It's probably in part because I'm getting to be something of an old cuss at this point, but I've certainly found my tastes shifting in anime and manga both. If you look back at the last couple years (there are very few posts, so it's not hard), you'll find that I've been tending more and more towards Slice of Life stuff. Action, mecha and the like are less and less on my radar every day. Profound stuff that digs into people and personalities though? Those are things I dearly love to find.
Well, a few days ago I happened to be poking at my Kindle app, and it was suggesting a manga to me called "A Silent Voice". I think I'd heard the name before, but hadn't really paid attention. I looked at it, and thought it looked like it was worth taking a chance on. Wow, am I glad I did.
What is it? In short, it's the story of a group of elementary school classmates (I hesitate to use the word friends), and when they are slowly reunited many years later. The perspective character is Shoya Ishida. I don't want to spoil too much, but for him, the entire story is one of redemption from what he was in elementary school.
Why would he need redemption? The other main character is Shoko Nishimiya, a shy girl who is deaf. In elementary school, she tried to go to the same school as Shoya and some others (who form most of the rest of the cast). To be blunt about it, she got bullied, and pretty brutally at that. The ringleader? Shoya.
However, as things went, eventually the mob turned on Shoya as well, making him the next victim of their cruelty.
As you can imagine just from that short description, this can be a very hard manga to read at times, but it is well worth it.
As the story progresses, each of the characters needs to come to terms with what they have done, and really, with who they are. It's messy, and in some cases, I honestly don't believe that the ending is very clean, but I see that as a good thing. People are messy, they don't wrap up all their issues, and that's more than reflected here.
One of the things I really like in the story is that bullying is shown to be a street that goes in many directions. Shoya was a bully, and then became the victim. Others are shown to have participated because of their own issues in life. None of that excuses what they did, but it does show a very real perspective.
I can speak to myself, having been on both ends of that spectrum. I got the full bully routine for many years, in many places (courtesy of my parents moving a number of times when I was younger.) Combine a speech impediment with the fine motor skills of a musk ox, and you can pretty much figure it out from there.
Yet, looking back at me in High School and (especially) college, I'd grown into being a downright mouthy and obnoxious jerk at times. I thought I was being "funny", but saying things that were as hurtful as any of the stuff that had been said to me. So yes, I can see aspects of myself in 3 of the characters in this story (I won't share which ones, you can guess.)
One of the strong themes in the story is set up by Shoko's mother. When she saw Shoya again for the first time in many years, she reacted very badly, but she dropped the line "how can you give her back the years you took from her."
The simple truth is, when we hurt others, we can't "take it back". The ways that Shoya's actions compounded Shoko's problems simply cannot be taken away. That's a very real truism for us in life too. We honestly cannot "make up" for what we've done. Talk of "earning forgiveness" is always empty, because we can't somehow magically take away the pain that we cause. However, we can start each day, looking to be better and different than we were the day before. That doesn't "make up" for the past, but it does chart a new course.
I look forward to reading this one again. I read it pretty quickly the first time, because the story was so compelling. Now it's time to really go back, and read it to get all the nuance, and pick up on the foreshadowings that I had missed.
(Edited: There's also an anime feature I'm looking forward to seeing. For some reason, I thought it had already been released on CR, but it's too recent for that. Certainly goes to the top of the heap when it comes out on BR.)
I put this one in the must read category.
