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title: “koe no katachi” published: 2019-07-01
this post is a little difficult in knowing what and what not to say, especially
as there are other people who play a major role in the story leading up to my
watching of koe no katachi and i don't wish to accidentally reveal or make it
easier to ascertain anyone's physical identity on here, be it my friends’ or my
own. that said, my identity is probably already a cakewalk to determine for
gafam and any big and evil enough government (looking at you, 鬼お兄様)
like can be found in the divided kingdom and corporate states of
dystopia to name a couple that i could easily think of more appropriate names
for without any forethought. so, because i cannot realistically explain enough
of the story to make this post an interesting, sickening, and emotionally
gut-wrenching true tale of "man's inhumanity to man" and anime being awesome without betraying the right to privacy we all have (trying to
set a good example here for 鬼お兄様), i guess i will just talk about the
anime.
just a heads up; i'm not great at knowing what might be considered spoiling since everyone has they're own opinions on this, so while i will try and avoid anything super specific i might end up spoiling as early as in my list of subject matters the film covers and i may end up talking about the symbolic ending of the film.
koe no katachi (the shape of voice / a silent voice)
the beginning
i found myself a little lost at times, to be honest. no, not lost so much as confused. there were a few things that really stood out as being off, although some might have been due more to the language barrier than problems with the film itself (and yes, the irony is not lost on me). for any who don't know anything about the film, it's about a deaf transfer student and a boy and subject matters it covers include:
- bullying
- language barriers
- conforming to toxic group mentalities and behaviours
- forgiveness
- empathy
- suicide
- friendship
- love and hate especially among people who are different
anyway, the flow of time wasn't done super well in my opinion. and it's hard to remember these are elementary schoolers when their voices and mannerisms don't paint an image of what a sixth grade elementary school kid would sound like half of the time and their voices and appearances are almost identical to their five-years-later counterparts’. this is actually one of the biggest problems i had with this film (this is going from memory so i may not be remembering everything correctly; i wasn't taking notes as i watched or anything, so take everything i say with a grain of salt). the weird flow of time and sudden time jump(s) make me think maybe the manga was done better but had more time to it but i can't say for sure, having never read it.
i can't talk about the show in time segments after all, so i'm going to just do my rambling thing
another thing that seemed really unnatural and sudden was how they dealt with the character growth, at least in the first half of the film. if the characters didn't look almost identical to how they looked five years ago i might have found this easier to rationalise in my head. the character motivations for some characters were not well defined or didn't make a lot of sense at times; at other times, they were extremely believable and even relatable to the point of being able to invoke specific emotions very effectively.
despite most of what i've said so far being rather critical…
…i very much enjoyed most of the show. a lot of the bullying scenes made me uncomfortable and uneasy, but i can't imagine the intention of said scenes to be anything but to elicit aforementioned negative emotions, so that isn't a complaint. the second half of the show had much better character growth and made a lot more logical sense than the beginning, in a lot of ways making up for the problems i had with the first parts.
this is why i shouldn't spend so much time writing the preambles to my posts
namely, i feel like i don't know how to bring up my favourite parts of the show in a way that makes any sense whatsoever and so the best i can do is say the things the show dealt with (see bulleted list above) were overall done very well. things i planned on mentioning or talking about in more detail include the little sister with the camera, the families of the two main characters (especially the mothers), the ways in which this film is an emotional roller coaster (at which time i'd probably try and be clever and talk about the roller coaster in the film), the symbolic ending, suicide and why people do and don't do it, how the deaf girl sounded when she spoke (honestly wouldn't be surprised if i learned the voice actor for her was in fact deaf herself), and how many parallels i can find to my own life in this film. considering how long this is already, be glad i don't have the words or desire to go into any more detail.
in conclusion, i apologise for how messy this post ended up being and how much of it was spend saying not much about anything. if i ever decide to review an anime, i'll make sure it doesn't end up looking like this blog post. and if you thought i was trying to review anime in this or any previous post, sorry but that has not been my intention at all. i like to talk about anime. i don't know how to review it, and i don't want to write anything that i don't have fun writing about.
またね～