A little kid bullies a deaf girl and tries to not be a shitbag years later.
This is one of my favorite manga, and the movie did not disappoint. It’s a much better depiction of children than most anime, where they’re angels who can do no wrong but are strangely sexually aware from birth. In Koe no Katachi, children are complete scum, just like in real life. These people are way more evil than the villains in most recent anime. And they do it while being entirely believable too.
My only complaint is that a number of the side characters in the group of friends did not get fleshed out enough. I’ve even read the manga and I was still wondering who some of these people are. They also cut the plot about making a movie (the original excuse for the group to get together). While I think that was an excellent choice, it left it a bit of a mystery why these people who mostly hate each other on some level were hanging out together and pretending to be friends. I think they could have just left out Kawai, Sahara, and the boy whose name I forget to give some more focus on Ueno. As it is, for all these characters, I was left mildly confused who they were and what they were doing.
But, for the most part, I loved this movie! Fabulous job by KyoAni as usual.
- Storytelling – A – Great, emotional story.
- Voice – A – Nothing else like it!
- Characters – A – Some side characters were weaker, but the main ones were fabulous.
- Attention Grab – A – Kept me glued.
- Production – A – Looks amazing.
- Overall – A-
Recommendations – Kimi no na Wa, Orange, One Week Friends
I really like it also…. I thought everything was going to end….. but then… and then…. really emmotional… 🙂
I got the impression that, for all the scumbag-ness of the children, the manga (currently reading it on CR, haven’t seen the movie yet) lays even more blame on the feet of adults. The children end up in bullying out of egotism and frustration, but it’s the adults who handle the whole thing terribly, either by laziness, incompetence, or an actually not-so-thinly veiled desire that it could end exactly how it does, and cause the disaster, which in the long run risks ruining the lives of bullied and bullies alike, whereas they get away scot free.
Yeah, that is absolutely correct, the movie barely focused on the adults aside from the main girl’s mother. But the manga was much harsher on the adults than on the children. The children were scumbags for a reason and for the most part managed to rise above their upbringing.