This review contains spoilers (if you haven't watched ASV yet WTF are you waiting for)
In this review I will focus on Ishida and his development throughout the film. A Silent Voice a beautiful tale about a man learning to love himself again. The plot deals around themes of self-hatred, social anxiety, acceptance into society, understanding others, getting a second chance and more and everything is conveyed in an excellent and beautiful way through Ishida. The story begins when we are introduced to 17-year-old Ishida standing on a bridge with the intention of committing suicide, but stops himself when he hears fireworks.
We go back 6 years to Ishida's years in elementary school. We see 12-year-old Ishida enjoying his life as a carefree kid having fun with his classmates. One day a new student arrives in the class, Shouko Nishimiya and it turns out that she is deaf. As time goes by, Ishida starts to bully her, whether it's pouring water on her, writing nasty things to her in her notebooks, taking her hearing aids and more, until he reached the breaking point and made Nishimiya transfer to another school. At first his classmates give him support for the things he does, but when the teachers at school find out about the case, they immediately disown him and put all the blame on him. Of course this did not pass Ishida in silence he also mentioned the others who were part of the bullying but without success. After the incident, Ishida's "friends" start doing to him exactly what he did to Nishimiya and he lives with it until the day he graduated from elementary school, in high school one of his classmates at the time pointed out what Ishida had done in the past which caused everyone to distance themselves from him and eventually caused Ishida to be alone and this is what developed his social anxiety made him hate himself and what made him put an X on everyone's faces and shut his ears to his environment.
We return to the present, We know that Ishida has completely regretted the things he did in the past and that he wants to meet with Nishimiya, correct the mistakes of the past and thus finish his unfinished business and put an end to his life. This is more or less the characterization of Ishida throughout the film. Throughout the film, Ishida re-establishes connections whether it is with friends from the past or new ones. He is constantly questioning what friendship actually is, does he deserve to be happy after the horrible things he did in the past. The film comes to "prove" to Ishida the mistakes in the way he is currently living and to show him a different and better way. During the second act of the film we see Ishida happy again from the bottom of his heart with the connections he made for himself again, during the time he spends with them he slowly begins to understand the importance of his life and the importance of the people around him, he thinks to himself that he has finally found solace and that he can continue move on and live like this.
But at the first moment of crisis, he immediately dismantles everything thinking that he has not yet been punished enough for his actions, he thinks that he is destined to live alone and in the end die alone because of this, and that is exactly what he does. We move to the festival to the part of the film that has the second best scene in my opinion, the scene where Ishida saves Nishimiya from her suicide attempt. We see him doing a personal reflection, thinking again about all the things he went through, asking himself if he really apologized to Nishimiya for the things that happened between them in the past, and in a final prayer he turns to God to give him the strength to save Nishimiya and swears to him that he will stop running away from his problems in life, that he will start listening To everyone's voices he will look people and his environment in the face, and in a last attempt he manages to save Nishimiya but... falls from the balcony himself.
In the end we see Ishida take down the X's from everyone, takes his hands off his ears and finally after years, hearing everyone's voices and looks at his surroundings in the face and he starts crying tears of joy. We see him develop and change for the better wonderfully and this scene is definitely the best in the whole film in my opinion.
To finish things off I can say that this film moved me in every way, a lovely film that I really think there is lots to learn from. Definitely a favorite of mine.
