I watched A Silent Voice for the first time, here’s what I wrote.
A Silent Voice is about a boy who tries to reconcile with the girl he bullied in elementary school. Or so it might seem, but those who’ve seen the movie know that it’s way more than that.
It’s about anxiety, depression, and growing up.
[Note: You can watch the narrated video version of this story here. Check it out!]
I recently turned 20, meaning I went into quarantine as an 18-year-old and come out as, whatever this is, a 20-year-old — Which is wildly known as, quote, One of the most important times of your life. You need to be drunk every weekend, be in the best shape of your life, and also be growing a bustling career. You need to travel and see the world, experience everything within 10 years. because, well, after that, you’ll be 30. Your knees will hurt.
That’s what it feels like, for me, at least. And I’m sure other people.
But here’s some things that I’ve realized, and you can correct me on these if you think I’m wrong:
- Life doesn’t go as planned
A pandemic could happen at any second. Okay, maybe not any second… More like, how life works as you know it can completely change within a short period of time. You can plan out the next 10 years and you probably won’t get past step 1 without having to edit something. Hell, you can try to plan your day tomorrow and there’s a large chance something will backfire. You can’t control what happens, you can only control what you do. It’s like you’re a character moving along a written plot, and the development you go through is depending on how you adapt to the storyline.
2. What others think about you or what you should be doing, doesn’t matter. At all.
I used to hold everyone’s opinion of me, even strangers, so highly. I would contort myself to fit the mold I thought others wanted me to fit. I hid things I was passionate about because I thought others would think badly of me. Especially the fact that I watched anime, back when watching anime wasn’t cool — KIDS THESE DAYS HAVE IT SO EASY. Anyways.
But especially during the pandemic, when I lost touch with a lot of people. I realized it was so incredibly stupid to hold myself back from others. Because at the end of the day, unless you deeply care for someone, what people think of you doesn’t matter. You are just letting this anxiety you feel control your life, and hold you back from being who you actually are. And don’t get me wrong, it’s not like you can just say one day, “Okay, I don’t care what others think of me anymore.” It doesn’t work like that, unfortunately. You have to work for it every day. But once you start letting go, the more at peace you slowly begin to feel.
3. Your mental health should be your number one priority.
I realized you can’t just push back how you’re feeling forever. Eventually, you have to deal with it. Throughout all of high school, I would just continuously push back anything I felt. I remember watching so many more movies and shows and anime during High School because I was just constantly searching for a distraction from my feelings. I kept motivated to do well in school and to make it to university. But, 2 years ago when I actually packed up everything and moved to a new town, and began uni, it didn’t feel real. I had lost touch with reality, lost touch with my feelings, and it has taken me 2 years to finally start getting my sense of self back. That’s how I learned the importance of taking care of yourself, even if above others. To show yourself love, because, at the end of the day, people in your life can come and go naturally, but you will always have yourself. So you need to take care of yourself because achieving a goal doesn’t mean anything if you feel awful after completing it.
TW: Mention of suicidal acts and themes ahead.
In the third act, Shouko is standing on the balcony of her home, as the fireworks boom in the distance. This links to the beginning of the movie, in which Shoya stands on the ledge of the bridge and begins to fall, only to be brought back to reality by a distant firework going off.
Shouko can see the fireworks, and feel their vibrations, but unlike Shoya, their loud and abrupt noise can’t shock her back to reality, because, well, she can’t hear them. She jumps off the balcony. Shoya grabs her just in time — but he ends up falling instead. Hitting the water just as he had planned to in the beginning sequence of the film.
Shoya was alone at school for years, and he believed that the world would be better without him. But within a matter of months, after he had planned to jump off that bridge, he finds a beautiful friend group and someone he wants to love. He starts to forgive himself for his past, and lets go of his self-loathing. At the very end of the film, he finally feels comfortable looking everyone at his school in their eyes. This is the peace he would have never found had he jumped off that bridge at the beginning of the movie. This is the message of this film. Self-forgiveness and living for you. Of course, it’s much more romanticized than the reality we know, which is important to recognize.
Conclusion
And if you take one thing away from this video, I want it to be this. If it’s available to you, go to therapy. At least look into it. Even if you don’t think you need it, you have no idea what could be lurking in your subconscious, secretly weighing you down.
This movie was a gorgeous one and something that can definitely be amazing to watch when you’re feeling down. It’s now one of my favorite movies and I can’t wait to watch it again and again because the peace it brought me was so refreshing, especially after having a rough month or two or three.
Thank you so much for watching this video. If you enjoyed it and you want to leave a like, it helps me out a lot. I try to one-up myself every month with a new video, so subscribe if you want more like this one, just better. Either way, I hope you have a fantastic day, and with that, that’s all I wanted to say.
