A Silent Voice / Koe no Katachi jmovie review

I first heard about Koe no Katachi last year because it won a whole bunch of manga awards. Intrigued, I read through the whole manga a deaf girl Shoko and her tormentor in primary school Shoya. I wasn't impressed with the manga because it felt like a typical teen angst, everyone has a secret burden style typical story.

However, the movie is a different animal because it does one important thing to the manga's story; it had to distill the 7 volume movie into 2 hours and cut out all the fat and concentrated the story on Shoko and Shoya instead of everyone's sob story. A Silent Voice is one of those rare times when an adaptation has truly improved on the original source material.

With all the unnecessary stuff trimmed out, I found myself having a greater appreciation of the two main characters. Shoko who wants so hard to be accepted that she blames herself for everything and Shoya who is burdened by his sins and cannot face the world.

Its easy to compare A Silent Voice to Your Name / Kimi no na wa with both being high school movies about a boy and a girl and both being released close to each other but A Silent Voice is a lot heavier and more psychological.

An interesting note about the sound design, during the movie I was thinking about how the music throughout the movie seemed muted and how it would have benefited from a more jpop soundtrack but when the last scene came, I understood that the muted music was intentional and it was a brave sacrifice in order to tell the story better.

Bravo to the people who did the adaptation and they've certainly turned an ok manga into a must watch movie. A Silent Voice is now showing in Australian cinemas.