• That would be all fine and good, if the movie showed the recovery of the girl who got unjustly picked on and the bully helping her trust again, or something like that, but this film is all about THE BULLY making amends, so that he doesn’t feel like killing himself. The deaf girl’s personality is not explored whatsoeverーshe’s just the apologetic, cute, love interest.
• Yes, you heard me correctly. Love interest. The first time the characters meet after the time skip, the deaf girl (with good reason) runs away from him. But, once they meet again, she’s starts flirting with him? She forgives him? This guy ripped out her hearing aids, causing her ears to bleed, and threw away thousands of dollars worth of hearing equipment for this deaf girl and beat her for getting him in trouble.
• Saori Hayami does a good job at voicing a deaf girl, but the victim of the story, practically has no role other than to be a Mary Sue that apologizes constantly for being abused. It’s sickly reminiscent of the scene in Royal Space Forceーwhere the main heroine apologized for almost getting raped. I threw my hands up and almost quit midway through the movie because of that characterization of a sweet, deaf girl.
• To make things worse, the main character doesn’t just keep ing her, but he brings the other bullies that used to hurt her along with him! Yeah, there’s a girl who used to be nice to her that comes along, too, and a fat guy that look’s like Deku if he gained two hundred pounds and serves absolutely no point in the story, except to make the protagonist look less creepy.
• The most well-written character was probably either Ueno or the deaf girl’s little sister. Ueno, while being a terrible person who had no right tagging along with the deaf girl after being awful to her, forcing her to apologize to her for “breaking up their friend group by snitching,” and beating her up, was one of the more fleshed out characters.
• Ueno’s character was refreshing, because she was a pretty girl that was ghetto trash and anime never does that! KyoAni did well at animating her mannerisms to look like she was a trashy, garbage can of a person and didn’t make her a moe copy/paste like most of their female characters. Sadly enough, Ueno (though unlikable) was far more realistic than the girl you’re supposed to be sympathizing with.
• The little sister wasn’t well-written eitherーseeing as she forgave the main character far too easily for all of the horrible shit he did to her sister and even seems to possibly like him? What is this, a fucking visual novel? And, she takes pictures of dead animals and posts them all over the house to... keep her sister from committing suicide? Why?
• I was seething throughout this whole movie though, if people thought Your Lie in April was melodramtic, this takes it to a new level. Seeing as the deaf Mary Sue hangs out with all of her bullies again, something bad is bound to happen. It was forced tension that didn’t need to be there. There were moments that were like, “Hey, let’s go to the amusement park with two of your bullies tagging along. Nothing can possibly go wrong!”
• As someone who was bullied pretty severely as a child and teenager, I would never EVER want to hand out with my bullies again, god forbid, have romantic feelings for one. It disgusted me that such a nice girl would be blaming herself for these awful people being unhappy, apologizing on her knees for something that was not her fault AT ALL, and even attempting suicide over it and then blaming herself when the protagonist falls while saving her.
• Overall, A Silent Voice is a movie that’s worth watching if you want to see pretty visuals, but other than that, no one should have to sit through this stupidity. It was hard watching a good person continually getting trauma heaped on her, for no good reason, while the asshole who hurt her gets to recover from the guilt of bullying her. It’s a bad movie and has bad messages in it. I give it a 3/10.
