Silence can be Deafening: Themes of Bullying and Isolation in A Silent Voice

 I feel especially qualified to speak about this masterpiece of an anime/manga, because I have not only watched the animated movie multiple times, I have also read the manga in its entirety. I will talk about what I liked about the adaptation, where I felt it came short of perfection in adhering to the original storyline and some of the elements that I found most powerful as well as characters I loved and ones I loved to hate.

The story follows Shoya Ishida, as it begins he is your garden variety grade schooler. He gets bored easily, so when a deaf girl (Shoko Nishimiya) transfers into his class, he amuses himself by leading a group of other students in bullying her. The anime just glosses over much of this in the opening montage because it is the setup to the full story, but the whole of it, and especially the teacher's complicity in it, is especially disheartening. The manga is more powerful in the regard that you actually see how much of poor Shoko takes and how earnestly she just really wants to be friends and blames herself for what is happening. The teacher telling his students that having her there is a bother is really sickening as well. Since most of the actual bullying is just part of the opening sequence in the anime, you don't really see the teacher's role in it all. One student (Miyoko Sahara) actually tries to learn sign language but then moves away, presumably because she becomes a target for trying to help poor Shoko. In the end, Shoko's mom has to complain to the school because the expensive hearing aids she's been buying keep disappearing (one of the ways in which Shoya has perpetuated his bullying is by stealing her hearing aids and tossing them around the classroom). When the bullying comes to light, Shoya is forced to take all the blame as the other kids lie to get themselves out of trouble. His mom, who is a single hairdresser, uses her meagre income to pay Shoko's mom back for the hearing aids and Shoya watches as she grovels and is subsequently slapped by Shoko's mother. The knowledge that he has been a burden on his mom, who already has it rough, is hard on Shoya. He hides the fact that he is being bullied from her when the bullying energy of the school turns from focusing on Shoko to focusing on him. His shoes are stolen, but he lies and says he lost them jumping in the river. Shoko tries to help him at first, but he lashes out at her instead of letting her help and after their confrontation she leaves the school. Shoya then endures bullying for the remainder of his gradeschool life and finds himself isolated and alone. The friends he once surrounded himself with have all abandoned him and this feeling of isolation is indicated by showing all others around him with x's over their faces. He can't look people in the eye. He is in his third year of high school when the montage of the anime ends, and he is planning his suicide. We see evidence as the date he has planned to do it is marked on the calendar and each day leading up to it is filled with preparations. On the day of, he realizes suddenly that he has never apologized to Shoko since she moved away. He has one bit of unfinished business.

When he goes to find her, we learn that he has studied sign language. He brings her the notebook he stole from her as a child. Shoya's feelings of isolation and guilt and his subsequent salvation are what make this story one of the best depictions of bullying not only in anime, but anywhere I've seen. Bullies aren't inhuman and I think the idea that they are just perpetuates the cycle. Bullies are often hurt or bullied and lash out at others because it's all they know or because looking down on others makes them feel better about themselves. Understanding that bullies are people too does not condone bullying and this story is not saying that bullying is harmless. It actually says quite the opposite. By humanizing the bullies, by letting us see that they are all just misguided people, it allows an understanding that could very well lead us to find real solutions to bullying. 

Shoya finds his reason to live when Shoko forgives him and they begin an unlikely friendship. This is the beginning of what will eventually open Shoya's world up beyond just his family and help him to find real friends again. His first male friend is a young gentleman (Tomohiro Nagasuka) who he witnesses being harassed by a group of kids who are trying to steal his bike. Shoya intervenes, allowing the boys to take his bike instead. When Tomohiro brings Shoya's bike back to him, after finding it discarded in a ditch, the x falls from his face and Shoya makes his first friend since grade school. The characters are all very realistic, and realistically there are those whose motivations and actions are petty and less understandable than others. First I will talk about the various characters I liked and why I liked them.

Miyako Ishido is Shoya's mom. She is understandably upset when she learns of his suicide plan after he has already given up on it. She burns the money he gave her to repay what she spent to replace Shoko's hearing aids telling him in no uncertain terms that if he tries anything like that again she'll do the same thing. He'll never be able to expunge the debt if doing so means he is free to take his own life. This scene shows just how much Miyako cares about her son despite being unaware that he was being bullied in school. Given that she is a single mom with at least one other child to care for (Shoya's older sister, and later her daughter as well) and that Shoya actively hid the fact that he was bullied by playing it off like he was goofing around with his friends as always, Miyako can be forgiven for not seeing her son's pain before it got to the point where he was planning his own suicide. I like her because, despite her lack of awareness of what her child is going through (mostly because he's hiding it from her not wanting to cause her trouble) she does her very best for her children. She puts up her daughter and grandchild, possibly just while her son-in-law is out of the country on business, despite running her own hairdressing business in the same building where they all live. She takes responsibility for her son's misguided behavior without being harsh with him over it. She is just overall, the best mom she can be given that she has to do the whole thing by herself.

Yuzuru Nishimiya is Shoko's sister. We meet her for the first time when Shoya comes to talk to Shoko as a teenager. Yuzuru pretends to be Shoko's boyfriend since she's young enough her gender is ambiguous and she dresses in tomboyish clothing. She does this in the hopes that Shoya will leave Shoko alone assuming that he's there hoping for a romance between them. Yuzuru is very protective of her older sister and her photography hobby is mainly used to show Shoko what death is like because her sister has talked about suicide. Yuzuru is an interesting character because she starts off hating Shoya for what he did and trying to keep him away from Shoko, but eventually realizing that he is human and not the same as the young boy who hurt her sister horribly all those years ago. She's also interesting because she's both immature in ways and more mature than she should need to be in others. Their mother is not the best person at handling emotions and giving maternal affection, however her mother is. The Nishimiya girls' grandmother is shown to be very tender and understanding unlike her daughter who tries to handle situations more practically.

Tomohiro Nagasuka is a favorite character because he is tenacious and he defends his friend vehemently. He is also different enough that he doesn't really have many friends either. He lies and says he has friends to save face, but it is pretty obvious that he is lying from the outset by the way he acts.

Shoya's character growth throughout the series is palpable. I really enjoyed seeing the x's start to fall off people's faces as he got to know them and started opening up more. There is a major setback about halfway in, which causes some x's to reappear. I enjoyed how this small detail was able to give a major insight into this character's thinking and state of mind at any given time. 

Although Shoko's self-loathing may be difficult for some westerners to understand (because our society emphasizes individuality over community), I got where she was coming from. The idea that you're really just a burden to everyone around you, and that they'd be better off if you weren't there is not new to me. Those of you who know how I was raised will understand why there is a great deal of guilt that I associate with taking charity or being helped in any way. I can't even imagine not being able to get out of that mindset of being a burden because I had a physical handicap which kept me at least somewhat dependent on others. It also doesn't help that the teacher basically calls her a burden and that all her classmates see her as one, hence the bullying in the first place.

Now to main characters I loved to hate (I will not include the teacher, although he was loathsome because he has a minor role) -- Naoko Ueno has always kind of crushed on Shoya since they were kids. True she did nothing to stop her classmates from turning on him or him from being bullied for the remainder of gradeschool, but then again she didn't want the same thing to happen to her. She is a very selfish character and she does so many horrible things out of jealousy. After the climactic event of the story which lands Shoya in the hospital, Naoko refuses to let Shoko in to see him even though she has no right to keep anyone out (she is not family). She also physically attacks Shoko because Shoya's injury could be construed as her fault. Not only that, Naoko had a hand in the dissolution of Shoya's friend group thanks, again, to her jealousy of the bond that she saw forming between Shoya and Shoko.

Second on this list is Miki Kawai and her character is so awful it makes my skin crawl. She pretends to be nice and friendly to get close to a guy she likes. Then she throws Shoya under the bus faster than you can blink as soon as she thinks her reputation might suffer. She is just a loathsome character and incredibly selfish and self-centered. She is also incredibly self-righteous, always acting as if she had nothing to do with the bullying even though she laughed right along with everyone else when it was happening.

Shoko's mom makes a close third. I know she means well, and is only doing what she sees as best for her children, but damn that woman is cold. It is not until near the end, after Shoya's accident, that we actually see a different side to her. 

But what is so good about this story, and these characters, is that they all experience at least some character growth. Ueno and Kawai have the least character growth out of everyone and even they have some.

What is different between the anime and manga? Well, they made the anime a movie, so there was a lot they left out. Major things that got left out were: the movie (the friend group was making a movie to show at the cultural festival when they dissolved), the teacher's role in the students' behavior (I think they touched on it, but didn't really show the extent to which he turned a blind eye to the bullying and even somewhat encouraged it), much of the bullying and interactions from when they were kids (because this part was just a montage in the movie), the extent to which Ueno interfered and tried to keep Shoko from seeing Shoya while he was unconscious in his hospital bed, Shoko's getting the friend group back together to finish the movie (it does show her going to everyone, but in the manga they finished the movie and brought Shoya to the premier as a get well present). For the most part, this is a very good adaptation. I understand that they could not have included everything as that would have made the movie much too long. The movie was very good in both sub and dub versions making this one of the few anime that I am willing to watch dubbed.

Something Fishy

So I'm here to talk about the anime Banana Fish. I had long heard of this story as one of the ones that got it right with LGBT representation, so I was very eager to see how they handled it. On the outset it looks like it's setting up for an intimate relationship between the two male leads who are drawn to each other despite coming from completely different worlds. It never actually confirms anything, however. There is no love confession. There is only a declaration of friendship. There is no doubt that the two had chemistry or that they cared deeply for one another, but nothing more. Not only was the relationship between the two who would have been the wholesome couple never confirmed as more than close friendship, the only other gay representation is extremely negative. Papa Dino uses Ash and other young men as prostitutes, even threatening to rape Eiji at one point. Dino is a mafia don who, among other things, runs a child sex trafficking scheme through one of his restaurants. One of the first people to get killed, Marvin, is shown as being openly gay and he turns out to be a pedophile who has tapes of himself raping Ash as a young boy in his apartment. 

Not every bad guy in Banana Fish is gay, but it would seem every gay man in Banana Fish is a bad guy. And before you say "but what about Ash and Eiji?" they aren't gay, at least not entirely. There is a scene where Ash and Eiji talk about girls they've liked. At most they are bi-sexual or bi-romantic. The story, if you ignore what seems to me to be blatant homophobia, is good. It is a story about a man's journey towards redemption and love despite coming from horrific abuse and violence and being constantly drawn back into that world (it just doesn't seem that the love is more than platonic in nature). If the show had ended with any sort of romantic declaration of love, even if the love is asexual because of Ash's past, it could be called good representation. Yes, it is a story of abuse. I agree that showing how Ash is vulnerable and has been used by men brings to light the very real abuse that many women face in their daily lives just because they're women and reasonably good looking. However, it was not necessary to exclude any positive gay relationships. There are at least two positive heterosexual ones. And the best argument I've heard for this is that the original Manga was written in the 80's which was a time when you couldn't be explicit about that kind of thing (unless you are pushing the message that gay = bad, I suppose, because there are plenty of explicit depictions of gay men, they're just all being portrayed as bad people).

So I guess I'll watch the other shows that have been recommended as good representation and find out if they are similarly disappointing. Other than the poor LGBT representation, Banana Fish was a pretty good show. The intrigue was good. I wasn't too crazy about the portrayal of America, but that is more amusing than upsetting. Some parts of it seemed a little bit reminiscent of actions movies, which aren't really my scene (lots of gratuitous violence that doesn't move the plot along), some of it did help show the contrast between the worlds Ash and Eiji live in, though. I really loved the relationship between the two, even as a platonic bond, but would have loved it more if the writer had had the balls to make it undeniably romantic love. I have heard that there is an epilogue that shows one of their friends talking about their relationship and classifying them as soulmates, but I feel like this is enough of a cop out that it doesn't count. It's like JK Rowling saying Dumbledore is gay but never actually showing it (until recently, in an apparent attempt to revive her standing in the LGBT community after all her anti-trans rhetoric).

Isn't it time to Feel Good?

 I realized the other day that I never did a follow up post on Feel Good despite having finished the show and loving it. The best part of this show was how real the characters felt. Mae's trauma felt real, the way they suppressed it felt real. George's inability to accept her bisexuality felt real. Mae's mom being judgmental and overly meddlesome felt real, and Mae's denial also felt real. George's dad with his flightiness felt like a real dad going through a midlife crisis. It was all so brilliant and realistic. The roommate character (Phil) continued to be lovable despite it turning out that he actually was the reason his dad left like he'd said all along. 

So the comedy aspect of it was good, because I felt that the situations were actually pretty funny sometimes. Certain elements I felt actually lent to more situational comedy, like the fact that the caring, sensitive guy George dates when she breaks up with Mae turns out to be a bit of a possessive jerk in the long run, or how George ends up coming out to her friends.

I will warn you, in case this is a problem, that Feel Good does deal with issues of statutory rape, grooming and pedophilia, drug addiction, mental health issues, and LGBT issues including being genderqueer. It does not make light of these, but draws its situational comedy from other elements and especially from how other people view and react to the characters in the show, sometimes in ludicrous ways that feel all too real. Take, for example, George's fear about coming out. It shows up when she confronts one of her students for calling another one a gay slur. She then goes to the principle to rant about how the SRE class should be teaching things like sexuality only to find out that she should have been doing that all along and that it was her own hang-ups that caused the issue. Another time that also involves George's school life comes when George jokingly sends Mae a text asking them to meet up at the school for sex. Mae takes George's request seriously and ends up being shuffled into a closet so George's class doesn't find out. A lot of Season's one's comedic moments deal with George's insecurities and her own internalized homophobia. Phil's depression isn't treated as a joke either, but there are some comedic elements concerning the unique way he tries to cheer George and Mae up, or how he deals with their breakup. In many ways he is like a child, their child.

The show was so good for so many reasons. I loved the well-written main characters and dialog, the director's choice to use certain sounds to indicate a PTSD response in Mae, the way they portrayed the inner dialog Mae has with Scott before finally confronting him, the side characters (especially Phil, but even the ones I really hated because they were jerks), the romance, the comedy. I really can't think of a single criticism.

The Rising of: Misogyny?

I watched the first episode of Rising of the Shield Hero and while this does seem like it might turn out to be a pretty awesome underdog story in the long run, I find a few elements troubling right off the bat. The first of these is the so-called matriarchy. So I knew about Malty, I had been spoiled so I was expecting it. When she tried to ply him with wine and told him he shouldn't refuse because it was a "matriarchy" I thought to myself that she was obviously using his ignorance to trick him. Because the first thing that stood out to me in this so-called matriarchy was that the place was run by a man. They were brought before a king. All the people summoned were also male, and (in a place where magic exists, mind you) it is assumed that men are more powerful and therefore the rape law's existence. None of these things suggest a place where women hold any sort of power, let alone power that is greater than that of a man. So the only thing I can think is that the writer came up with this matriarchy nonsense to explain why there was such a harsh punishment for rape. There have existed many patriarchal societies in which women have little to no leverage where rape still held the death penalty. The other explanation I can think of is that this is written by a misogynist as a "warning" of sorts kind of like the character Nurse Ratchet was written to suggest that women couldn't be trusted with power in the wake of the women's lib movement in America. I will probably continue the series because I like a good underdog story, but the underlying message does seem to be one that might tend to piss me off at times. When that happens, I'll just come here to rant about whatever and perhaps I will even end up giving the show a high recommendation by the time I'm finished. We'll see.  

Nice guys finish... Where exactly?

So I just finished watching the anime Kiss Him, Not Me. Despite its problematic elements, I ended up enjoying the show with its many and varied anime references, interesting characters, and unique reverse-harem concept. I also enjoyed reading the comments from fellow fans on Crunchyroll. I've always had trouble believing that truly nice guys finish last and are consistently passed over for more aggressive types, and the comment section proved me right since the one truly nice guy in the show is the one that consistently got the most overall love from fans of the show most of whom I assume were straight or bi girls because the show is marketed for its pro-BL and fujoshi content.

So the premise of the show is that a big girl is a huge BL nerd (also known as a fujoshi in Japan) and is friends with a bunch of hot guys who she secretly ships with one another, but various circumstances (comical ones) cause her to lose weight and suddenly all these guys who were her friends are pursuing her romantically. Except they're not all "suddenly" interested in her. There is one guy who seems to have always felt some degree of interest and he also seems happy when she's happy and goes along with whatever. He's just happy she allows him to be a part of her friend group. He's a nice guy. He's the guy I wanted her to end up with (even though the show also presents a female alternative to all the guys who was also interested in her prior to her weight loss). The only problem is that he doesn't even realize he actually likes her romantically until almost the end, at which point he just flat out confesses with no hesitation whatsoever while everyone else tries their best to keep him from telling her how he feels because none of them genuinely want to know how she feels because they don't actually care (or at least that was my interpretation). The great part is that he seems to be the overall choice of fans as well. Sure there are fans that ship the more problematic characters (even the two who push to get her to relose the weight when she ends up gaining it back for a short time), but overall the consensus seems to be the Matsume is best boi. I agree. 

But the whole thing got me to thinking about the whole "nice guys finish last" idea and where it actually comes from. You see, I think actually nice guys finish first, but to be an actual nice guy you can't be superficial. Superficial guys are only interested in girls who look good and they consistently go after girls who are out of their league in the looks department and they finish last because those girls are interesting in guys who look good too. If a guy is superficial about who he wants to date, why is it a bad thing that the girl he's interested in is also superficial about who she wants to date? It's a double standard. People who actually fall for personalities over looks tend to end up with people who also like them because people with good personalities don't pass over a person because they don't measure up in the looks department. Well, that's my two cents anyway.

Ah Love, What a Funny thing: Exploring my taste in Anime Rom-Coms

So I've been watching a lot of Rom-com anime shows lately. Some were full of generic Shojou (anime directed at teen girls mostly) tropes and lots had problematic elements, especially the older shows. I've seen quite a few and there were some that I liked more than others and I thought I'd take a minute to explore the shows I really liked as opposed to the shows I thought were just meh and what concepts and characters I liked more than others. So, starting off, I've narrowed the list down to shows that were both centrally focused on romance (eliminating shows such as SAO which had a romance in it without it being the defining element of the show) and shows that I felt were less rom-com and just general romantic drama (such as: Say I love you, Library Wars, Dusk Maiden of Amnesia, Sasaki and Miyano, Horimiya and Given). I've tried to keep it to shows that have one central romance, but included one harem show (The World God only Knows) because I just like the way it was done with that one. I also excluded comedies which had romance but it was less prevalent and not as important to the story (The Disastrous life of Saiki K) and shows I've started but not finished (Quintessential Quintuplets). Finally, keep in mind that some of these shows I watched years ago so I'm relying on my memory for certain details as I have lost access to some.

For shows I really enjoyed one of the common elements is good characters and/or dialog. Many of the shows feature rich casts of side characters whose antics are just as interesting (in some cases more so) as the main romance (Toradora and Kaguya-Sama Love is war are prime examples of this). All of the shows I picked have interesting concepts. Two are about a normie being forced to live amongst a bunch of oddballs (Pet Girl of Sakura Hall and Boku wa Minna Kawai-sou), a few are about learning to love or first love (My Love Story, Over the Moon for You, Love Chuunibyou and Other Delusions, Kaguya-Sama Love is War), and a few are about a couple of social outcasts finding love with each other (My Teen Romantic Comedy Snafu, Love is hard for an Otaku, and Komi can't Communicate). A lot of the ones I chose for my favorites list have the most adorable couples (I'm Being Harassed by the Sexiest man Alive, My Dress up Darling, My Love Story, Over the Moon for You, and Love is hard for an Otaku). The final two on my list both have interesting concepts. The World God only Knows is about a gamer who is so much of a nerd that he prefers 2D girls to actual female company and is the king of in-game conquests, but when he is forcibly recruited to extract demons who have latched onto the heart of various girls he needs to figure out a way to make real girls fall for him too or quite literally lose his head. So I can't Play H is about a reaper who feeds on the perverted energy of the guy she's paired with in order to fight. Toradora bends gender norms having the guy be the one who is domestic and pairing him with a girl who is not only a slob, but can't do much of anything domestic. My Dress up Darling also bends gender norms with the guy being a good cook and knowing how to sew while the girl is less handy with these things. 

For the list of shows I liked but wasn't insanely into, most of them have simple characters that fit generic tropes. They are mostly all cute, some are very frustrating because of the long wait for any kind of romantic resolution and the many, many, misunderstandings that crop up along the way. Take, for example Lovely Complex. Most of the characters are pretty generic. Your main duo both have insecurities which cause them to be self-conscious, but everyone else is able to see how great a couple they'd make before either of them do. In Wolf Girl and the Black Prince you have the shared secret trope. In this case, the secret that they share is that the main female character is lying her ass off to fit in with her friend group. Mayo Chiki follows this same formula a little differently, as the main girl of this is cross-dressing and pretending to be a boy and is found out by the main male character. Kamisama Kiss has a pretty unique concept, but the characters are all very generic down to the tsundere male lead. A lot of the shows on this list also have problematic dynamics between the main duo (such as the petty violence in My Pet Monster, the Black Prince's sadistic side, or the joke treatment of a trans girl in Lovely Complex and the vast age difference in Kamisama Kiss). Some of them have male leads that are beyond clueless and therefore extremely frustrating (Monthly Girls Nozaki-kun and Lovely Complex) where even when the female lead directly confesses attraction the male lead misunderstands. The only one on this list that has somewhat interesting characters is I can't understand What my Husband is Saying, but because that show is just very short (three min an episode) I wasn't able to get enough of the characters to really fall in love with it.

So I guess the elements that make a rom-com good in my mind are: a rich cast of characters, an adorable couple that may or may not break gender norms,  comedy that isn't a bunch of silly tropes and doesn't make fun of trans people, rich and engaging dialogue, and a unique story line that pulls me in.

*Edit, despite my combing of MAL to find all the shows I've seen in the past so that I included most, if not all the shows I truly enjoyed from the bottom of my heart, it seems that I left out one of the best. I was reminded of this by a Facebook post from Crunchyroll alerting me to the fact that this show has a second season. The show is called Science Fell in Love so I tried to Prove it! and both the comedy and the romance is everything I could ever wish from a rom-com. It is, along with Love is Hard for an Otaku, one of my personal favorites because the cast are all adults (which makes me feel less guilty thinking about them in compromising situations) and it doesn't really have a lot of problematic elements played off for comedic effect either.