
The story of Koe no Katachi shows us how to understand people like them. All of us don't do these things but sometimes we ridicule them, sometimes we ignore them (and ignoring them isn't doing anything good at all, too). Let's face it, we have people like Nishimiya around us. Today, May 10, is the first day of its showing in the Philippines and I have no regrets watching it! This review is very late because of one big reason: the release of Koe no Katachi in Philippine cinemas was delayed. It’s not unwatchable, but it may as well be. Everyone and everything is so undefined, here, that I’m not sure there was even a recognizable arc to the story. Rather, what we get is an attempt to faithfully hit all the big story beats and images from the manga, and, in so doing, the movie overlooks its first duty as a movie: tell a good story. There just isn’t space for it-at least, not without drastically trimming plot and character alike. There are too many moving parts, too many characters with their own intertwining storylines to cohesively tackle in two hours. Closely adaptable? No-at least, not as a movie. It’s a brilliant, brilliant story-and it deserves better than what’s in this film.Ī Silent Voice is a series-and I emphasize series-based on character progressions over a period of months. It’s an overwhelmingly minority opinion, I know, but A Silent Voice is a slapdash, choppy, depthless summary of a remarkable, heartrending story of the despairing consequences from the most basic of our childhood stupidities: our ignorance of empathy.
