6 top award-winning anime films on Netflix to watch

A Silent Voice

An honest story about childhood pain, depression, suicide, and redemption through learning to love yourself, A Silent Voice is an incredibly emotional anime about the friendship between a high school girl named Shoko Nishimiya who is deaf, and a boy, Shoya Ishida, who bullied her in elementary school because of her inability to verbally communicate. As children, Shoya’s terrorizing of Shoko escalated to the point of the young girl transferring schools, which results in the other children bullying and isolating Shoya.

In high school, Shoya is chronically depressed and suicidal, unable to forgive himself for his grade school days. He resolves to end his life and takes time to learn sign language to ask for Shoko’s forgiveness beforehand. But after running into Shoko again in their high school hallway, and her being moved to tears at Shoya’s plea for forgiveness, the two form a friendship, and Shoya abandons his plans for suicide to try to learn to see the world through Shoko eyes.

A Silent Voice, which released in 2016, is directed by one of Japan’s most acclaimed female anime directors, Naoko Yamada who is known for the anime series Clannad and K-On!. A Silent Voice, the first in our list of six award-winning anime on Netflix to watch for both its heartbreaking emotional honesty and gorgeous aesthetics, won seven awards the year after its release, including the Japanese Academy Award for Best Animation of the Year.  The film was also nominated for Festival d’Animation Annecy’s award for Best Feature Film.