>A Silent Voice (2016)
>KA: Minoru Ota (partial)
Ayyy, A Silent Voice is on Netflix now! Finally, I can tell people to watch this movie in a way that doesn’t involve either buying an expensive BD, jumping through hoops to get it off the UK iTunes music store, or piracy!
I’m not going to write in depth about it yet because >spoilers in the tag, but I will take a moment to point out something. Traditionally, we talk about character animation and action animation as if they were two different things even if often they aren’t. In fact, given how fighting is usually a significant emotional event one way or another, they sure better overlap at some point, else something’s gone wrong.
If I had to sum it up, what the animation here sells is physicality. There is an intense amount of attention paid to how these characters have their weight distributed. The awkward groping way they struggle with each other builds on that. They obviously don’t really know what to do except to kinda manhandle each other…which, of course they don’t. They’re just very frustrated elementary school students. What’s fascinating is that you can tell which one is more frustrated. For all Shouya’s pushiness, it’s clear from his posture that he’s not really putting his full weight into it. Shouko is. When Shouko comes out on top (literally), the way she shakes Shouya is violent and impassioned in a way that nothing before was for uhh…pretty understandable reasons.
It sells who these kids are and why they’re fighting just by how they move. That’s animation.
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