Voices Unheard: An Emotional Journey Through “A Silent Voice”

Plot Summary:

Directed by Naoko Yamada, A Silent Voice revolves around the two main characters, a young man named Shoya Ishida and a young woman named Shoko Nishimiya. The movie starts with Shoya crossing out a date on his calendar, where he was going to quit his part-time job. He goes to his part-time job location and quits, sells all of his personal belongings for 30,000 yen, gives the money to his older sister, and heads out to a tall bridge, where he almost kills himself until a group of boys with firecrackers stun him out of it.  

Time moves backwards, and Ishida is now a young boy who is waiting for a transfer student to arrive. Apparently, the transfer student, as stated by one of his girl classmates, is a girl. The transfer student is deaf, and she communicates through a notebook. She introduces herself with the notebook to the class. Naoko Ueno seems to be the only girl who is antagonistic toward her. The scenes progress in the children’s daily lives and classes. When it's Shoko’s time to read aloud, the next reader, Shoya, mocked her way of speaking.  

It is shown that Shoya and Naoko start bullying Shoko more and more. The pranks or bullying seem to be fairly harmless, like throwing her hearing aids or pouring water on her, but it gradually becomes to an unacceptable point. He rips the hearing aids out of her ears, and she winces and cries out in pain with blood spilling from her ears. She tried to be Shoya’s friend, but he constantly rejected and bullied her. She never seemed to hold it against him, however. Right after she temporarily left the school due to the loss of eight of her hearing aids and the constant bullying, Shoya was targeted as the next person to be isolated and bullied. No one stood up for him, as they were all guilty but did not take responsibility for their actions.  

Shoya’s sister went to apologize for her son’s actions and came back bloody. Shoko tried to wash the words off his desk, and they got into a physical fight. Time skips forwards again back to the present with Shoya in high school. He is attending a sign-language class and encounters Shoko again as a high schooler. Upon seeing each other, Shoko runs away instinctively, as she does not know how to respond. After asking if they can become friends in sign language, the scene moves to his house with his sister and her daughter. His sister reveals that she had suspicions he was going to commit suicide. She threatens to burn the part-time money until he promises to not kill himself.  

It is revealed that after the elementary school incident, the people from that school spread rumors about him and completely ruined his self esteem to the point where whenever he sees someone, they have x marks covering their faces. He goes through his everyday life seeing these people with x marks and avoiding everyone due to his past trauma. He tries to see Shoko, but he is turned away by a person younger than them. After a guy at his school retrieved his bike for him, the x mark peeled away from his face. He became friends with the guy who sat behind him in class named Nagatsuka. They both went to see Shoko. Shoya brought a big piece of bread for Shoko to feed the carp fish, as she loved doing that when she was younger.  

After speaking with Shoko outside, they playfully fight over the notebook with writing in it. The notebook falls into the river, and they both jump in to retrieve it. At school, the incident became popular on the internet, and all of his classmates are paying attention to him. He goes after school to pick up his sister’s daughter and runs into Yuzuru Nishimiya, who is Shoko’s younger sister, who posted the video of him. After Yuzuru spends time with Shoya and his family, she reveals who she is and her relationship to Shoko. Yuzuru’s mother comes and slaps Shoya in the face. The four of them meet up and talk to each other again. The scene then returns back to school, where the x marks are visible on all of his classmates aside from Nagatsuka.  

Shoya tried to ask Kawai in his class if he knew the contact information of Sahara. However, she did not know. They ended up finding each other anyways. He enabled Shoko and Sahara to reunite and catch up with each other, as they were close friends. Naoko tries to get close to Shoya, as she invites him to the cat café she works at. She also hops on his bike and tries to invite him out. Naoko ridicules Shoya for being friends with Shoko. They meet up several times afterwards. They have fairly awkward interactions, but it seems like they are both trying to become real friends naturally. Shoko ends up confessing her feelings, but Shoya did not understand the confession. After speaking with Kawai and Mashiba, the x marks on their faces also peel off. They meet Sahara and Nagatsuka at the old bridge.  

The entire group goes to the amusement park. For some reason, Naoko is trying to get fairly close and friendly to Shoko much to her discomfort. Even the x mark on Naoko’s face removes after he realizes that he is starting to make friends with all of these people, or at least wanting to become “familiar” with them as people. He runs into Shimada when getting Takoyaki which was set up by Naoko. He was one of the main bullies to him during elementary school. The x mark returns on Naoko’s face after this incident. Naoko expresses how she liked the environment and friendships between all of them before Shoko arrived. She forced Shoya to see Shimada even though he has scars from that time.  

Yuzuru had taken a secret video of what happened in the Ferris wheel between Naoko and Shoko. Naoko blames Shoko for everything that happened and for ruining Shoya’s life. Kawai and Mashiba are revealed to be using Shoya and pushing him back into isolation on purpose by playing dumb. The group fell apart, as everyone started blaming each other. Due to the incident blowing up again about the bullying in elementary school, Shoya pushes everyone out of his life. Yuzuru seems to be neglecting classes and herself, so her granny tries to tell her to take more care of herself even though she is worried about her sister.  

After the death of their grandmother, Shoya invites Shoko out to an art museum. The ending of the scene was not positive, as Shoko too wanted to separate herself from Shoya with the reason that she did not want to cause misfortune on him. He helped bake a birthday cake for Shoko’s and Yuzuru’s mother. The scene switches to a festival. Shoya watches the fireworks with Shoko’s family. Shoya said she needed to return to her apartment to study. Yuzuru asked to grab the camera from the apartment and witnessed Shoko trying to jump off her balcony to commit suicide. He barely grabs her off the ledge. Internally, he promises to “listen to everyone’s voices” and to stop excluding himself purposefully.  

In return for getting her safely on the balcony, Shoya falls instead. He dreams that he is at the bottom of the water and floating. Shoko’s mother and younger sister interact with Shoya’s sister. Shoko’s mother prostrates herself on the ground and bows in repentance. The scene switches to Naoko beating up Shoko who she blames for Shoya’s hospitalization. Shoko is shown to have a broken arm. Shoko’s mother starts to fight and protect her daughter against Naoko’s physical attacks. Shoko deeply apologizes and prostrates herself too on the ground. Once Shoko’s mother and Yuzuru return to their apartment, Yuzuru starts to hang up photos around the apartment to stop Shoko from killing herself. Shoko goes on a “journey” of resolve and speaks to everyone in Shoya’s life.  

After waking up, Shoya was in a panic because he could not find anyone. He runs out of the hospital and meets up coincidentally with Shoko on the bridge at night. They talk to each other about what had happened. He tells her not to blame herself and that they are very similar. He also states that he found the will to live. Shoya returns to his house, where Maria is watering the plants, and thought that he was dead. Several things happened nearing the end: Naoko tried to resolve her guilt by speaking with him about things in the past, Shoko’s mother got a haircut by Shoya’s sister, and Shoya helps Yuzuru study.  

Once he returns back to school, he reveals to Shoko that he has a hard time looking at other people in the eyes. The entire class appears happy to see that he has returned. Shoya reunites with Nagatsuka, and they work things out. Apparently, the entire class and several people who knew Shoya created multi-colored paper cranes for him. Shoko taught Naoko how to say “idiot” in sign language and called her an idiot instead of apologizing like she usually did. When Shoya started walking around the school festival, his ears and his eyes completely opened. All of the x marks on everyone’s faces peeled off, and his full-scale hearing returned. He started crying once he pictured his friend’s smiling faces.  

Personal Thoughts:

What really struck me about this movie was how the director used animation to convey controversial topics that is extremely difficult to discuss even in live-action films. It also reveals just how devastatingly common bullying is in Japanese society. Both physical and emotional bullying ultimately scarred both of the main characters. The aggressors never really fully apologized, but there were several short scenes which did reveal that even they felt some level of guilt and repentance. Naoko was one such character that fit this example.  

Shoya Ishida’s character was especially heartbreaking, as he went from the initial aggressor to the victim at the turn of a scene. The “bullying” he did to Shoko was out of a lack of comprehension of her disability and her life. His redeeming feature was his effort after his failed suicide attempt. He learned sign language to communicate with Shoko if they ever met again. He truly reflected for his actions, especially after he became the target of bullying himself. Shoko Nishimiya’s character was even more tragic, as she could not change the fundamental aspect of herself that everyone seemed to pick apart and hurt her for. Ultimately, she learned acceptance of herself thanks to Shoya, but it is hard to live a life where you cannot be fully accepted.  

The theme of suicide presented in the movie was dark yet indifferent. There was no emotional buildup to Shoya’s attempted suicide. No one except for his sister recognized the strange patterns of his life (and she only did so after he came back alive). It is almost as if the world does not care no matter what happens. The second suicide attempt was presented with more emotional buildup except that it still was presented amidst the fireworks blurring everything. Perhaps the most realistic thing about it all, however, was how Naoko victim-shamed Shoko for “causing” Shoya’s fall.  

The “blame game” that all of the characters play is exceedingly disastrous, as individual responsibilities for bullying are shifted to a scapegoat. Even Shoya himself shut himself and others out of his life, as the x marks on everyone’s faces represented two things: 1) They were all enemies who refused to acknowledge or believe him and actively shunned him in their minds and words, and 2) They were people who Shoya were too afraid to acknowledge himself. Opening oneself to others after traumatic events is painful and difficult, but he realizes that it is for the best he tries again at the end of the movie for a reason. Even if people made mistakes and did horrible things, by blocking everyone out, they can never redeem themselves or be truly known in the way that Shoya wanted to be acknowledged.