Watch the emotionally intense anime movie A Silent Voice before it leaves Netflix

polygon.com:

It’s no particular wonder why so much anime across so many genres and eras focuses on high school settings: It’s a intense period full of radical new experiences. And while young people often don’t recognize this until much later in life, it’s often a period where they’re learning how to be human and how to understand other humans, without guidelines or a basic toolkit. American media about high school usually heightens that dynamic in different ways from Japanese media, often presenting students as precocious, self-defined, and so hyper-verbal that they seem like particularly petty adults. (Just look at Mean Girls — Rachel McAdams was 26 when she played Regina George in that movie.)

But anime high school series are more likely to tap into the uncertain aspects of being a teenager — especially the awkwardness around managing emotions, and deciding what’s safe or smart to reveal to other people. Naoko Yamada’s emotionally intense 2016 movie A Silent Voice, leaving Netflix on June 4, focuses on specific areas that most high school stories won’t touch. It’s a particularly raw look at the damage young people can do to each other without intending to, and without any way of predicting the scope of their actions. Plenty of high school media addresses bullying, but Yamada’s adaptation of Yoshitoki Oima’s manga veers away from the pat and familiar narratives, and dives so deep into teenage emotions that the weight is almost staggering.

In a slow and thoughtful opening that switches rapidly between past and present, elementary school student Shoya Ishida hangs out with his friends in an enviously casual way, joyously running between one small childhood adventure and another. Then a deaf girl, Shoko Nishimiya, joins his classroom.