The moment where my problems start is the when they start the class after Shouko's introduction. The first thing came to my mind is, wouldn't it have been better for her to go to special school? Because this school is a completely average one and by the looks of it, they do nothing to help her, in fact, the teacher immediately forgot about her disability. That just felt stupid to me. Then the music scene happened.
They were trying to teach music to a deaf kid... What? Whose idea was that? Certainly not the kids, who obviously weren't fans of it, then it must have been the teachers, but did they even think about that? This seems to me like an exceptionally retarded idea. At this point, my suspension of disbelief was completely destroyed, or would have been, if it had a chance to exist in the first place, because this happened in the first 7 minutes.
Alright, I can understand not sending her to a special school, her parents probably wanted her to be able to fit into society, didn't want to separate her. But that music scene, there is no logical explanation to that... perhaps they didn't want to hurt her feeling? This is just stupid, I mean, I won't pretend I know anything about handling people with disabilities, but still. Someone should have just to told her to not participate in that. I don't want to hurt anyone's feeling, and I am certain that disabled people don't like being reminded of their disabilities, and being pitied, but this is on the level of trying to teach dancing to someone who was born without legs, in order to make him\her feel normal. Like, I don't want to crush your feelings, but let's face reality, this isn't likely to work out, there is a difference between being considerate and borderline stupidity.
And there is the entirety of the bullying part. Man, where do I even begin? Ah yeah... kids sure are evil, huh? Did you know that kids can be exceptionally cruel without actual ill intent and most probably realise the error of their ways as they grow up? I did, therefore I knew there is no real significance to this, in the grand scheme of thing. You know, I was once in a similar bullying situation, but on the other side, me and my friend were the bullies. We didn't go anywhere the extent portrayed in this movie, but it was essentially bullying, and you know what, it never once occurred to us that we were the bad guys, we had zero malicious intent, it was all just a game to us, like everything else in life at that age. Obviously, I am a completely different person today, and it might sound like a shallow excuse, but it's the truth, we were around 12 and we just didn't know any better.
Honestly, I am not actually all that surprised that the kids bullied Shouko, because I believe the situation was handled really poorly. Imagine this, you are around 12 living your normal life, and then all of a sudden they dump this weird kid on you, who you don't really care about. All of a sudden they expect you to learn sign language, and with the adults pushing you to care about her, you are essentially being guilt-tripped into being her friend. You know what is the most natural human response to being forced to do something you don't want? Resistance. These kids just got a lot of emotional baggage thrown at them, which they were not enough mature to handle, it seems like a natural response that they turned against the cause of this extra stress... Shouko.
And when they are confronted about it, they start pointing at each other. I remember things like these happening from my childhood, when the class was confronted about something and asked the responsibles to stand up. No one did it, obviously, we were kids scared shitless, when we realised we did something wrong. Our response was shifting the blame, every man tried to cover his ass, we might have been good friends a moment ago, but now it is every man for himself. For these reasons I can't really blame the kids for everything that happened, I mean, they were kids, they didn't know better. In fact, some of the blame lies with adults, who failed to properly assess the situation. The teacher who slams his fist on the chalkboard was a real hypocrite, because in a previous scene he clearly saw the kids picking on Shouko, but just kept staring with his usual sleepy face, clearly not giving a damn. All in all, I don't think that either the children or the adults can be blamed for the situation, everyone handled it poorly, everyone made bad decisions, it was just an unfortunate sequence of events, that spiraled out of control, no single person can really be held responsible.
This was the moment when I dropped the movie, closing the tab. I knew that this will be the source of all the drama, and I already found it simply stupid and overreacted. However, curiosity won out in the end.
Now, I won't pretend I really understand what came after this, because I was so disinterested, that I couldn't sit through it all, I skipped huge parts of the movie and only watched parts where the drama happened. I wasn't disappointed, it was pure teenage drama bullshit. If I understood anything from it, especially the bridge scene, is that these people can't understand each other at all, or for that matter, themselves. Watching as their feelings go over each others head was pure cringe and pain. And the moral of the entire plot? The two main character realise that trying to commit suicide, might not be the best course of action... Woah, what a shocking revelation.
So yeah, some truly riveting stuff.
In the end, I have to admit that the movie wasn't meant for me. Depending on your outlook on life and your life experiences the movie can offer vastly different enjoyment. All I can say, that if you can't stand teenage drama, misunderstandings, self-sacrificial characters, who blame themselves for everything, and general human emotional "weakness", this might not be for you.
