Friendship 101
Creative Staff:
Story & Art: Yoshitoki Oima
Translation: Steven LeCroy
What They Say:
WORDS OF REASSURANCE: Once upon a time, Shoya was terribly cruel to Shoko, his elementary school classmate who couldn’t hear. To make up for his past sins, Shoya has devoted himself to repaying the debt of happiness he owes. So when Shoko faces a romantic setback, Shoya assembles some familiar faces from their past for a trip to the amusement park that may just change things for Shoya, too.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
A Silent Voice volume 4 picks up right after Shoko’s love confession to Shoya last volume, Shoko utterly flustered that she wasn’t able to make her message clear to the former bully.
With that as our establishing point, the remainder of the volume does an effective job of carrying out that theme of misunderstandings. Continuing with Tomohiro’s plans for creating a movie, he and Shoyu slowly amass what ends up becoming quite the group of acquaintances in their cast. And while the noticeable increase in their personal circle feels sudden and oddly convenient, Shoyu does acknowledge such when the group decides to hang out at an amusement park together. With the gang consisting of former bullies, cool kids, nerds, jocks, and downright bitches (Naoka coming on full-force here), Shoko is justified in second-guessing his friendship with all these people. Motives for most of them are still unclear, and with Naoka especially reflecting the personality he’s trying to leave behind, it’s interesting seeing how he slowly but surely accepts that friendship isn’t something that can be analyzed under a microscope, but rather felt and lived within the present moment.
That’s not to say that complications aren’t bound to crop up sooner or later, though. With Naoka having wormed her way into the group, the concept of “pretend friends” she brought up last volume is further built upon here as she makes such blatantly transparent insincerities towards Shoko. Her aggressions essentially serve as a major point of conflict for the plot as she plays devil’s advocate for Shoya’s past actions, building up to her and Shoko’s one-on-one conversation at the amusement park’s ferris wheel. Seeing her justify all the horrible actions she and the rest of her class played upon Shoko is gut-wrenching and just plain hard to watch, but does keep in theme with the series’ message of misunderstandings as well as what defines friendship. Realizing that Naoka goes to such lengths to try and gain back her friendship with Shoya makes for an interesting twist on the exact thing Shoya was doing just one volume ago and proves how good intentions can turn sour fast.
Keeping with the theme of misunderstandings, the volume moves away from the cast of students and begins to focus on Shoko’s family, introducing her grandmother as well as better fleshing out her mother. And while all the conflict around her grandmother feels contrived for just how quickly she’s introduced for the sake of drama a mere couple chapters later, it does serve as an interesting means to explain Mrs. Nishimiya’s cold actions towards her children. In particular, seeing her act not as a mother, but a wife betrayed by her husband provides a different flavor of heart-wrenching that still keeps in tone with the overall feel for the series and shows how silence can carry a different collection of emotions depending on the person.
In Summary:
The main gripe in A Silent Voice volume 4 is how hastily it introduces characters for the sake of plot progression. That said, it still does a good job of maintaining and furthering its themes of friendship and misunderstandings through a lack of communication, or in some cases communicating in a means that others simply cannot see.
Content Grade: B+
Art Grade: A
Packaging Grade: A
Text/Translation Grade: A
Age Rating: 18+
Released By: Kodansha Comics
Release Date: November 24, 2015
MSRP: $10.99
