After a year since its original release in Japan, A Silent Voice came out on Blu-Ray and DVD in Australia in December 2017 in Australia, distributed by Madman. The Australian A Silent Voice Limited Edition comes with both the Blu-ray and DVD copy of the movie, four art cards and a 75 page booklet.
Packaging:
The packaging is comprised of a cardboard box. Unlike the Your Name version, it is fully enclosed.
The packaging artworks on both the front and back is nothing special but is different than the normal release.
The Movie and Special Features:
For the review of the movie, please refer to this page. The copy of the movie is inside a normal Blu-ray case with full sized artworks on the front and back, although this means the title of the film isn't seen anywhere.
The special features include:
- two music videos (Koi wa Shito
no wa by AIKO and Koe no Katachi (A Silent Voice) by Speed of Youth)
- the
trailer
- TV spots
- a video of real-life locations as seen in the film
- four
interviews involving the Director, Character Designer, Art Director and Music
Composer.
The music videos include some unique animation and the songs
aren’t too bad. Koi wa Shito is the main
theme with vocals while Koe no Katachi is instrumental only. The video of comparing the real-life
locations against the film is always interesting to see how different (or
similar) it looks, although it is painfully short at just over two minutes. The interviews range from 2 to 7 minutes
long, so they are still quite short but gives insight to the thought process on
how to adapt everything into two hours. Both the Blu-ray and DVD contains the same special features, although of course, the Blu-ray copy has a higher resolution at 1080p.
Art Cards:
The Limited Edition contains four art cards. They look nice although not really from what you would call the iconic scenes from the film.
Booklet:
The booklet is 75 pages long and has character artwork and
bios, key visuals, storyboards and short essays that analyze the manga and
film. It is a hefty piece of material. Unfortunately, around half of the
length is taken up by the storyboards.
They’re not even for the movie; rather they are for the two music videos
so they feel a lot like padding out. The
essays were interesting in how it explores the transition from manga to film
and how it had to trim and make changes. It has a short look at how the author found
their inspiration for the manga and the various themes it touched upon. The booklet isn’t bad, just a lot less meaty
than expected.
Below are some low-quality samples of the booklet.
Overall:
A Silent Voice is a fantastic and thought-provoking film and is worth buying a physical copy whether it be on Blu-ray or DVD. The Limited Edition is roughly 50% more expensive than the normal version. Whether the extra is worth the premium is hard to say, although the booklet is filled with padding despite being already short, and the lack of special features is sad as you would have loved to learn more about A Silent Voice.
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For reviews of other things, have a look at this page.
