Koe no katachi (2016)

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1. 

   Windill

   Beautiful anime about sensitive teenagers trying to overcome their weaknesses. 5 years 5 months ago
2. 

   Princess_Of_Snails

   Beautiful! 7 years 4 months ago
3. 

   Siskoid

   Director Naoko Yamada's brand is young people suffering quietly but daring to reach out, timidly. A Silent Voice (I guess some distributor somewhere didn't think "The Shape of Voice" would play in English markets) is just such a film. In 6th grade, Ishida bullied a deaf girl (Nishimiya) relentlessly until she had to be pulled out of school, at which point he is ostracized, though the there's plenty of guilt to go around. By late high school, Ishida, devoured by guilt and isolation, is on the verge of desperate outrage, until he meets Nishimiya again and an unlikely friendship is struck in his need for redemption. The story remarks on how redemption is a personal choice, because it never seems like Nishimiya, as pure a soul as you're likely to find, resents those events. Time is often enough for forgiveness from others, it's forgiving oneself that's the hard part (indeed, both characters are too focused on their self-loathing to realize it). A tear jerker for sure. I was especially taken with Yamada's sensitive psychological stylings, not only putting crosses over the faces of the people Ishida has taught himself to blank out (no doubt in the original Manga), but following through by making her "camera" look away, at details, or at strange frames. It may be hard to imagine, at first, that we could forgive Ishida, but Yamada puts us in his head, and in any case, it's not our job to do so. It's his. 2 years 7 months ago

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