A Silent Voice

**A Silent Voice** is a 2016 Japanese anime movie based on the manga of the same name. It was directed by Naoko Yamada, written by Reiko Yoshida, musically composed by Kensuke Ushio, edited by Kengo Shigemura, and produced by Eharu Ohashi, Shinichi Nakamura, Mikio Uetsuki, Toshio Iizuka, Kensuke Tateishi, and Kyoto Animation.

## Contents

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## Why It Rocks

1. Beautiful, jaw dropping animation.
2. Great voice acting in both sub and dub.
3. Amazing soundtrack that combines instrumental and electronic sounds for unique pieces that not only heighten the film's quieter scenes, but really speak to the characters' headspaces.
4. Engaging drama.
5. Incredibly likable characters. Even the main character Ishida, who starts out as an unlikable jerk, manages to become well-fleshed, likable, and complex later on.
6. Masterful visual storytelling. This is especially important in this movie because the main heroine Shouko is unable to hear so she has to communicate with sign language and body language.
7. The film looks at teen bullying from a soberingly hard-hitting perspective that's uncommon for the animated medium.
8. The ending is pretty saddening.
9. The treatment of the disabled may be shocking or even criminal to a lot of Western/European viewers, but sadly the treatment of disabled people in Asian countries is much like this film portrays. It is not uncommon for bullying and other malicious practices to be common towards the disabled, and little is done to stop it.
10. Shoko was voiced by an actual deaf actress in the English dub (Lexi Cowden) and French dub (Mélanie Lemaistre).

## Bad Qualities

1. Naoka Ueno is an incredibly unlikable character.
	* Unlike Shoya who eventually realized the error of his ways and tries to be a better person, Naoko doesn't change at all and is instead just as rude as she is when in elementary school and who is shown being mean, even violent, and unapologetic especially to Shoko whom she physically assaults twice in the film, and both times blames Shoko. Once on the Ferris wheel, when Ueno slaps Shouko for daring to say she hates *herself* due to Ueno's bullying. Then after Shoko's *attempted suicide*, Ueno blames Shoko for her "selfishness" in trying to end her own life, even though Shoko's suicide attempt was partly due to Ueno's continued bullying.
	* She's a hypocrite since ingratiates herself into Shoya and Shoko's new friend group partly to push Shoko out of it, by insisting Shoya reconnect with their old elementary school friends and continuing to bully and undermine Shoko when no one is looking. She then has the gall to blame *Shoko* for the on the bridge that results in the new friend group breaking up over it, when she herself refused to stop stirring the pot or opening old wounds.
	* After all of this she never gets her comeuppance making her a Karma Houdini. While Shouko's mother does beat the snot out of her after the latter blamed and physically attacked Shoko for her *attempted suicide*, unlike in the manga, Ueno never turns a new leaf. She's also never called out for her victim blaming mentality toward Shoko, and is in fact *rewarded* for her vile behavior by being welcomed back into Shoko's friend group at the end (by Shoko herself!) despite refusing to apologize for all the grief and drama she caused.
2. Some scenes from the manga were cut from the movie possibly so that the movie wouldn't be too long. For example:

* The part from the manga where Nagatsuka and Ishida made a movie together was cut from the movie.

## Reception

*A Silent Voice* was critically acclaimed by critics. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 95% based on 37 reviews, and an average rating of 7.61/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "As beautifully crafted as it is powerfully written, *A Silent Voice* looks at teen bullying from a soberingly hard-hitting perspective that's uncommon for the animated medium." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 78 out of 100, based on 10 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Makoto Shinkai, director of *Your Name*, called the film a "fantastic piece of work" and a "polished and grand production" which even he is unable to replicate. It won Best Animation of the Year in the 26th Japan Movie Critics Awards, where director Naoko Yamada also received praise for her work on the film. At the 2017 Annecy International Animated Film Festival, the film was selected as one of the nine feature films in competition.

### Box Office

The film opened at #2 at the Japanese box office behind Makoto Shinkai's *Your Name*, and grossed a total of ¥283 million from 200,000 admissions within two days of its premiere across 120 theaters. As of November 30, 2016, the film has grossed a total of over ¥2.2 billion from 1.7 million admissions. It ranked at #16 on Nikkei Hit Ranking for 2016 from East division. It was the 19th highest-grossing film in Japan in 2016 and also the 10th highest-grossing Japanese film of the year in the country (tied with *Death Note: Light Up the New World*), with ¥2.3 billion ($19.56 million).

In China, the film grossed CN¥44.5 million ($6.7 million). It also grossed $310,407 in the United States and Canada, $110,552 in the United Kingdom, $437,577 in Bolivia, New Zealand, Paraguay, Spain and Thailand, and $5,471,482 in other territories, bringing the film's worldwide total to approximately $33 million.