A Silent Voice

In cer­tain moviego­ing cir­cles, the term ​‘ani­mé’ evokes expres­sion­is­tic flights of genre film­mak­ing, but Naoko Yamada’s A Silent Voice strips away the sci-fi or fan­ta­sy trap­pings that those famil­iar with the likes of Aki­ra, Spir­it­ed Away or 2016’s Your Name would expect, to dig deep into one of Japan­ese animation’s most fer­tile sub­gen­res: the slice-of-life, com­ing-of-age melo­dra­ma. And this is melo­dra­ma to the max.

Adapt­ed from Yoshi­to­ki Ōima’s seri­alised man­ga by Yamada’s fre­quent screen­writer col­lab­o­ra­tor, Reiko Yoshi­da, the film fol­lows Shoya Ishi­da, a bul­ly-turned-lon­er who wres­tles with the emo­tion­al fall­out of tor­ment­ing a deaf girl, Shoko Nishimiya, back in ele­men­tary school. Dri­ven to attempt­ed sui­cide by shame, guilt and self-loathing, Ishi­da is giv­en an oppor­tu­ni­ty to fix past mis­takes when he reunites with Nishimiya and slow­ly con­nects with friends old and new to sit­u­ate him­self with­in a sup­port­ive social circle.

Fans of Yama­da and Yoshida’s all-girl rock band series K‑On! (here hint­ed at in a pop­py open­ing cred­its set to, incon­gru­ous­ly, The Who’s ​‘My Gen­er­a­tion’) will find famil­iar joy in A Silent Voice’s expres­sive­ly-drawn sup­port­ing cast of char­ac­ters, from Ishida’s schlub­by pal Tomo­hi­ro to Nishimiya’s short-haired, tomboy­ish younger sis­ter, who, in far­ci­cal fash­ion, is ini­tial­ly sus­pect­ed by our hero to be her pro­tec­tive, toy boy suitor.

How­ev­er, con­sid­er A Silent Voice a straight­for­ward com­e­dy-dra­ma at your per­il. A heady, hec­tic open­ing half hour sees Yama­da fran­ti­cal­ly cut back and forth from past to present, over­lap­ping mem­o­ry, dream and real­i­ty, daz­zling and con­found­ing the view­er in an expert fac­sim­i­le of the des­per­ate, dis­tressed mind. More relaxed view­ers may be left behind, but those engaged by the film’s unex­pect­ed rhythms won’t be left wanting.

Through­out, the nar­ra­tive is made ever­more elab­o­rate by the quirks and com­pli­ca­tions of teenage angst. Mir­ror­ing Ishida’s self-absorbed anguish, Yamada’s pur­pose­ful­ly awk­ward shot com­po­si­tion is often off-cen­tre, the gaze blurred or sim­ply sheep­ish, with char­ac­ters cut off at the extreme edges of the frame. Remark­ably, this is ani­ma­tion as social­ly-anx­ious shoegazing.

It’s remark­able, too, that A Silent Voice is a rare fea­ture-length Japan­ese ani­ma­tion direct­ed by a woman to receive a the­atri­cal release in the UK. (Not that cin­e­mas are stuffed with solo female-direct­ed, fea­ture-length ani­ma­tions from any coun­try, mind – Kung Fu Pan­da 2 aside.) It may dis­ap­point some, then, that A Silent Voice is so firm­ly root­ed in a mas­cu­line point of view, with its pri­ma­ry female char­ac­ter lit­er­al­ly deprived of a voice, and made all the more pas­sive, and inscrutable, by her role in our protagonist’s arc of social sal­va­tion. But per­haps not every film needs to sat­is­fy the man­i­fold demands of progress to break new ground.

Ulti­mate­ly, A Silent Voice is, at heart, an all-the-feels ani­mé. And though it lacks the pol­ish and pre­ci­sion of its peers, it is cer­tain­ly impact­ful, and its very pre­sen­ta­tion on the big screen is wel­come. It broad­ens the pop­u­lar def­i­n­i­tion of ani­mé, and brings new voic­es – silenced or oth­er­wise – to the inter­na­tion­al stage.