Ranked #309

Voices of a Distant Star

Another hidden gem gets reviewed.

I randomly picked this DVD up at Blockbuster's Anime section and expected nothing much from it and 25 minutes later I was ...... !!!!!! The next day I told 10 people about this movie. That's how much it *got* to me.

Hoshi no Koe ~The Voices of a Distant Star~, is essentially a story of a long distance love and mail messages between a boy and girl. The movie is really short, but in that time you discover that the two of them are friends, the girl is sent out with space forces, but they "text" each other. As time passes (on earth) the boy will age quicker than the girl who is millions of light years away.

If you've ever been separated from a loved one by time or distance, this movie will resonate very strongly with you. Prepare the Kleenex. You won't really cry because the movie is sad, you'll cry because of ... sheer longing and wishing and other emotions, please watch the movie and you'll understand what I mean. It's a Masterpiece.

The movie's sheer ability to pack that much emotional punch into a 25 minutes ~ now THAT is story-writing talent. It totally disproves the myth that movies have to be long to have good character development.

What is even more amazing is this entire anime was done by 1 man with 1 Apple Mac. He and his wife provided the voice acting for both characters. The man is Makoto Shinkai. I made a vow to follow his career. Since Hoshi No Koe his career has taken off, he is the talent behind "The Place Promised in Our Early Days" and "Byousoku 5 centimeter". This guy is so good that I'll buy every anime he makes because I know it will be good.

Please watch, highly recommended.

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An absolutely beautiful masterpeice in all but a few regards.

Voices of a distant star tells the tale of two lovers, seperated by time and space whos only connection is through txt messages which arrive at exponentially increasing delays, to the point where a message is sent wishing happy 24th birthday, from a 15 year old me.

Voices of a distant star is the end result of getting a perfect love story, trimming off all the excess fat, and shrinking it down to 25 minutes of raw emotion.

This was a very hard anime to rate, if you were to take this 25 minutes and compare it to the same length of time in any other anime, Voices of a distant start would win hands down, but because its so short when it came to the end, I was just wishing it would continue for even just another 20 minutes. It left me feeling satisifed but not quite furfilled.

I can see what 'they' tried to do with this anime, purify and distill it, and in that regard it was pulled off flawlessly. The one problem I have is I feel that the characters drew the short end of the stick and at times, the storyline felt quite rushed.

The art style in this anime is just so beautiful it really does justice to the storyline, although the storyline feels like it could have been developed a little more, Voices of a distant star has some absolutely amazingly breathtaking scenes that I never thought I could learn to apprechiate within 25 minutes.

Voices of a distant star is the perfect example of how even within 25 minutes, something beautiful can occur, but because of this it left me wanting more which is why I give it a 9, altough with an added 20 minutes it could have easily been a 10.

A truly rememorable anime and one that I highly recommend. read more