Hello everyone, I'm Yukinoshita. I'm pretty new to writing reviews so if you have any tips you would like to share, feel free to do so. I would love to be able to write better reviews in the future. ^-^ This review is spoiler-free by the way!

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♥ » Information

Chapters: 64
Volumes: 7
Author: Ooima, Yoshitoki
Genres: Drama, Romance, School, Shounen
MAL: http://myanimelist.net/manga/56805/Koe_no_Katachi
Extra Info: There's an earlier one-shot which centers around Nishimiya's bullying shown in beginning of the manga.
A movie's also coming out in October 2016, produced by Kyoto Animation. Be sure to check it out!

♥ » Story

The story begins with Ishida and his friends doing a test of courage, performing many troublesome activities such as jumping off of a bridge, pouring salt on slugs, etc. Why does he do this? Simply because he's bored. Life is boring, school is boring, and Ishida wants something fun to do. So when the new deaf girl arrives in his classroom, Ishida takes the opportunity and bullies her to defeat his boredom. Throwing dirt at her, yelling in her ear to harass her, and throwing out her hearing aids, without a thought that he's doing this to another human being.

After all the bullying, Nishimiya's mother transfers her out of the school. Upon hearing the news, the entire class turns their back against Ishida and starts bullying him. Ishida realizes what he's done, and begins to feel guilty about his actions. However, it's too late. The bullying continues for the next few years of his life, all the way up to high school which keeps him from having any friends or having a happy life. About to give up, he meets Nishimiya once again at a sign language school and begins to build his path to redemption.

♥ » Characters

Honestly, most of the characters are dislikable. Some are somewhat likable, yes, but a majority of the characters were made for you to hate because of their twisted and fake personalities.

Our main character, Ishida, starts off as a dislikable character. He did the things he did simply because he was "bored" and had nothing else to do, not realizing the consequences he would have to face after doing those actions. After finding Nishimiya years later, he decides to change. He decides to make it up to Nishimiya for all the bullying he did back when they were kids by doing everything he can to make her happy, and also get his classmates to forgive him.

Our other main character, Nishimiya is a sweet girl. However, the class sees her as a weird girl and the one time someone tries to befriend her, that person gets bullied and moves out of the school. Due to her being deaf, she's unable to converse with people, and is instead having to write down her messages in her notebook to people and allowing others to write back, with some using that opportunity to put down nasty words in the notebook. Despite all this, she keeps a smile on her face, not allowing anyone to see her pain.

♥ » Art

Each character is drawn very nicely, all with a realistic look unlike other mangas with "flawless characters" and such. It has its ugly characters, its normal characters, and its pretty characters yet they aren't over the top designs. The use of warm/brown colors is absolutely gorgeous, as seen in the volume covers. 


♥ » Enjoyment

I very much enjoyed this manga. It tackles the issue of bullying that is commonly found in schools without failure. The characters felt real, the story was powerful, and it ended up making me cry several times because of how much I felt for the characters. Overall, this manga could've received a 10/10 from me if it weren't for the ending, which was pretty lackluster compared to the rest of the manga.