Koe no katachi tells the story of a deaf girl and her bully who gets bullied himself, realizes what he has done and tries to make up for his behaviour. I have read the manga and think that KyoAni did a pretty good job of adapting it while there are indeed some problems in the adaptation which I will talk about later in this review.

The movie deals with some heavy topics like bullying, depression and suicide, but it portrays them as something normal, it´s part of the characters everyday life. As the story continues, we learn more about the past of the characters and their problems so we can understand the actions of the characters. Koe no katachi excels at telling its story through motives, for example a calendar that ends in the middle of the year to show how the suicide attempt was planned for a long time. Thats why things never feel like they have no reason, the clues have been there the whole time and suddenly start making sense. That is also the biggest weakness of the movie, it´s impossible to develop every character of a wide cast over a two hour runtime like a manga with 64 chapters, especially the side characters. But they did a pretty good job with it, I feel like if you just watched the movie you would barely notice this flaw.

The pacing never feels rushed or too slow, we learn new things about the characters with every scene while never having a thousand new things thrown at us at once. Shouya, the main character, and Shouko, the deaf girl, develop their friendship with each other and their new and old friends and are faced with new problems and conflict on that way. Shouya knows both sides of bullying, so he never can forgive himself for what he has done while Shouko forgives him quickly. Many characters are from the grade school class of Shouya and Shouko, so they have to deal with their past too, everyone with other methods. These side characters act like many people after someone was bullied in their surrounding: They say that it was the fault of someone else or act like there was no problem. That´s the rason why Shouya got bullied after Shouko changed school, nobody wanted to admit they did something wrong, so they label Shouya as the bully and blame only him for the past.

All these things are a great opportunity for character progression and development, mainly with Shouya. After all these years of being bullied, he has shut down and ignores everyone else. As the story progresses, he realizes that there are people that accept him and he begins to change. Shouko on the other hand fells like a boring character at the beginning, she never reacts to anything and always apologizes. But when her feelings are revealed towards the end, her character and actions start to make sense. With how little we know about the other characters, we can still understand their feelings for the most part without knowing their backstory. After the emotional climax of the story, we are presented with a conclusion of the conflicts where they are not fully solved but the characters accept them and learn to live with them.

The art and the animation are great and support the story very well. KyoAni knows how to make characters and the world around them look good and amplifying the emotions portrayed in the story.

In conclusion, Koe no katachi may not be perfect, but it plays out its strong points very well, we watch the characters being confronted with their past and having to deal with it while we can enjoy the beautiful sides of this like friendship and forgiveness. The story doesn´t feel forced, and the reason for it is the same as for the movies problem with developing side characters: It takes its time to explore the really important parts and making us understand the reasons for the actions. A full adaptation of the source material is traded for a focus on the main storyline and the emotional buildup for the main characters. This results in the movie having the emotional impact it surely has.