Following the success of "Your name" we now have the next successful anime that is currently sweeping the charts of Japanese and Asian box offices. "A silent voice" captures various mature and serious topics, packed into a wonderfully animated 2 hour feature. It deals with topics such as: social anxiety, fitting in, bullying, suicide, all such that wouldn't be expected in a teenage romance/drama anime that we were led to believe. No, a silence voice tries to capture a much broader idea with a reasonable amount success.
Though the film has been heavily marketed to feature the female protagonist, a deaf girl she really isn't the centerpiece of this film, this film really takes a much more in depth look at our male protagonist, a bully. This is quite a refreshing view from the lens of someone on the other side of most modern day films and takes an unconventional look from a very interesting angle, while sidelining the romance as a brief sub-plot. This film at its core is about trying to fit in and the notion of being isolated but it was also highlighted that it was very important for one to get over their own guilt and to quite literally put in this film "face the world again".
This film does best at capturing this atmosphere, the sense of mistrust and uncertainty towards others, the use of literal crosses on the characters that our protagonist encounters to represent his own lack of self confidence and fear of social interactions was a very good stylistic choice in my opinion.
This film is however flawed mostly in the development of character, many of the secondary characters and even in some cases the main characters are quite poorly developed, many secondary characters come out of nowhere and their motives are very much unknown to the audiences and sometimes plain irrational, I understand that it was a very important thing that within this group of friends each character represents their own flaws however because of this lack of development these characters grow to be rather irritating and distracting, detracting from the overall narrative at various times. These character flaws can be understood due to the fact that this is an adaptation of a manga series and it should noted that it attempts to cram in way too much information resulting in such complications.
Though the film has been heavily marketed to feature the female protagonist, a deaf girl she really isn't the centerpiece of this film, this film really takes a much more in depth look at our male protagonist, a bully. This is quite a refreshing view from the lens of someone on the other side of most modern day films and takes an unconventional look from a very interesting angle, while sidelining the romance as a brief sub-plot. This film at its core is about trying to fit in and the notion of being isolated but it was also highlighted that it was very important for one to get over their own guilt and to quite literally put in this film "face the world again".
This film does best at capturing this atmosphere, the sense of mistrust and uncertainty towards others, the use of literal crosses on the characters that our protagonist encounters to represent his own lack of self confidence and fear of social interactions was a very good stylistic choice in my opinion.
This film is however flawed mostly in the development of character, many of the secondary characters and even in some cases the main characters are quite poorly developed, many secondary characters come out of nowhere and their motives are very much unknown to the audiences and sometimes plain irrational, I understand that it was a very important thing that within this group of friends each character represents their own flaws however because of this lack of development these characters grow to be rather irritating and distracting, detracting from the overall narrative at various times. These character flaws can be understood due to the fact that this is an adaptation of a manga series and it should noted that it attempts to cram in way too much information resulting in such complications.