A Silent Voice
This was a pretty hard film to watch at times. There are a lot of moments which will hit really close to home for anyone who has bullied, experienced bullying, or engaged in cliques when they were teenagers. The way the story captures the imperfections and ugly sides of childhood is really raw and pretty powerful. What it ends up saying with all that is even more impactful because it doesn't provide a real moral or solution or lesson other than expressing that sometimes we have to accept that things cannot be perfect and all fixed, and just try our best to work around it.
It's not a perfect film though. I felt the opening moments were really rough. The direction was kinda erratic and there wasn't any good momentum until it started properly after the OP. The pre-OP and OP were really odd choices to open the film with because they felt totally out of place and got in the way of framing the narrative in an informative way. It almost made the film feel like a clipshow edit movie for a TV series instead. I'm also not a fan of how Yamada kept using that camera pan upwards to empty sky with lensflare shot. It felt like she used it 600 times in the film. Every other transition! The pacing in the film was strange too, since the story is very dense. They distilled a lot into the film, and packed them into story vignettes that sometimes lacked connective tissue or proper time lapses. That also contributed to parts feeling like it was an edited compilation of a longer series. Being bombarded by dense storytelling this way also made the film feel like it was 5 hours long.
Those flaws aside though, wow, what a story. It's impossible for me not to appreciate what they set out to do here and what they accomplished. This isn't an easy feel good gimme story about a boy who bullies a handicap girl and then regrets it only to reconnect years later and make it up to her. This is an uncomfortable and somewhat traumatic story about the challenges of communication, how young people can fail utterly at expressing themselves, and the barriers and perceptions we build up around ourselves to shield ourselves from the painful possibilities of reality. Nishimiya being deaf is simply one of several vehicles the film uses as a barrier. It is clearly the main one, but the difficulty of understanding what people mean and what they intent is a theme that carries through for all the characters regardless of handicap. I can safely say that out of all the characters in the film, the only one I liked was Nagatsuka. Honest, direct, and the most grounded of the lot. Kawai is probably the most detestable anime character I've seen in a while. Yet with all their imperfections, the dynamics created in the film make it all work. There is beauty in the ugliness, when put together, and when forced to be together. That in a nutshell, is human society.
I like Kyoto Animation best when they challenge themselves to make films about human relationships told with sharp direction and stunning character animation. I don't care much for their action/fanservice/whatever/DTL shows. A Silent Voice is probably one of the better ones. I'll sooner rewatch Tamako Love Story than this, because it is happier and more digestible, but in terms of thematic success, this is maybe their strongest work since Hyouka.