dialogue and text of the deaf character, Shoko Nishimiya, were distorted to match the likeness of an actual deaf person. The voice acting of Shoko was played by seiyuu (Japanese for voice actor/actress) veteran: Saori Hayami and did an amazing job on mimicking a deaf person’s attempt of speaking even though they have never heard the word pronunciations. The character of Shoko really does a splendid job on being a visual representative for bully victims. Her loneliness depicts the harsh reality that kids go through so often and her deafness even furthers that isolation, giving the audience a truthful understanding. “A Silent Voice” and Saori Hayami does a great job on providing an insight on the experience that bully victims go through and how the world is viewed by them. Some of these insights include how victims tend to believe that the world is better off without them, on the contrary film shows how wonderful and positive an impact they can make just by being there.

Compared to the source, the manga obviously had more content than the film, just like all the “Harry Potter” books to the films. As someone who has read all seven of the manga, I felt that the film could have added three scenes even though the film trickled over the two-hour mark by the end. The three scenes, if you have read the manga volumes, are the movie project proposal to the teacher, the movie filming process, and the epilogue. If anything, I thought the manga epilogue was almost guaranteed to make an appearance in the movie. The manga epilogue just gave so much closure to understand the final relationship between Shoya and Shoko and I feel that the movie could have gained a more positive review with it. Onward to the end of my review, I give “A Silent Voice”, 8 hearing aids out of 10. Even though Makoto Shinkai believes that this film was incomparable, I still think that his movie: “Your Name” is on a higher level to “A Silent Voice”. The reason that I gave “A Silent Voice” a lower score is because of the important scenes that were left out from the manga. One thing that is super important to me, is keeping an adaptation as loyal and close to the source. Sure you can argue for those who have read the manga or light novels that they enjoy the animated adaptation more if it was slightly different, but for as short as a series such as “A Silent Voice”, I believe the more similar to the manga, the better the movie could have been. Regardless, this film is definitely in my top three of anime films and I recommend it to all, both the manga and the movie. According to the official website: http://koenokatachi-movie.com/bddvd/, the DVD and Blu-ray for “A Silent Voice” came out May 17th, 2017, so get your copy of this truly special film. You can also enjoy the “A Silent Voice” series by buying the seven-manga volumes on www.amazon.com or if you are a crunchyroll premium member, you can also read all the volumes on their site at http://www.crunchyroll.com/comics/manga/a-silent-voice-koe-no-katachi/volumes. (That’s how I read all of “A Silent Voice”). You truly won’t regret watching or reading this series, give it a shot and I guarantee you will tear up, cry, and scream in joy!

As for the themes in this series, I would like to add my two cents. It really is an eye-opening experience and shows a perspective of bullying that is hard to portray. In the end, things go well, but not without bumps and bruises. Sometimes it is a case of ego that prevents the strongest of friendships from forming. Shoya’s ego deteriorates the healthiness of his relationships and he chooses to ignore the people around him to avoid the crippling judgment. In the end, he realizes the answer to his problems was to listen to other people. My main point is to learn this lesson from Shoya; I could have used this a few years back. And my message for those who do get bullied for your differences, it’s not ok, but it gets better. The movie reminded me of how many are affected by bullying which leads to severe depression and the awful result of suicide. As someone, who has those dark days in their past, my message to you is to trudge on, persevere, and don’t give up. Believe me it does get better, but you got to work at it and sometimes you feel that you’re alone like Shoko. For her, it was painful to watch how lonely she was and how her deafness also isolated her even more, and it pains me to be reminded that so many people are experiencing her reality. If you’re alone, it’s ok to reach your hand out and ask for help, you should never have to worry about being a bother to someone. If you read this and this pertains to you, know that you’re not alone and there people who want to help you.