Koe no Katachi (A Silent Voice)

As a wild youth, elementary school student Shouya Ishida sought to beat boredom in the cruelest ways. When the deaf Shouko Nishimiya transfers into his class, Shouya and the rest of his class thoughtlessly bully her for fun. However, when her mother notifies the school, he is singled out and blamed for everything done to her. With Shouko transferring out of the school, Shouya is left at the mercy of his classmates. He is heartlessly ostracized all throughout elementary and middle school, while teachers turn a blind eye.

Now in his third year of high school, Shouya is still plagued by his wrongdoings as a young boy. Sincerely regretting his past actions, he sets out on a journey of redemption: to meet Shouko once more and make amends.

Koe no Katachi tells the heartwarming tale of Shouya's reunion with Shouko and his honest attempts to redeem himself, all while being continually haunted by the shadows of his past.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Background

Koe no Katachi won the following awards: Japanese Movie Critics Awards for Best Animation Feature Film in 2016; Japanese Academy Award for Excellent Animation of the Year in 2016; Tokyo Anime Award Festival for Anime of the Year (movie) & Best Screenplay / Original Story (Reiko Yoshida) in 2017; Japan Media Arts Festival for Animation Division - Excellence Award in 2017; Japan Movie Critics Awards for Best Animation of the Year in 2017; and Camera Japan Festival for Feature Film in 2017.

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Related Anime

Adaptation:	Koe no Katachi
Other:	Koe no Katachi Specials

More characters

Characters & Voice Actors

Nishimiya, Shouko

Main

Hayami, Saori
Japanese

Ishida, Shouya

Main

Irino, Miyu
Japanese

Nishimiya, Yuzuru

Supporting

Yuuki, Aoi
Japanese

Ueno, Naoka

Supporting

Kaneko, Yuuki
Japanese

Nagatsuka, Tomohiro

Supporting

Ono, Kensho
Japanese

Ishida, Maria

Supporting

Kamata, Erena
Japanese

Pedro

Supporting

Watanuki, Ryuunosuke
Japanese

Ishida, Miyako

Supporting

Yukino, Satsuki
Japanese

Sahara, Miyoko

Supporting

Ishikawa, Yui
Japanese

Mashiba, Satoshi

Supporting

Toyonaga, Toshiyuki
Japanese

More staff

Staff

Nakamura, Shinichi

Producer

Iizuka, Toshio

Producer

Tateishi, Kensuke

Producer

Senami, Riri

Assistant Producer

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Opening Theme

"My Generation (マイ・ジェネレーション)" by The Who

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Ending Theme

"Koi wo Shita no wa (恋をしたのは)" by aiko

More reviews

Reviews

May 26, 2017

Detective

Not Recommended

Koe no Katachi is dangerous because it is exploitative. I'm not going to pretend to know anything about deaf people. I don't. This movie certainly does not allow any greater understanding into the mind of deaf people is the point I want to iterate. It uses a serious problem as a plot device constantly and reduces Nishimiya to one-dimension. She is the textbook definition of a mary-sue as well as a damsel in distress. This is clearly troublesome when trying to explain deafness to an able-bodied audience.

Nishimiya's entire character is her illness. She is paper thin with her sole character trait being she likes ... to feed fish. She is so inhuman it is gross. Moe being used in this way is offensive. Including deafness or any other handicap into anime is an exciting idea, and I laud the attempt. Sadly, the execution is simply sickening. A personality-less self-insert male character who wants to repent for mistakes he made when he was a child falls in love with the object of his errs. It's inherently questionable to approach this topic from a romantic perspective because it's hard to sympathize with an object. And that is what Nishimiya is, an object. To be affected on, for us to pity, for us to see illness in a "new light," to justify against bullying, to see the indomitable human spirit. A show like Monster works this concept excellently because it uses the object of interest (Johan) as more of a symbol. This work tries to make Nishimiya a character as deeply developed as Shouya but they foist too many roles on an underdeveloped symbol, not even mentioning her role as a character.

Shouya, Ueno, and Ishida are all flat. Their motives are drawn to plot points not to logic. Ueno shows up when things finally start moving in a direction the audience would be satisfied with in tacky KyoAni fashion. Drama in this work is so over-the-top and predictable it's borderline cringe-worthy. Even if you could swallow the unbelievable developments that lead to the saccharine mid-section of the film the way it dissolves is so inauthentic. Shouya shows no signs of development and no effort to change throughout the work and then magically obtains a group of friends.

As for the abstract? The art? If you polish it up enough and use a voice technique the audience is unfamiliar with you have the safest ticket to visual and audio praise you can muster. Are there creative shots in this work? Impressive blocking of characters? Fresh setting or new takes on animation/style? No. This is a typical KyoAni work. They stuck with what sells.

What the point is thematically I can't tell you. I can tell you that this film is successfully doing what it wanted to do. Capitalize on disease using moe with the highest budget in the industry. This work is not even average, it is bad. Please stop and think about why you feel the way you do when you watch this work. If you're crying is it because Nishimiya is a person you have become endeared by or are you crying because she's like an injured puppy? Affection for things like this a wonderful human trait, but this work is dubious.

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Sep 18, 2016

Yamadarin

Recommended

[Story] 7 - Plot holes and cut sub-plots, excluded from the original script/manga.
[Art] 10 - Characters true to their manga designs, high quality animation.
[Sound] 7 - Creative use of sound/music. Nothing too special and memorable besides theme song.
[Character] 7 - Side characters had their story severely cut. Leaving some with empty character.
[Enjoyment] 10 - Tears, sadness, anger, happiness and laughs, the whole package.
[Overall] 8 - Definitely would watch again.

For those wondering how and where I watched this film, I watched in Japan. At Keisei Rosa10 in Chiba on September 17th.

Having read the manga 4 times over and crying every time, I went into the theater ...

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Sep 19, 2016

GohanwaOkazu

Recommended

Note: I watched it at the Toho Cinema Complex in Ario Nishiarai (*I had thought I could have been the only person on this review list who had really watched it at a cinema in Japan after reading a particularly harsh review, but I was wrong).

A quick overview: Koe no Katachi is a very well done film, although not without shortcomings, and which has dealt with (a) complex issue(s), and which leaves the viewer with questions but no easy conclusions. It is a powerful enough film to remember and ponder over, and people may draw different lessons, or perhaps none.

Pros: The sound and vision (KnK ... is top-notch Japanimation. I dare say that in some aspects, it is better than a Ghibli film). The ambient piano background music really matches with parts of the film, and the use of marimbas and even silence at the dramatic climax worked out well. Shoko Nishimiya is adorable when she has that half-proud and half-shy face when she does ponytail. Cute, but elegantly done and not unpleasant. However, was this better than Tamako Loves Story - I cannot tell. There were recognizably magical rooftop sequences in Yamada's K-On! and at the classroom and school ground with Midori in Tamako Love Story. I am not sure whether KnK had such "magic" moment despite its very fluid art.
Voice actors have all done a great job. Saori Hayami, Yuki Aoi, Miyu Irino were expectedly good, and Kaneko Yuki (who played Midori in Tamako) was a great pick for Ueno, another difficult character.

Con: I feel that the original manga's theme was very challenging for a very young manga artist to deal with; I also felt that some themes weren't fully explored or developed properly. Besides the bullying/redemption theme, there is an attachment/detachment in relationship theme, and on top of that, a male-female friendship and romance theme. Those themes coexisted and had resonated against each other for sure, but it's not done in a well-calculated and clear-cut way. That was the main issue of the serial manga, and to explore those themes, the manga author had to involve the characters to comes to terms with each other in a slightly forced situation (like the movie club and the event of going to a theme park).
Although the story line of the movie club was completely cut and altered, the theme park sequence was saved for the film- which still felt forced. However, I felt that Reiko Yoshida has done a nearly perfect job with script-writing and editing the story to be able to fit in for a two hours film. My only grievance is that the reason behind Nishimiya's decision at the climax was not convincingly told (which was as in the manga- but the Manga fully told Shoko's mother's sufferings of being divorced because of her child's disabilities and sis Yuzuru's side story of being bullied because of the same reason- so there was a more natural reason why Shoko should have cumulative feeling of guilt that she was making other people involved with her unhappy [and not just that sense of guilt towards breaking up Shoya's relationship with others]). Viewers might be puzzled then why Shoko had to make that decision in the climax (as it was already not exactly written convincingly to start with in the original manga).

Final verdict: Having written down the cons, this is a very challenging work of art (yes, "art", which is not simple "entertainment"), and it did choke my heart at several moments. This won't be everyone's favorite, as it deals with a serious and dark issue, and as it's not all straightforward (as in Tamako Love Story) - but it leaves viewers questioning about their own relationship with other people in the past and present.

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Saw it, so - so... Nothing special. Kleferi - Aug 16, 2017	19 replies	by SatouMatsuzaka »» 7 minutes ago
Is this the best Anime Film of the 21st Century? ( 1 2 3 ) duckybear - May 17, 2022	141 replies	by SatouMatsuzaka »» 9 minutes ago
It’s kind of sad people think this movie is somehow a masterpiece. ( 1 2 ) SatouMatsuzaka - Mar 26	73 replies	by SatouMatsuzaka »» 13 minutes ago
What makes this movie a masterpiece ? ( 1 2 ) manan_12- - Feb 6, 2022	72 replies	by SatouMatsuzaka »» 4 hours ago
Poll: Koe no Katachi Episode 1 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ... Last Page ) nihon_no_tsuki - Sep 21, 2016	621 replies	by NightKing1701 »» Yesterday, 8:21 AM

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Koe no Katachi

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Ishida, Shouya

Nishimiya, Yuzuru

Ueno, Naoka

Nagatsuka, Tomohiro

Ishida, Maria

Pedro

Ishida, Miyako

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