When someone asks for an Anime movie recommendation, the top three recommendations I see are: (1) Anything by Ghibli (2) Your Name (3) A Silent Voice.
I watched some Ghibli moves but I haven't watched Your Name yet. The movie I watched and keep coming back to is A Silent Voice movie! It's a story of redemption and self-acceptance that I think everyone should watch at least once in their life!
While I will describe the story below, I think it's best if you go into it not knowing anything, what I would say is that it's very emotional and will make you tear up of happiness and sadness, at more than one point through the movie.
A Silent Voice is one of the most realistic anime movies ever & all characters in the movie are like people you must have met in your real life. I believe anyone would relate to at least one character of the main cast.
The story follows Shouya Ishida. In grade school, he was a bully who constantly targeted Shouko Nishimiya, the deaf girl in his class that wasn't treated well even by his other classmates.
Now in High School, Shouya can't look at people's faces anymore. He plans to commit suicide, believing that there's no forgiveness for what he has done. Before he dies, however, he wanted to apologize to Shouko so he starts looking for her.
They meet again, and after learning how Shouya regrets what he had done, and learned Sign Language for her, she forgives him. So, their story of redemption and learning to accept oneself begins.
The movie poster in Japan...
What sells the story though is not its premise, but the characters and how well their development is executed! All of them, even supporting characters are all multi-layered and feel human, which lets the emotional parts of the story hit harder.
I've got to mention Some of them didn't have time to be fleshed out in the movie version compared to the manga.
The movie has everything you need to know about anime to start watching longer shows.
The movie also depicts people with psychological disorders very realistically, which is rare for anime. As someone who has some social anxiety, I can tell you it's depicted surprisingly accurately with one of the characters in this movie!
Shouya & Shouko as children
