A Silent Voice Book Series Comparative Review
March 31, 2022
If you search “A Silent Voice”, you will find my review of “A Silent Voice: The Movie”. I recently was gifted the mango series. Just from reading book one there are so many details left out from the movie. If you don’t want spoilers from the movie or book I would advise you to not read beyond this point.
As I have stated before, there are many details left out from only the first manga for the series. One of which is the first time Shoko and Shoya met each other. Yaeko Nishimiya, Shoko’s mom, was trying to make Shoko look like a boy so that she doesn’t get bullied as much for being deaf. Yaeko ended up going to “Hair Make Ishida”, Shoya’s mom, Miyako Ishida, to cut Shoko’s hair off. Miyako instead handed Shoko a hair styles magazine. Shoko ended up picking a shoulder length hairstyle. After Miyako was done cutting Shoko’s hair, Yaeko got irritated because it wasn’t boy short to which she stormed off, but not before buying into Shoya.
Another complete change was when Shoya tried giving back Shoko’s old notebook. Yes, he did give it back, but it was Yaeko’s fault that it fell into the river. Yaeko saw Shoya giving the notebook back to Shoko. Yaeko snatched it away. Shoko accidentally smacked it out of her hand. that is when it fell into the river. Shoko went over the railings to try and get it back and Shoya followed.
Just from these two incidences, I feel like this movie could have been more accurate if it was made into a series. The book shows Yaeko being more aggressive towards Shoya, not only because he bullied Shoko, but the fact that Miyako went against Yaeko’s wishes when cutting Shoko’s hair.
There are many more differences in the series and movie. More specifically the “moron” scene. I was so interested to see how that would turn out in the book and it never actually happened. Naoka ended up having a chapter about her, which made me dislike her even more, but non the less she was an important character in the whole series/movie.
Authors Note
I was able to read all the books in a matter of a few days because of how interesting they all were. I would definitely recommend the book series, if you couldn’t tell already. You can get the English version on Instagram. The series I got had an included notebook, but unfortunately it only had the first few pages Shoko had written on.