I have read a lot of books in my life. For real, I'm pretty sure I have a problem, and in my life I've read hundreds of stories I would consider great. But I have rarely come across a story where every single event, character, motivation, and consequence felt deliberate, predetermined, and connected. A silent voice is one of those stories.

I honestly don't think I've ever seen a pivot so smooth yet so drastic as that between volumes one and two. For about three quarters of volume one you're gonna be thinking, "fuck this spiky haired little shit, picking on this sweet little girl because she can't hear, if I was there I'd mess him up". But then we do see him get messed up, and by people who were complicit in these actions. Watching Shoya get reverse-Uno carded with the force of a Muhammad Ali Dempsey roll by these inherently hypocritical kids forces a small amount of pity into the hearts of us when we were cursing his name only pages ago. This small bit of pity is used to catapult Shoya into the protagonists seat for the remainder of the manga as we watch him try to atone for his sins. Shoko remains the same kind and loveable person and feels responsible for Shoya's lack of friends as a senior, and watching both of these people try to restore as adults what they lost as kids is beautiful and heartwarming.

This story of course is an up and down for our characters, as a constant improvement wouldn't be able to carry a story through seven volumes, but it doesn't have the artificial drawn out feel of a soap opera or CW show. Every setback is an aftereffect of Shoya's own actions and the way the people around him read them. We watch all of these imperfect people refuse to acknowledge their own flaws while Shoya has the self awareness and clarity to see the faults of others in an objective light because he is aware of his own. The characters are like planets and watching them slowly flow into each others gravitational fields to make a solar system is satisfying and perfectly timed and executed. It's reminiscent of Neon Genesis Evangelion in that everyone has problems that they only tell to the mirror, and as we come to the lowest point of the series in the middle of volume six, we watch these characters finally face themselves and each other fully, and as they begin to pick up the pieces, a calming sensation fills the you as you realize they're going to be all right.

The final volume of this story is one of the most satisfying things I've ever read. As the pages yet to be read grow thin, every single thing get's paid off and tied together in a satisfying way, and the last two images of this story put me in the kind of good mood that makes you look around and go, "hell yeah" for no particular reason. The perfect execution of a story about the cruelest and kindest things we are capable of, this is a story that nearly everyone can relate to from some angle, and every angle is sympathetic and flawed in some way. This story will make you smile, it will make you cry, it will make you introspective, and most importantly, it will make you see the shape of a persons voice.