Koe no Katachi Chapter 62 Discussion

Naabii said:


exactly my reaction. lol

RightSaidFred said:


You have tolerance for sure, Ano Natsu de Matter was brutal.

fullmetal_adam said:

As for the romance aspect, or lack thereof in this case...the manga was tagged as romance and teased romance throughout, but ultimately delivered nothing. Shoko's misunderstood confession was entirely swept under the rug and forgotten. Reference to the cat-themed garden decorations made multiple appearances, but not this massive, almost character development? "...things aren't always perfect in real life and not everything gets wrapped up nicely" is a terrible excuse for the mangaka's failure to deliver a satisfying romantic resolution in the story. Besides, this isn't real life, it's a manga. If I wanted real life I would go outside and live it. "Shoko and Shoya's relationship was great as is, their love for each other spoke louder than words or even blatant actions. It was truly moving." I think you've attributed more depth to the manga than it earned. I wanted to experience a full and satisfying resolution to the story by reading it, not be required to write my own fanfic in order to fill in the blanks left by a mangaka who failed to fit it in, despite Shoya's filler-fuelled coma and all-around slow moving second half which seemed to be treading water until the exciting conclusion where literally nothing happened...

zackpaulou said:

"... Fast-forward to when Ishida makes up with her, Ishida brought something precious to her that makes her fall in love with him. And that is her thrown away hopes. It is in the form of her notebook, which is symbolism for her desire for friends, a genuine connection with others that she has already left behind, thinking it not possible. It is also in the form of Ishida returning the hand gesture of wanting to be friends, giving her an answer to a question she has given up on asking in a long time. These brought long forgotten hopes and dreams back into Nishimiya's life, as you can see from her teary expression. And you can't blame the gratitude and affection she feels for Ishida."

Annotations since the post is copied from another thread. Summarizes perfectly, IMO
Why nishimiya likes ishida and how her feelings are not rushed.

RightSaidFred said:


If she's suffering from Stockholm syndrome or Battered Women's Syndrome, then her feelings would make sense. She was abused and bullied by this boy. So it would strain credulity for her to have feelings for him.

Again, poor character development.

zackpaulou said:



Although what i just quoted explains in detail the situation, everyone's allowed to have their own opinion and criticism about the Anime & Manga. I don't agree with your's, however i respect it.

Blue_Ninja0 said:
Personally I think "I want you to help me live" was as much powerful of a confession as the cliché "I love you" and I liked it better that way.
But yes, I would love to see more of their relationship in the manga. Still much better than the movie though.

Dutch_Chief said:
I wouldn't mind to have seen them get confirmed as a couple, but what would possibly have been a better alternative, is to have him think back about the time when she confessed to him, and he thought she was talking about the moon, then realize he misunderstood her words, and start to blush. Then that could have meant he has feelings for her too, and they do get become a couple, or it could just have been from embarassment of having been confessed to and not even having realized it.

That would have been been pretty open-ended, but with some hints to think about

Quintessence said:
It wasn't as good as it should have been. . . The way the main girl reacted to being bullied was. . . weird. To say the least. She was way too quick to forgive people, especially the main guy. Main guy was pretty unlikable throughout (44 chapters before he finally said sorry? Really? ffs. . .) but she likes him anyway? Kind of felt a bit like Stockholm Syndrome to me the way she got so attached so quickly to someone who mentally and physically abused her for months. A couple support characters were kind of horrible human beings yet they tried to portray everyone as being simply misunderstood. . . weird. And way, way too many instances of unchecked victim blaming. To the point it actually made me feel a bit sick to my stomach. Too much attention was paid to the main guy and his suffering (which he mostly deserved) rather than the girl who really, REALLY suffered. There was 0 chance I was ever going to feel sorry for this guy no matter how hard the mangaka tried. Maybe if he properly apologized from the get go and made a genuine attempt to make amends, but he really didn't, just occasional self loathing and vitriol towards people who remind him of who he used to be and low-key still was. Spare me.

A lot of the drama felt forced for the sake of having drama which made the pacing too fast for much of the series as they attempted to keep the drama coming almost nonstop. Really the pace started getting messed up when Ueno was reintroduced. Then the last 2 volumes were kind of weak. They stretched out the hospitalization by giving each character exactly 1 chapter to get different views of essentially the same thing then they rushed to an ending. Really it was all downhill after the suicide attempt and it wasn't even a high hill to begin with (7/10). I had high hopes for this and the first volume was really good, but in the end I can only give it a 6/10. So much disappointment.

Unpopular opinion, I know from reading the comments here, but as someone who suffered from bullying for almost their entire time in school (from as early as I can remember until grade 10ish), to see bullies and bullied getting along at all in the way these characters did, as teens and without apologies, is pure fantasy. The depiction of bullying in the first volume was very accurately portrayed, for the series to turn out how it did makes it very much look like the mangaka understood what bullying looks like, but not how the bullies and the bullied think.

Pande91 said:
Shouya never sees Shouko as much more than "victim of bullying, with disability". He never sees her as anything but a deaf person worthy of pity, which feeds into his self-hatred. He constantly tiptoes around her, treating her like the lightest breeze could shatter her. To him, she's not as much a person as a reminder of his mean past self.

And the manga does little to correct that, too. We don't see any of her interests or other friends. Does she really have no one to talk to from the institute for people with hearing disabilities? Doesn't she have any hobbies? Does she just sit around and watch the wall after coming home? This girl is just an empty shell save for her disability and depression.

Shouko isn't a character, she's a prop whose disability isn't used to tell a story about a disabled person despite it being the reason this whole story happens.

Arkaniet said:

I mostly agree with what you wrote here. I don't know if I'm just super petty but I didn't feel like anyone besides Ishida made any real attempt at fixing their wrong doings from the past. And that in and of itself can be a message as well. That what's done is done and at some point you have to stop martyring yourself over the past and forgive yourself and move on. Ishida did so much horrendously terrible stuff and got what was coming for that. It took getting bullied himself to understand what that does to someone. Making him the protagonist was a hard sell but for me it still worked since he made a genuine effort to make up for the time that Shoko has lost due to his bullying.
The same cannot be said for most of the supporting cast Kawaii and Ueno were terrible and even the chapters that were supposed to give them a sort of "redemption" absolutely fell flat and I didn't buy any of it. The as you say "unchecked victim blaming" infuriated me to no end. And Shoko is internalizing all of that shit as well and blames herself for "ruining everything for everyone around her". The poor girl tried to kill herself because she was done being a burdon to everybody around her. She just wanted to be included, she just wanted to feel normal and wanted to have friends and why the hell is that so much to ask wow. And what's with the "she can't even defend herself" from the Mom? And Ueno being like "and then you send the adults after us"...

Quintessence said:
The main problems I had with Ishida is that it took him 44 chapters to say "sorry", which is insane as it was something he should have said the minute they were reuinted, and a major part of his way of making up for his past actions was to accuse others and lash out at them. It very much told me that he didn't really learn his lesson he just traded bullying Shouko for berating everyone else because they didn't get caught for bullying Shouko. He never, ever, got over the fact that his friends threw him under the bus, even though he literally tried to drag every last one of them down with him, and that was continuously used to try and make him look like the victim when he very much was not.

Quintessence said:
The way Shouko reacted to all the victim blaming was accurately portrayed. Many people do attempt suicide from that level of gaslighting and they will often try to keep it all to themselves, especially when everyone around them is complicit and they don't feel like they have anyone to turn to. It just made me sick to see it happen because I've been there. That and the first few volumes were accurate representations.

Quintessence said:
It's everything else that makes no sense. The way she immediately forgave all of her former bullies over and over again, especially Ishida and Ueno, and then started harboring feelings for Ishida, the bullying ringleader. . . Not realistic in the slightest. You don't get bullied mercilessly for half a year and then forgive everyone and be all buddy buddy without so much as a "sorry".

Quintessence said:
A much better representation can be found in Kimi to Tsuzuru Utakata

Arkaniet said:
A simple sorry just wasn't gonna cut it and apologies cannot be accepted. His early mindset seemed to me that he didn't even think about being forgiven. So instead he tried to make up for what he ruined. Him lashing out at the others was... for me... to some degree fine. All of them were trash to her as well and they immediately ganged up on him and threw him under the buss. He had to suffer the consequences of his actions and paid for what he did. None of the others did and instead they went along their merry way, each still bein just as toxic as they were back then. Kawaii and Uonos freakout when Nagatsuka tried to deescalate was super telling that at their core both of them were still hatefull and just putting up a front (No clue were precisely it is but they call him fat blob and that he shouldnt touch them and stuff). None of them grew like Ishida did over the course of the manga. I think the concept of the manga was to overcome, move on and forgive and grow from your past self, for that to work I myself accepted that even though he was a bully he was also the bullied and therefore also a victim. These two things don't exclude one another in my head.


Agreed. What I don't understand is the timing of the suicide attempt... ok so here's how I took it. Shoko gave up on connecting with people by leaving the notebook in the pond. Ishida brings it back which gives her a little bit of hope and energy to try to connect with people once more. But all of that falls appart on the big blowout by the bridge where Ueno lashes out at Kawaii and well everything goes to shit. Ishida is going on a "pretend date" with Shoko and she tells him that she "ruins everything around her". So she is once again blaming herself for what happened on the bridge. This reinforces the notion that she's poison to the people around her and shatters her hope of reconnecting once more. Therefore she's loosing her will to live again. Written out this is... somewhat plausible but this was so hasty... the blowout wasn't irreversible and she still connected with Sahara so I don't really understand. Maybe it's like a breaking point thing. She was on the edge for so long and while they got her away from it at bit the blowout was to much. The movie added a scene to show that her hearing loss was progressing and that she was completely deaf on one ear, maybe loosing her last bit of hearing was to bad of a future to look forward to.
Yep I had a hard time going with all of this as well. The way it was presented was super strange. And then you had her Mom saying stuff like "She never fights back" and Ueno saying stuff like she never bothered to listen to her voice and never voiced her own. And none of this gets challenged so maybe the author shared this opinion? To me that just sounded like victim blaming but her forgiving everyone and going with this whole thing sure makes it seem like she doesnt fight back and doesn't really voice her disdain. Makes you wonder if the author even reflects upon that this is victim blaming. I might be reading to much into it though.
Thanks for the rec. I'll add it to my plan to read. Haven't read yuri before so we'll see how that goes.

Quintessence said:
I'm not saying the trash supporting cast didn't deserve to be lashed out at, they 100% did and it did piss me off that they got off consequence free, but it just showed that Ishida really hadn't changed all that much. This can be shown clearly when he lashed out on everyone on the bridge, even those who weren't his bullies. That one scene ruined any chance I had of ever feeling sorry for this guy and reinforced what I was thinking the whole time, that he hadn't really changed and was bottling up a lot of hate inside and was just waiting for an excuse to unleash it. It very much made it look like he was masking his true feelings and then after being provoked enough the mask fell off. I honestly don't think he grew at all until after that. He was carrying too much baggage that he wouldn't let go of.

You don't get to abuse someone and then play the victim when the shoe is on the other foot. Ishida spent half a year abusing someone and then when it was his turn to take abuse suddenly he's a victim. He's a victim of his own devices. If someone pulls out a gun and shoots someone and then someone else hauls out a gun and shoots them they don't get to then play the victim card because they never would have gotten hurt if they didn't shoot first. There is 0% chance of me ever feeling sorry for someone like that and this is what they centered the entire manga around when they really should have focused on Shouko, the only true victim in the entire story.

Shouko's suicide attempt would have made much more sense if they would have just made her the focus of the story instead of Ishida. She was always like this but you never got to see it because the story was all about him and he's as dense as a brick and didn't notice that she was struggling to hold herself together the entire time. To be fair she put up a good front, but the bridge incident was too much. She started building a house of cards when she started hanging out with Ishida and then Ishida himself was the one to knock it down. Considering she wasn't getting any emotional support from home she must have felt like she was suddenly all alone again. She was also made the focal point of the argument so it would be all to easy for her to think that everything would be better if she just wasn't around anymore. I've been there before. Suicide becomes a very attractive option when you think you're being left all alone and people are openly telling you it's all your fault.

Quintessence said:
Shouko's suicide attempt would have made much more sense if they would have just made her the focus of the story instead of Ishida. She was always like this but you never got to see it because the story was all about him and he's as dense as a brick and didn't notice that she was struggling to hold herself together the entire time

Croseus said:
Sorry to jump you guys' conversation, but I want to insert some relevant information. In my opinion, every issue you've described is attributable to deliberate choices of the story to be misleading in service of its core ideas related to misunderstanding and miscommunication. A major theme of the story is the disparity between individuals' subjective experiences -- the most obvious example of this is Ishida and Nishimiya having very different opinions about Ishida himself (for reasons that are extraordinarily subtle but incredibly well-done, imo). It is tempting to see Shouko as Generic Bullying Victim, when in actuality the story establishes her as a very complex personality with a specific history, set of insecurities, and (surprisingly intelligent and analytically-minded) views. The story is not about bullying -- it is about communication. The mangaka has strongly emphasized this. To this point: Shouko's problems all stem primarily from others' inability or lack of effort to understand her -- instead understanding her in ways that are convenient for them or projecting their own emotional damages onto her. This manifests both in malevolent (e.g., Ueno, Ishida in 5th grade) and benevolent ways (e.g., Yuzuru, Mashiba), and many readers do the same. The actual bullying itself (with the exception of the notebook/pond incident) has very little direct impact on her; a reader's overemphasis of the bullying's importance to the story is a dead giveaway that the reader did not pick up on the (admittedly extremely subtle) specifics of Shouko's psychology.

When you make an effort to understand Shouko for who she actually is rather than "just a bullying victim", her feelings and actions make much more sense, and a side product of that is that you start to empathize with her views on the side characters and their (at least partly) redemptive qualities. If you want my full explanation for my point of view, rather than this vague and hastily written explanation, you can find it in the Koe no Katachi JSL Guide that I linked above. Therein, I explore the full depth of Shouko's character and why she feels and acts the ways she does. I would honestly be very interested to hear your feedback, since much of my reason for making that guide was to counteract what I see as common misconceptions about the story and its characters, especially Shouko.

Arkaniet said:
Right he was lashing out at everybody in that scene. He was the same as the scene that I mentioned with Ueno and Kawaii, they also didn't change and when push came to shove they snapped as well. He had way to much hatred and resentment build up at that point. It does sound like the series has stuck a personal cord with you... and not a good one. I've never been in a simila situation so your insight is very appreciated. Sorry that you went through that and I hope that you're feeling better. I seem to be very lenient on accepting very fallable characters as protagonists if the story fits and there's some progression to be seen. This story clearly, as you said, needed a lot more development on his part and I can see that point. It would have been nice to see some kind of spin-off from her Shokos point of view... it would be a VERY hard read but an interesting one for sure. Thanks for reading my ramblings and I hope you have a good one.