The Shape of Voice
A Tribute to “A Silent Voice”
The sounds of the people around him are muffled, hollow, and static.
He can’t look anyone in the face.
He’s full of guilt. He’s ashamed.
He lifts his hands, to cover his ears, blocks out all the noise but the ringing in his head.
And Shoya Ishida shuts himself off once again.
And he’s alone, again.
This is Koe no Katachi. A story about the bullied. But more importantly, a story about the bully.
A story about loneliness, trauma, depression, and suicide.
Simultaneously, a story about forgiveness, redemption, and empathy.
A story about self-hatred. But also a story about self-love.
This is the story of Naoko Yamada’s masterpiece “Koe no Katachi”.
In a world bustling with voices, Shoya Ishida lost his voice, lost it to the guilt of his mistakes, to the trauma he suffered and gave, to the shame he felt, and to himself.
Shoya was dead. He was dead the day he planned his suicide. As dead as the animals photographed by Yuzuru.
His existence had meaning, as meaningful as that of those dead animals in the photograph which were there to comfort Shoko.
That’s the voice he gave himself, after he lost his.
Shoya is still alone, still not able to look up at people’s faces.
As he walks through the festival, regardless of the people cheering, kids running and playing, all the noise is still muffled and static.
Slowly, he tries to lift his head up, lifts his hands from his ears, lets the sound back in, and looks up, to the people, and more importantly, to himself.
He finally looks up as his eyes meet the world he had once shut off.
In that moment, Shoya finds his voice. Finds it with the help of a girl who herself never had a voice.
This is the story of “A Silent Voice”.
