Naoko Yamada finds adolescent feeling in a pair of knees or a small, uneasy gesture. We recommend her patient, tender filmmaking, with one reservation: A Silent Voice gives its remorseful bully more room than the child he hurt.
Fi1m perspective
Yamada often looks towards a character’s legs to show how nervous they are. In A Silent Voice (2016), bruised knees and awkward gestures make school life feel painfully exposed. Cinematographer Kazuya Takao’s off-centre framing makes an ordinary encounter feel difficult. Yamada gives these small details enough attention to hold us without a grand setting. We found the bullying hard to watch because the children’s expressions kept the distress specific to the child enduring it.
Her Kyoto Animation work took her from television series such as Tamako Market (2013) to the features A Silent Voice and Liz and the Blue Bird (2018). Music is another way for her to express what characters cannot readily say. Composer Kensuke Ushio is a regular collaborator. She moved to Science SARU in 2021, after leaving Kyoto Animation in 2020. Her 2024 feature continues her interest in music and colour as ways to explore identity and connection.
The difficult question in A Silent Voice is how much attention a former bully deserves. Shouya Ishida seeks forgiveness from Shouko Nishimiya, the deaf classmate he bullied, and Yamada refuses to make his regret an achievement deserving immediate credit. She watches the other children closely, too, showing how much their opinions matter to those trying to fit in. Humour gives them lives beyond the cruelty, rather than interrupting a serious subject for a little relief. Their ordinary moments together help us care about young people who can be difficult to like.
The difficulty is that Shouko needs more of that attention herself. Reiko Yoshida’s screenplay sometimes leaves her chiefly important as the person who might forgive Shouya, and Yamada’s sensitivity to a gesture cannot quite repair that imbalance. The crowded middle also needs a firmer cut; patience with adolescent behaviour does not require equal patience with every strand of the story. Those are substantial reservations about a film we still warmly recommend. Start with A Silent Voice, but spare some thought for the girl whenever the boy’s remorse threatens to occupy the whole picture.
Biography
Naoko Yamada is a Japanese animator and director. She joined Kyoto Animation in 2004 after graduating from university and began as an inbetweener on Inuyasha. She progressed to key animator on Air and episode director on Clannad before her chief directorial debut with the series K-On! (2009).
Yamada directed the series Tamako Market (2013) and the films Tamako Love Story (2014), A Silent Voice (2016) and Liz and the Blue Bird (2018). She left Kyoto Animation in 2020 and has since worked at Science Saru. She was born on 28 November 1984 in Kyoto Prefecture.
