A Silent Voice 3 Review

This manga is focused on friends from Shoya’s and Shoko’s past troublesome days. It’s great to see how people have changed or stayed the same over the 5 years they’ve been apart. Here’s the info on the rest.

A Silent Voice 3 (Kodansha Comics)

Shoya finally gets a cell phone, being that he sold his old one and canceled the contract in order to save/give money to his mother from the previous volume. He attempts to get Shoko’s number in a suave manner, but this dude’s got no game. It results in him ending up looking for her long lost elementary school friend, Miyoko, instead. As he has a million questions rattling in his mind about the enigma that is Shoko, all of them are cleared when Miyoko asks her all the questions upon meeting her again.

Then, as the two are bonding, Shoya declares that he wants to right all the wrongs he has done to Shoko in the past. We’ve already seen this coming into play in the last volume, but with this one it’s more prominent. He’s trying to get to know her and helping her reconnect with old friends. Of course, there are some problems when another classmate has no interest in being her friend and is pissed off about the changes in him. Guess she wants Shoya to revert back to being an asshole. Some women like that.

As a side character, Tomohiro is a nice bestie that seems like a detective-type guy that wants to find a good match for Shoya (romantically? I guess?) He just wants a nice girl to get with his bro and it was nice seeing more characterization on his part. I will say that there is no romance thus far. We just have an old classmate who has a crush and who the hell knows how Shoko feels. I only know that Shoya isn’t interested in dating all that much, so we are still in the shonen realm.

The art is consistent and there’s not as much humor here. I could have done without all the jealousy bits, but that’s understandable and it does show realistic situations. The plot wasn’t really profound and didn’t have as much drive as the first two volumes, so I docked some points off. As you can see, I can’t really say much going on because nothing really went on.

Conclusion

I still loved the characters and dialogue. Everything seems to flow naturally and nothing feels too contrived or tropey. I think it’s a great series thus far.