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Reading Manga—'A Silent Voice: Volume One'

My Thoughts on the Acclaimed Manga

By BoblobV2Published 6 years ago 4 min read
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A Silent Voice is an emotional story about a boy who is looking for forgiveness from a girl he bullied in elementary school, because she was deaf. The story shows Shoya as he was when he was younger and how he changes in to the person that he is. Written by Yoshitoki Oima, the manga was nominated for the 2016 Eisner Awards, and reading the first volume, you can clearly see why.

The story is wonderfully constructed, clearly showing a narrative of learning from your past mistakes, striving to become a better person, overcoming and not giving up on life, being kind to one another, and being accepting of others. Morals that individually could be the sole goal of a narrative by themselves all condensed into a wonderful web of events and characters that ooze a sense of sincerity, and genuine understanding that your emotions will be pulled from happiness to sadness and back to happiness masterfully in a matter of pages.

This is a slice of life, coming of age story combined with a romance. Which in and of itself is not unique when it comes to manga. What is unique is the execution of it. The narrative is grounded hard in reality and brings to light thoughts that we have all had when we were growing up, being adventurous when the things we worry about most in our lives is the best way to kill boredom. The various cliques that are borne from interaction and type of people you find yourself being around, the way children view each other, harken back to the memories accumulated in ones own childhood.

It truly captures childhood in its entirety, showing both the good, and bad coming out of it. Showing how it really effects the people that we become, the long term repercussions of actions that we at the time feel as if had no great consequence at all. Most of all the deep rooted emotions that grab hold of your personality molding you into the person you become.

By having such a strong point of reference the Oima introduces Shoko, who is deaf. Having seen what the class dynamic was like before she came, and comparing to when she is new, to when she is an established member of the class, you get to experience the change in perspective that occurs in all the classmates. Shoko by herself is such a wonderfully written character that you find yourself cheering for her a lot more than you are for Shoya as he is bully and the main character.

The escalation of events progress at such a meticulous pace that in the space of a single page, you go from thinking that Shoya deserves everything he is getting, to feeling sorry for him while at the same time deepening the emotions we feel towards Shoko within a single panel. Oima manages to do this is because of her strong understanding of the medium of manga, and comic books.

A Silent Voice is a true masterclass on utilizing manga to it’s fullest potential to convey a story in the best possible way. The panel work is wonderful to look at as the positioning of them combined with the images and speech bubbles within make reading this pleasing on the eyes, masterfully guiding you through the natural flow of the narrative as a result.

The panels, save for a few, are all incredibly detailed, showing everything in the environment around the characters. The character designs are unique helping each one stand on their own, making them all distinct from each other. In addition there is a uniqueness to the character design that is inherit to Oima’s personal style that helps the characters stand apart from a majority of the characters from most other manga.

The effort put into the facial expressions of the characters really shines through as all you need to do is look at the expression of the character and you will understand just how they feel, without a single expository speech bubble telling you how they feel. Which shows a great understanding of human emotion and expression from Oima’s part.

In the first volume alone, the narrative will have you laughing with the characters, and have you on the verge of tears as a result of the events taking place around our two central characters, and is an experience I highly recommend. A bonus being that the story is only seven volumes long, it is easily digestible and is not a large commitment on time, unlike many of the other long running manga that exists in the industry right now.

In addition to the manga there is also a two hour long anime adapting the story which is incredible in its own right, and one I enjoy more as more time passes. Though that is something I shall talk about in more detail at another point in time. For now I highly, highly recommend, A Silent Voice.

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About the Creator

BoblobV2

Writing about anime, and anything else I find interesting.

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