Naoka Ueno

Naoka Ueno (植野 直花), is one of the classmates of Shōya Ishida in elementary school and a "supporting character" of A Silent Voice series. She is pretty notorious for having anger issues in some points of the series, making her one of the two most unlikable characters in the series.

Why This Nuisance Should've Left and Never Returned

 * 1) This character is by far, one of the absolute worst in representing mean girl stereotypes. As she acts very mean for no good reason whatsoever, leading her to become an irredeemable character.
 * 2) She is not a good friend to Shōya...
 * 3) * She wanted to get his attention by bullying (his prologue counterpart), as its her main intention by picking on Shōko Nishimiya when she debuted in their school.
 * 4) * When she wins him over, she helps him in continuing his bullying onto Shōko Nishimiya to death.
 * 5) * When Shōya gets her, along with his old friends and Miki on the plate when he is reprimanded for his brutal bullying, she in return, abandons him and and goes along with the crowd in giving Shōya comeuppance. Not only is she unfaithful to him, but she basically wanted to get away with bullying.
 * 6) * When she sees him again, she manipulates him into getting his bad side back when she attempts to bully Shōko again once she sees her.
 * 7) * When Shōya stops her from doing the act and admits to her that she (Shōko) and him are friends, she laughs it off, teases him and states gives him a mean compliment that their friendship is fake, which is a lie.
 * 8) * When she asks him if he hates her when they somewhat talk in private together in the fair. When he says he does, she begins to run towards Shōko, even when he begs her to not to do it in his fear, she ignores him and does it anyway.
 * 9) * As stated in WTNSLaNR#4 below, she still bullies Shōko much to the dismay of him. Wow, what a friend she is.
 * 10) * She never apologizes to him for her acts of bullying towards him, making her look pretty heartless.
 * 11) Moment of hypocrisy...
 * 12) * She states that she likes Shōya, but she actually doesn't care about him as stated above.
 * 13) Speaking of Shōko, she bullies her to the extreme, even though Shōya changed for the better and she didn't do anything wrong to her.
 * 14) * As stated in WTNSLaNR#2.2, she helped Shōya in continuously bullying Shōko, giving her unjustifiable pain and trauma during her time in elementary school.
 * 15) * Just like Miki Kawai, she manipulates both her, the teacher and her classmates in making them and us as the audience, to think that she is helping her to be settled well in her new surroundings. When in reality, she is trying to pick on her.
 * 16) * As mentioned before in WTNSLaNR#2.4, she tries to bully Shōko when she sees her again in the time-skip. Though she is stopped by Shōya when he sees it.
 * 17) * When she (Naoka) talks with her (Shōko) in a room of the Ferris Wheel together, she tells her that she hates her, and tries to make an agreement with her to hate each other. When Shōko declines to maintain her status of a good character, Naoka both slaps and bad-mouths her in response. Which not only hurts Shōko physically and mentally, but almost breaks Yuzuru's (Shōko's younger sister) camera as well.
 * 18) * She goes way too far in her acts of bullying during the hospital scene (which happens outside of the hospital), in which she actually assaults Shōko because she (Shōko) tried to take her life and thinking in her (Naoka) mind that she dragged Shōya to her balcony to commit murder, when in actuality, he was trying to save her from commiting suicide. She does this by bad-mouthing her more by saying that they would be better off without her, even asking that her to go ahead and die, as well as dragging her by her coat and slamming her onto the fence outside while she still has a cast. This gives Shōko a massive amount of pain, both physically and mentally.
 * 19) * To give a massive insult to injury, she also gives pain to her family. Her actions towards Shōko traumatizes her (Shōko) sister Yuzuru twice; first, when she slaps her older sister in a room of the Ferris Wheel as stated in WTNSLTS#4.4, which she (Yuzuru) filmed intentionally in secret, not to mention that the footage shocked Shōya as well. And second, when she sees her sister getting severely hurt by Naoka. She also bullies Yaeko (Shōko and Yuzuru's mother) when she gets involved into the whole ordeal, which Naoka bad-mouths her as well, saying that she should die too and set her daugther straight, not to mention that she also hit her and goes as far as pulling her hair, which is way more abusive in comparison.
 * 20) * Her hypocrisy has also extended, as she thinks that Shōko and her family are bad people, when in actuality, she is the bad one.
 * 21) * When you put criminal law into account, Naoka can be faced to a long sentence of imprisonment, as well as facing a large fine.
 * 22) * Even when Shōko still acts kind towards her after all of this, she still bullies her. Even after all of this, she still doesn't learn her lesson.
 * 23) * Just like how she treats Shōya, she never apologizes to her for her acts of bullying towards her.
 * 24) * Overall, she treats Shōko like this since she thinks that Shōko is taking Shōya away from her, which fueled her jealousy. This is further shown when she secretly sees Shōko removing the vandalism she commited on his desk. As a result she bullies her as a way to protect Shōya. How does this actually help him? She is just making things worse for him and others, not to mention that it's an unreasonable reason to bully someone. (Overall bullying is always bad, even if you have a reason.)
 * 25) To make things more shameful, she acts nice to Miyoko and Shōya because they are nice to her, but acts horrendous when Shōko acts kind to her. Let's not forget that she (Naoka) doesn't let or even asks her (Shōko) why she interacts with Shōya, which makes her look delusional, dumb and flustering to the audience.
 * 26) In the manga, she has made some creepy faces when her teasing is focused in that angle.
 * 27) While she did get comeuppance for her actions, she backfires on it and as stated in WTNSLTS#4.9, she doesn't learn her lesson, thus making it unsuitable. It would've been much better if it was mentioned and/or seen for that matter, that she got harshly reprimanded by her father and/or sent to the slammer and the story would end there. Or better, her being forgotten from the story entirely.
 * 28) Both Yūki Kaneko (for the Japenese dub) and Kira Buckland (for her older version in the English dub), makes her sound cringy and irritating in her normal voice, too menacing when she has a tough voice and absolutely traumatic in terms of yelling.
 * 29) Though she feels remorseful for her actions, she has NO motivation in changing her character. This in turn, lags in her character development.

Nice Qualities

 * 1) Her design is passable.
 * 2) While she absolutely comes off as a bully who should be in the slammer, she does have a moment of sympathy.
 * 3) * As mentioned in WTNSLTS#6, she only has her father as a parent, meaning that her mother either died or divorced him, though it isn't actually been confirmed.
 * 4) * This can be somewhat understandable, since she has to do deal with her job to make ends meet as well as taking care of her three younger siblings, though this doesn't excuse her bad behavior entirely.
 * 5) Gia Grace (for her younger version in the English dub), is much more tolerable in the movie compared to the other actresses.
 * 6) While her remorse towards her actions is ignorable, she did apologize to Shōya for bullying him and coming to possibly hurt his feelings, when she tried to make amends with him. Though she doesn't really mean it, it proves that she isn't entirely heartless.
 * 7) She did become friends with Miyoko Sahara, when she finds out that she is actually inspired by work in fashion in the manga.
 * 8) She also helped in making Miki Kawai feel guilty about her bullying, much to her (Miki) constant denial of participance.
 * 9) While it feels weak all by itself, she has hope for redemption, though it should be noted that it has to be written well to prevent from being half-baked.