Forum - View topicREVIEW: A Silent Voice GN 1
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Merxamers
 Posts: 720 |
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This was a painful series to begin reading, like you said in the review. The bullying felt completely believable, and i think anyone who went to a public middle school can relate to some extent.
It is an excellent series though, and well worth reading beyond the first volume (I read it on Crunchyroll) |
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DontmesswithKarma
Posts: 491 |
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My favourite manga of all time.
Am I the only one who thinks Makoto Shinkai and ComiXWave Films are behind the movie adaptation? It feels like his type of series thru and thru |
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Forrest-kun
Posts: 34 |
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I've been waiting for a review of this for so long! This series has so much emotion its ridiculous... I was also cringing at the terrible things the children did it practically felt like torture. It even made me want to call people I bullied in school and apologize for the means things I did to them. I hope Nick reviews the 2nd volume because series deserves the recognition!
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zensunni
 Posts: 1294 |
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It is well worth the ride, and what a ride it is! This manga pulls no punches. Life sucks, kids are mean, and some teachers are self-serving and willing to throw a child under the bus to save their own hide when the going gets really tough. The first volume of A Silent Voice is enough to make one cynical... but there is hope... (But that hope is buried under a hole boatload of crap!)
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DigitalScratch
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One of my favorite manga. Roller coaster of emotions from beginning to end. What I love most about A Silent Voice is that not only does it not sugar coat or simplify the bullying, it also shows just how horrible the disabled are treated in Japan.
I have read a few articles about the life of a person with disabilities or mental disorders in Japan, and apparently it's not pretty. Said individuals are either ignored, not receiving the proper treatment, or are outright demanded to stay out of "normal" society because they can't contribute to it. So Shouko's treatement at the hands of her peers, school, and her family is so painfully accurate it hit home hard for a lot of people. I don't know how accurate these statements are, but it's pretty disheartening to see how those who need help are simply shunned. And it also says a lot that this manga was apparently boycotted by a handful of Japanese folk in an effort to not get it published, mostly because it would have given Japan a bad name. Or something like that. |
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meiam
Posts: 3442 |
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I though it was well done but pretty formulaic, you know full well were its going well before it gets there (and this get a million time worse in later volume). It takes its time to establish the situation and the character, which is somewhat of a mixed blessing. It makes for compelling situation but I couldn't help but feel like we were going in circle somewhat.
As far as the bullying, I did find that it was laying it a bit too thick, although this might be a cultural difference. I did most of my early schooling in a very poor and multi ethnic area and one year we even got a mentally handicapped person in class, the stuff that bullying story is made of. But there just wasn't any bullying that I could tell, at least nothing that was class wide like this. I then switched to another school and ended up in a rural community where I was one of the very few people who didn't grew up in the town, without any friend, but same thing there, no bullying. I switched school two more time (parent liked to move) and never really saw any bullying. That's just my own experience so I might have gotten really lucky but it did make it a bit hard to take some part seriously. Anyway still a very good read. Last edited by meiam on Thu Aug 27, 2015 12:30 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Desertking22
Posts: 81 Location: Michigan |
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How long is the series btw
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Desertking22
Posts: 81 Location: Michigan |
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How long is the series btw
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DigitalScratch
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62 Chapters long. Not sure how many volumes there will be though. |
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CallumKeyblade
Posts: 536 |
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There are seven volumes so it will all be in print within a year. |
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DTJB
 Posts: 671 Location: Dubuque, IA |
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Read bits of this a while ago. My only gripe while reading this was that Shoko didn't get any assistance to overcome the obstacle of being deaf. I spent several years in grade school with a deaf student in our class and she always had an interpreter who used sign language to tell her what the teachers and students were saying.
With the story lacking such a character, Shoko's problems really added to the drama and made it tough to read, but I felt it was unrealistic at the same time because of what I've seen in school personally. Either the author excluded an interpreter character to make Shoko's hardships stronger, or as others have commented here and from what I've read in other manga of the same genre, it could be a result of Japanese culture and society. |
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Utsuro no Hako
Posts: 1035 |
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It was reviewed in the old Right Turn Only column when Crunchyroll was doing the serialization. animenewsnetwork.com/right-turn-only/2014-05-20/.74700 I wish ANNcast could devote an episode to this the way they do anime series. It really deserves the attention. |
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whiskeyii
 Posts: 2247 |
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It's a cultural thing. This more or less gets addressed in waaaay later chapters when you delve into Shoko's family life. EDIT: Though it probably bears looking into concepts of 'wa' and 'ijime' if you reeeeally want a clearer picture of the cultural forces at work here. Long story short, it's encouraged that people who are "different" have that difference "helped" out of them through communal efforts. Hence, why the students and teachers act the way they do. |
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Ali07
 Posts: 3333 Location: Victoria, Australia |
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While I really enjoyed the first volume, I too thought that the bullying was laid on thick. And, while there were signs that the friends would eventually turn on Shoya, even that felt like it was a bit over the top.
Yes, it was clear that it was going to happen. But to have it all done so quickly...was a bit much for me. Still, didn't ruin my enjoyment of this volume.
That's an interesting one. I never felt that his expressions were disadvantaged by his eyes. Maybe a little in volume 2, but the dot eyes didn't take away from his expressions in volume 1. And, volume 2 is already out there. Thought it was good, and felt a whole lot "lighter" than the first volume. I'm looking forward to reading more of this series. Volume 3 is about a week away from release. |
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leafy sea dragon
 Posts: 7163 Location: Another Kingdom |
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Wouldn't that make Shoko the deuteragonist? I thought there can only be one protagonist per story.
Well unless you're the bully when you were in middle school, in which case it might hit too close to home. I haven't read it yet, but I'll put this on my wishlist. It sounds like the story that a bully victim would find uncomfortable but a bully even more so. I went to some very rough schools, which I didn't even realize was not normal until I asked people from different parts of the country. If this story depicts bullying the way I actually saw it, then I will be quite pleased because I'm tired of the jocks-taking-lunch-money kind of bullying you often see in stories. It demonstrates so little knowledge about bullying, you'd think the people who write these things were bullies themselves and never experienced it from the victim's side. |
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