A Silent Voice made me realise how much my taste in Anime has changed for the better

A Silent Voice is a pretty fantastic movie.

It’s an incredibly feelsy story that plays with the audiences emotions in the most brilliant ways possible while also exploring many relatable subjects that draw on those emotions.

It’s one of the greatest Anime movies I’ve seen in recent memory and I enjoyed the entire ride from start to finish.

So yes. You should go watch A Silent Voice if you haven’t already. It’s worth the 2 hours.

But other than being great, A Silent Voice did something I never thought it would be able to do. It helped me realise just how much my tastes have changed and broadened over the years.

Throughout the many years I’ve been an Anime fan I’ve never really cared for Kyoto Animation. I’d go as far as saying I even disliked them. Everyone has always seemed to be completely in love with their work, but I never really was. Almost every show I gave a shot I either found completely boring or just barely reaching the realm of “decent”, with Beyond the Boundary being the closest thing to “good”, in my opinion, that I’d seen from them. I’ve also never really cared for the aesthetic they tend to go for, but that’s also mostly been due to my own stupid preferences that nobody else really has.

I guess it also doesn’t help that they produced what I consider to be the worst Anime I’ve ever seen, Free! Iwatobi Swim Club. God I hate that show. It’s so boring.

Sorry Free! fans… I just don’t get it

I honestly wasn’t expecting to like A Silent Voice all that much. But I wound up enjoying it a lot. I even dug the aesthetic of the movie. In the end, I gave it a 9/10, making it the first Kyoto Animation production that I’ve rated above a 6.

Which then begged the question: “Is it just an exception that proves the rule?”

Needing answers, I immediately fired up another Kyoto Animation production I’d never seen before: Chuunibyo. I’m yet to finish it, but it’s been great so far and I’m really enjoying it. And like A Silent Voice, I’m even enjoying the aesthetic, despite it being that very same KyoAni aesthetic that I’ve been known to dislike.

But I never saw Chuunibyou before. So what if it’s just another exception.

 

So, I then went back and watched a handful of episodes from a few other Kyoto Animation shows I’d seen in the past and originally given low scores to, and in pretty much every case I found myself having a lot more fun than I did before, and even opened my heart up to that moe aesthetic. Except Free! because that’s still the most boring and bland thing I’ve ever seen.

But my point here is, my taste has changed dramatically in the last year or so. I used to be fairly vocal about my distaste for Kyoto Animations works, and yet here I am today praising them for a movie and a handful of series that I would never have seen myself enjoying a couple of years ago.

Those were dark days

There was a time where I would always look the other way when presented with a relaxing, cute, high school series with a moe aesthetic and consider such a thing to be the most boring thing imaginable. But today, if I’m in the mood, such a show, or movie,can be one of the most pleasant experiences I could ask for.

I guess being an adult with a full time job and a mountain of responsibility on my shoulders has helped birth a means to appreciate the relaxing, chilled out nature of a series like Hyoka or the mature message of a movie in the vein of A Silent Voice.

So, I guess I like Kyoto Animation now. Or I’m at least more open minded towards their work. I look forward to giving many of their shows a second chance.

I guess sometimes people do change.

It’s amazing what a single movie can do.