Hoshi no Koe

After watching the amazing 5 Centimeters Per Second, I figure I owed it to myself to watch Shinkai Makoto's first work Voices of a Distant Star. Reviews praised it and I assumed that it must be good. Well you know what they say about assuming. Story: Right off the bat I was unsure about the story. I liked the concept of love separated by distance as it worked quite well in 5cm Per Second, but the idea of lagging text messages is just ludicrous. You'd think that in the year 2046 we'd have invented a more effective form of communication, but I guess Shinkai Makoto didn't thinkso. Also look at the phones! No effort was made to even design phones that even had a hint of futuristic technology. Oh yeah, they could invent gigantic, space traveling, mechas, but more advanced forms of mobile communication devices are out of the equation! Moving on, the story gets no better from beginning to end and nothing is resolved. Practically no attempt is made to even strengthen the audience's true understanding of the connection that Nagamine and Noboru share. They just sort of tell you that they like each other and expect that to mean something. The years fly by without any coherent sense of meaning and the progression of time ends up not feeling quite right. Things don't change drastically enough for Noboru or Nagamine for me to even care. The story is just a mess. A pretentious, self-indulgent, mess. 5/10 Art: First impression was a mixture of confusion and disgust. The characters are HORRIBLY designed. From scene to scene, depending on the angle, they look so different that I sometimes couldn't realize if they were one of the leads or a new character. Proportions were also SO off at angles that I had to really try to resist the urge to punch the screen out of anger. Emotions don't quite come across as clearly as I would expect which just compounds with all the other flaws making this OVA nearly unwatchable. The space battle scenes actually stand out as the best art in the OVA, but the doesn't mean anything. The mecha designs and animation is average and uninspired. Yawn. 3/10 Sound: The sound in this also blows my mind at just how horrible it is. You know how bad the music is? So bad I can't even remember what it sounded like. I can't even remember what if there WAS music in this! And the seiyuu are as lacking in emotion as the Twilight movie actors. The sound effects in the space battle scenes are average, just what you'd expect for that kind of thing, so they leave no impression whatsoever. 3/10 Characters: There were characters? Really? I just thought there were talking slabs of painted wood. Not that they had much to say. The characters are just so lacking in any relatable emotion since the OVA didn't spend enough time establishing the nature of Nagamine and Noboru's relationship to make the audience give a car that they are separate. I'd like to see what exactly they love about each other. Noboru is a distant, blank, emotionless guy and Nagamine is a clingy, whiny, child. Neither are developed and both are just without any sort of distinguishing personality. And the whole lack of ANY other characters just blows my mind. Really. 2/10 Overall: 5 Centimeters Per Second is, to this day, one of my favorite anime movie/OVAs of all time and I think, since it came after this abysmal pile of filth, that Shinkai Makoto is a very talented man. He knows how to establish atmosphere and characters, situations and emotions that you can relate to. He brought none of his skills in these areas to this OVA. Flat characters, a ridiculous premise, emotionless seiyuu and horrible art all make this one of the WORST anime ANYTHINGS I've ever seen. I will never understand how so many people could enjoy this trash, but they can if they want. I do not suggest watching this. Save your time for Shinkai Makoto's other works as they are worth the investment. 4/10

I first watched this movie in 2004 in university and remember being blown away by the sheer depth of emotions and feelings that this short film manages to convey in the time that the typical shounen anime may have managed to advance the plot by about 2 screams, a power-up and a fireball. Coming back to this film over 10 years later, I was apprehensive at how my memories of the film would hold up to a rewatch by my older, cynical, 30-something self. The art is pretty mediocre especially given the advances in animation in the past decade. The faces especially tend to be distorted andout of shape though some of the landscape shots were pretty breathtaking. The plot is also pretty normal and if summarised is nothing special. In the short amount of time we spend with the 2 main characters, we don't really find out much about their history or motivations driving them. With all these flaws then, why does this film deserve a 10/10, a PERFECT score?? Makoto Shinkai (the director) somehow takes these somewhat mediocre elements, mixes them together and then turns them into an amazing film which is greater than the sum of its parts. Somehow, despite the mediocre and simple art, you really get a sense of the vast emptiness of space, and the loneliness and isolation that Mikako feels as she is separated further and further from Noboru by both distance as well as time. Somehow, despite the limited characterisation, you really come to understand how strongly they feel - their despair, their love, their hope. And to top it all off, Makoto Shinkai somehow did all this on his own using a home computer in 2002, when most people were still discovering how to use a computer to surf for porn and such. Hoshi no Koe is a movie about feelings, and how it conveys these feelings so forcefully in 20 minutes is truly impressive.

“There is no long distance about love, it always finds a way to bring hearts together no matter how many miles there are between them.” Telling a good story in only 25 minutes can be a difficult task, but Shinkai Makoto (almost) single-handedly managed to do so with Hoshi no Koe. However, since it was in fact only made by one person, it does have its fair share of flaws (some more prominent than others). Story: (8 / 10) The story is simple. Two childhood friends are separated, but try to stay in contact with each other, even as the distance between them grows. This creates a ratheremotional love story, and it does it all in the short time period of 25 minutes. Because it’s so short, there’s not too much to say about it, but Shinkai did a great job of delivering a story like this. Art: (8 / 10) The art is by far one of the biggest shortcomings of this OVA, and yet it’s so beautiful, all at the same time. Hoshi no Koe uses a mix of 2D and 3D-animation, mostly using the latter for the mecha and spaceships, while characters and backgrounds remain 2D. The backgrounds are fantastic, and looks so good, but this is where the problem comes in. With such beautiful backgrounds, it’s rather weird that the characters look so... bad. It really feels like there wasn’t nearly as much time put in for the character art, and it’s really noticeable. It wasn’t too much of a problem though, as all the other aspects of the art (and OVA in general) will take your mind off the character designs before you know it. Sound: (8 / 10) There are (apparently) two versions of this OVA. One where Shinkai and his wife did all the voices, and one which had proper voice actors. I watched the former, which obviously means the voices weren’t as well done as they could have been. Some lines of dialog just felt stale, but this is also a (very small) problem which quickly fades in comparison to the rest of the OVA. The OVA has a very emotional piano-centered soundtrack, which really helped bring out the emotions in every scene. The music in itself is fantastic, and the credits song, “Through the Years and Far Away”, is an absolutely beautiful song that really captures the tone the OVA set. Characters: (7 / 10) When you only have 25 minutes to tell a story, it’s quite obvious that there won’t be time for a lot of character development at all. Nonetheless, the characters felt real, and somewhat relatable (I’ve never been in a similar situation myself, so it’s hard to tell). What I did like, however, is how there are no supporting characters, really emphasising that this is the story of these two friends, separated in time and space, and introducing new characters which we’d have to develop emotions and care for would’ve probably taken away a lot of the feelings you get when watching this. Enjoyment: (8 / 10) I really enjoyed this OVA, and how it manages to do what it does in such a short time. It was rather emotional and sad at times, but not to the point where you’ll find yourself crying uncontrollably. Conclusion: If you have 25-30 minutes on your hands, and/or you’re simply a fan of these types of movies (5CPS, Promised Place) then I’d highly recommend you watch this. Pros: + Tells a great love story in a very short amount of time. + Fantastic soundtrack. + Nice mix of 2D and 3D-animation. + Beautiful backgrounds. ----------------------- Cons: - Character art really falls short. - Voice acting can feel a bit “off” at times (due to not having real VA’s)

Voices of a Distant Star is a very well received anime. For what reason is beyond me. This anime is just bad. Maybe I'm not the most cultured person, but seeing two people whining and complaining isn't my idea of entertainment. Story: The story has the right idea, it just doesn't seem to do anything. The idea that two people who care about each other but are split apart by distance is a noble idea, and one that could have worked, but it doesn't because it just shows the two people just complaining, and hardly anything else. Sure there are some action sequences in there, butthey are boring. If your going to do something like this, at least show the characters interacting with characters in the place they are. Just going back and forth between the two is not at all interesting. I honestly think that the director didn't even try to expand the story at all. Bottom line, this story could have been good at least, but it just fucks itself over by there being nothing besides the interaction, if you can even call it that. Characters: Now, here's where Voices really takes a downfall, the characters. Both Mikako and Noboru are simply too whiny. They're so whiny, it's hard to sympathize with them. They basically have no emotion besides the fact that they miss each other. It's just "Oh, I miss you" for 25 minutes in various ways. They don't even seem sad about it or anything, just rather depressed. Despite the fact they both whine and complain, I think that Mikako is worse because; 1. She complains more, and 2. She doesn't drop out of the army to be with Noboru, even though she can. But still both characters are just awful. Art: The art was overall decent. The Earth setting was really good, but the other settings were absent of anything interesting or eye-catching. Now, when you can't make space eye-catching, you defiantly have a few problems in the art department. The character design was OK, but Mikako's design looks like it was ripped-off directly from Lain's character design. The 3-D art however is where the art starts to drag itself. It just doesn't fit. It looks poorly compiled and not at all cleaned up. The only good thing I can say about the 3-D art is that the enemy ships look like a Haunter, who is an awesome Pokemon. But even that doesn't save the art, because it's just overall decent. Sound: The music is rather forgettable and boring. Sure, some of the stuff they did with the piano was interesting, but it's still just boring and forgettable. It's almost as they played the same song, just over and over again. The English voices were decent, and the sound effects were sort of interesting, but they were few and far between and you can't remember them. The sound part was just rather boring. Overall: I have no idea why so many people like this anime, it's just two people complaining for 25 minutes. That's not entertainment, that's high school drama, and frankly, there are better ways to watch high school drama than this. If you want to see people complaining for that long, then I feel sorry for you. 3/10

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