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 think ... so. 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

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, but ... they 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

Voices of a Distant Star — the work that made Makoto Shinkai famous and touched the hearts of angsty teenagers everywhere. Feel free to help me understand why this is revered. I get that it’s remarkable that Shinkai did everything but the music, but I fail to see how it gives him license to write a hollow story and be called the next Miyazaki for it.

Let’s start with the good. Shinkai is a master of animation, arguably the best in the business, and Voices of a Distant Star is no exception. While it may have been made by one man on his laptop, it is ... superior to the work of some studios. Even at this early stage in his career, you can see Shinkai’s obsessive attention to detail that brings his worlds to life in a way that few others have accomplished. This stunning world is set to a beautiful soundtrack that features some timeless piano pieces. Tenmon is to music what Shinkai is to animation, and together they make a team few can rival. And if nothing else, Voices of a Distant Star‘s attempt to tell a moving love story in under half an hour is ambitious.

Alas, now for the bad. While the animation is gorgeous, the limitations really show. The 3D scenes don’t stand the test of time and stick out like a sore thumb, and the character designs are so bad they’re comical — welcome to the land of the square heads. Tenmon’s also not so great when it comes to the climactic space/action tracks, which are instantly forgettable. And although the original Japanese voice cast (which includes Shinkai) is good, the English voice cast is ruined by Cynthia Martinez, a woman notorious for her role as Hermes in Kino’s Journey. Even if you can stand Martinez’s voice, the dub is essentially worthless because it departs so significantly from the original dialogue.

“So?,” you might say, “I’m a real anime fan and I only watch subs anyway. And I can get past the square heads.” Well, good for you — now about that story. Anyone who has seen Shinkai’s works knows his theme is love tested by distance and time, and Voices of a Distant Star is where it all began. In a sense, Negamine and Terao are the perfect characters to illustrate the concept: they’re torn literally light years apart by circumstances beyond their control and try desperately to stay in touch, even if it means waiting years for that next short text message. The problem is the characters and their relationship are remarkably undeveloped. They’re introduced, we’re told that they’re deeply in love (nevermind that they’re junior high school students), and suddenly Negamine is off into space, longing to be reunited with her soul mate.

This all felt terribly melodramatic to me, and it’s an issue that frequently arises in Shinkai’s works. The basic idea is beautiful, but if you want the audience to actually feel for the characters and their separation, you need to sell the premise that they’re genuinely in love. Otherwise, it becomes impossible to empathize with them, and what’s left is a dime-a-dozen plot with pretty slow pacing to boot. Granted, the film is only 25 minutes, but Shinkai has fallen into the same trap even when given more time (5 Centimeters Per Second). He does much better when he gives the characters and their relationship the attention they deserve, and fortunately his latest work, Garden of Words, suggests he is improving with practice.

Voices of a Distant Star is a unique work, essentially one man’s labor of love, but it’s tough to do it all by yourself. Shinkai deserves credit for his hard work, but he’s received way more than is warranted. There are a lot of good love stories out there, and this one doesn’t come close to making the list.

Intro: Voices of a Distant Star is probably one of the most appalling anime I've watched, next to Orange Road (which I still regard as the worst anime ever created).

Story: 2/10

Yeah, yeah, I get it. It's a love story. Seen plenty of those. Sadly, VoDS does not stand out in this regard. And for god's sake, who the HECK would use a flip phone in 2047? So much for advancements in technology.

Art: 0/10

This honestly looks like a fan animation than a professionally produced anime. I'm not kidding. The frame rate is so god awful that I can't even...! Argh.

... Sound: 6/10

The ONLY redeeming quality of the show. Even then, only Cynthia Martinez (Mikako) and the Siri-esque voice for the AI system is good. Adam Colon (Nobuo) was FLAT. Could barely even hear him half the time. It's really no wonder why Cynthia is more successful in her career than Adam. IT'S CUZ THE FORMER CAN ACTUALLY ACT, DUH.

Character: 3/10

Neither of the characters strike off as especially entertaining, so there's not much to say in this regard.

Enjoyment: 2/10

Well, whaddaya think? It's dreadful, no doubt. If this was a series? OMFG. I would definitely fast forward it like I did with Orange Road.

Overall: 2/10

The only redeeming quality of VoDS is just SOME of the voice acting, unfortunately. Would I recommend this to anyone? Probably not. I would link it to my friends to LAUGH at how atrocious it is, though.

Unfortunately, like the movie I saw before this from the same creator "5 Centimeters Per Second" it didn't live up to the hype that it received in the comments, or reviews.

I wasn't particularly moved by the story. It did have an interesting plot to consider in a philosophical type way, about being so far apart, and the same age but getting messages from the past.

Despite what could have been a great OVA, perhaps if it was longer, and they eventually re-united.

I gave this a 5 simply because I thought about how life would be if I had to share messages with a ... love one that way. That aside it would have had a lower score.

This week I went on a Shinkai binge. After seeing 5 centimeters per second, I launched into his remaining work. I quickly realized that 5 centimeters is by far his best work. Voices of a distant star is probably his least solid piece of animation (besides "She and her cat") that he has done. The theme of the story wasn't bad but because of Shinkai's reoccurring love themes, it was old by the time I saw this animation. The actual plot was kind of weak and was very hollow to say the least. The animation was in my opinion very poorly done (opposite of some ... of Shinkai's other work). Character development was better than you would have thought for the length of the film. Sorry to say that It wasn't very good in any way. One last rant...all the text messages were in Japanese and there was no dub or sub for it (what a rip) in the end, if you aren't able to read Japanese then you are not entitled to know what they are texting to each other...

Continuing my odd quest to watch everything Makoto Shinkai’s made, his debut short, Voices of a Distant Star, is… well, it’s not good, but it IS informative. It’s got everything I’ve come to expect from him: underplayed melancholy monologues, sad piano music, landscapes colored in gradients of desaturated light, themes of love fading across an immeasurable divide and the necessary pain of growing up and leaving things behind, the whole works. This is very much the RWBY volume 1 of Shinkai’s work: evidence of considerable talent that will be tapped much more completely later on, but for the moment is let down by amateur construction ... that’s the clear result of someone just getting used to the medium he’s employing. The themes are haphazardly exposited instead of intimately felt, the animation is all very janky (the character designs in particular are hideous), the leading lady’s voice acting is distractingly amateurish, and nothing’s allowed the space it needs to breathe. It also makes heavy visual reference to Evangelion; so many shot compositions and visual motifs in Distant Star- the design of the robots’ interior, trains as a metaphor for disconnect, the color red denoting a mind-palace confrontation with a self of a different age, that classic close-up shot on the pilot’s head rising as their eyes open in tandem- could easily be classified as ripping off Eva. None of that’s to its favor, though, as they only highlight how much less effective those cinematic tricks are when not being utilized as part of a carefully constructed audiovisual masterwork. But hey, this was clearly a passion project from one guy first dipping his toe into this stuff, so it makes sense for it to be a wobbly first step. Shinkai’s work has only improved from this starting point, so it’s not worth wasting effort disliking it.

[Spoilers... sort of]
As someone who considers Gunbuster one of his favorite interdimentional timey-wimey emotional space operas, I was going into Voices of a Distant Star with a handful of recommendations and comparisons to the classic Gainax OVA. What I got was... ehhh. Thankfully, other than the basic concept of time distortion, the mecha setup, and the pacing issues (more on that later), Voices of a Distant Star is it's own thing, so I'm going to do my due diligence and not compare it to the Other Time Dilation Mecha Anime.

I should start off by saying that yes, it's awfully impressive that this was made on ... some dude's laptop in it's entirety - in 2002! How often do you get genuine passion projects in anime? Not very often. Mad kudos. With that being said, bad animation is bad animation and poor storytelling is poor storytelling, no matter how big or small the production is. This is the first and last time I apologize for any insensitivites about the subject.

It's a shame, because the concept of the show and how it's explained does pull at my heartstrings. It's a question that humanity doesn't currently have the technology to answer - "as time distorts, how does relationships?" - that gives off a unique combination of dread and longing.

Funny how time distortion is probably this anime's biggest problem, given it's short length. Wait I know, it was probably born out of necessity and passion, ect! And I can certainly appreciate time-limited production's incredibly tough decisions to Show, Tell, or Infer... but there's a little too much assumptions on the viewer's part to really get invested in any of the story. My entire issue with the show's story is how much it skirts by with so little - and that's basically what the Characters and Story section get into.


Characters:

The protagonists' relationship is what I would call "defaulted" - they're a guy and a girl and they're in the same class so of course they hit it off - it's an anime, don't ask why! Outside of a few scant mentions of them hanging out at convenience stores, there's not much development of their relationship. "Defaulting" assumes the viewer will be perfectly ok with this - "love is love", after all. Unfortunately, without being given a real reason to care about the relationship, all the drama involving time and distance and love come across as nothing more than waxing poetic. "I miss him" "I love him" "I want to go to the convenience store with him" is basically all you're really going to get in terms of character motivation.


Story:

The lover's method of communication - their cell phones - is a cool analogue function that is immediately understandable to the viewer. Easily the best case of inferred storytelling in the entire OVA. "Of course digital data takes a long time to get from point to point in space!"

Unfortunately, all this in service to a story that doesn't particularly go anywhere special. They eventually long for each other so much that they are able communicate across space-time because love finds a way, or something. They basically miss hanging out with each other, mostly in ways we have to infer.

And I'm sorry if I wax on, but the mecha aspects leave something to be desired. Fine, a 14-year-old is chosen to fight in some space war - that's a genre birthmark. The real make-or-break for a show like this is why? Lack of manpower? Wanting the youngest people available for a campaign that would take decades of real time service? A simple sentence - or even showing other pilots - would seriously help with worldbuilding.


Art:

Alright, bear with me guys. I think we can at least agree the art is sorta bad, although easily the easiest thing to overlook in this production.


Let's start with a semi-nitpicky complaint - why is Nagamine wearing a school uniform in her mecha suit?


The character designs suffer from frame inconsistency to the point that it's distracting. You know how it goes - facial features go up, down and sideways depending on the perspective.


The mecha and enemy designs are basic 3D models with some sheen added. Strangely nostalgic, as a 2000's kid used to this era of CGI.


Conclusion:

Voices of a Distant Star has a cool concept and an impressive production background. Even with it's limitations in mind, it simply fails to tell a comparatively compelling story to more fleshed out shows, OVAs, and movies, and that's probably the one thing that's universally important for any story-based medium. I don't hesitate to recommend this to people if they want to see what a truly "indie" anime looks like, but outside that, it's all empty space.

Hoshi no Koe is very similar to 5 Centimeters Per Second, they were both extremely bad. I personally think if it had been longer than 20 minutes, maybe 4 episodes, then it could have worked. But the time they set themselves to tell this story did not work.

Story: 3/10
I- I don't even understand what the story was? There wasn't a big introduction, this boy and girl were just friends and then she gets sent to space at 15 for no apparent reason. The idea of 90s phones in a futuristic anime is ludicrous to me. No effort was made to change the designs even ... slightly, and you would think for an anime set in 2046, there would be a more effective way of communicating, rather than it taking years just to send one email. Nothing really happens throughout the entire movie, there is definitely no conclusion of the story. It just ends. It could have ended at half way through the movie and it would have felt the same. At least 5cm had a conclusive ending, even if it wasn't very good. I like the idea of two lovers being long distance, but Shinkai just can't seem to pull it off. The entire story is just a mess, there is no progression for me to even begin to care about these characters and their story.

Art: 1/10
The animation... it literally looks like a fan-made project by a teenager. Not a group of professionals. The characters are awfully designed. The proportions and angles were so off putting, no scene looked correct. Every bit of animation looked HORRIBLE. I found it very hard to watch it all the way through in one sitting. The only redeeming factor is the 3D fight scenes and the scenery. They look like they at least had some effort put into them. The mecha designs were very generic and uninspired, clearly no thought was put into the designing of it. I do get that this anime is from 2002, therefore there wasn't the technology there is now, but other anime that came out way before are higher quality. So the issue here is not limited technology.

Sound: 3/10
The sound may be the only redeeming quality of this anime, but the music and songs were not great either, I cannot even recall how they sounded. I can't even recall if there even was music. That's how bad it was.

Character: 1/10
You can hardly tell that there ARE characters in this dreadful movie. They were like two bricks trying to communicate. No personality whatsoever. I expected Noboru and Nagamine's relationship to escalate somewhat, but nothing happened. Noboru was an emotionless and distant guy, he may as well have not been in the movie. Nagamine was just a childish and clingy girl. Both awful personalities that were not developed in the slightest. At least 5cm had somewhat likable characters. It is weird as well that they are the only characters shown, what about the people Nagamine went to space with? What about her family? Noboru's friends? Anyone? It felt so lonely, there was nothing good about it.

Enjoyment: 1/10
There was no enjoyment at all. I was so close to turning it off many times, but I decided to push myself through it.

Overall: 2/10
Awful story, awful art, awful sound, awful characters, awful awful awful!! Do not put yourself through this mess, watch 5cm because at least there was slight development in that story.