Contains Spoilers It's quite genius actually. The way Yoshitoki Ooima is able to deliver such a flat amalgamation of platitudes in a neat little bow easily digestible to the common person is brilliant. I admit, like most others, I was blissfully unaware of its faults when I first watched it, but upon closer inspection and numerous rewatches, I found more holes and cracks on this sacrosanct anime I used to hold so dearly. The same way most horror movies heavily rely on jump scares to create more intimacy with a viewer, Koe no Kotachi heavily relies on its grandiose hodgepodge of intense themes to brush over character agency and perplexing plot devices among other things. The movie tackles mental illness, bullying, self-harm, physical disabilities, and much more. It almost seems sacrilegious to critique something so vulnerable. But I would argue breaking out that particular paradigm opens you up to a much more profound view on life and media.

This movie contains something far worse than bad character development, the movie contains bad character designs. Shouko doesn't have a personality. Scratch that, her entire personality is basically just her grim past and a hearing disability. This is exactly what I mean when I said the movie relies on its intense themes to carry the story and not like, cohesive and intriguing writing. She's there to forgive Shouya and cute fake smile at him until she reaches her breaking point. I end up having to emphasize with a person because of characteristics and not her character, which is very objectifying. Portraying her as this colorless inhuman plot device is insulting. I can't help but feel like the obfuscation of nuance on such a heavy character was deliberate, it seems like she's there to sell merchandise and not to humanize people that struggle with the same kind of demons.

Comic relief fat sidekick, independent younger sibling, and mean girl who secretly likes the male Main Character, and the three other side character friends I can't even describe because of how static their existence is. They are just there...to be there. Don't think I forgot these characters and forgot their "motivations" It's just that it's so vapid I literally do not know how to describe them. These aren't human characters, they are there to execute a plot point or two and go back to being husks of human beings.

The romance was shoehorned in, probably to appease a demographic. Well, to the best of my knowledge it was, maybe sometime before the time skip he was saved by a deaf person or something and then had a thing for them ever since. Who knows. It's crazy how meaningless some of the scenes were. Let's feed fish and eat yakisoba! This kind of low-stakes approach to plot development is a kind of high-risk and high reward gamble. A very useful device to show polarization to more climactic scenes like the bridge or balcony one. It can be used to show the fleeting of time and living in the moment, the possibilities vary. But how can the concepts be adequately contextualized if one of the characters is heavily objectified and romance is shoe-horned in? I have to admit, it was performed pretty well, with above-average cinematography sound design. But the moment I remember the relationship is built on the creator's laziness and tropes, my interest is automatically lost. To be honest, the balcony scene will always get me, the same way you can't help but get startled at a jump scare no matter how bad the movie is. I feel for the Main Characters in a Stockholm Syndrome kind of way as we are all prisoners to the inherent pathos of the movie. This is Ooima's wicked genius.

IDK man this anime is a big bruh moment.