A Silent Voice #1

The cover of this 2015 Kodansha USA release sets a quietly compelling tone: two middle-school-aged figures — a dark-haired boy in a black t-shirt and a brown-haired girl in a pink top and plaid skirt — stand apart in an empty classroom, the rows of desks and a chalkboard stretching behind them. There's a palpable sense of distance and unspoken tension between them that perfectly suits the story's reputation for emotional depth. Yoshitoki Ōima's clean, expressive linework brings an immediacy to the scene that makes this first volume hard to put down.