Hoshi wo Ou Kodomo

Every year or so, there is usually an epic movie that comes out on the silver screen. A story of a kid sucked into a fantasy world of some kind, willingly or not, and embark on an adventure of a lifetime. These films have almost become a dime a dozen these days, so they really need to be excellent and memorable to become a classic. Sadly, I don't really feel like this one treads new ground.

In this tale, we follow Asuna, a regular, independent teenage girl. We also meet a substitute teacher (Morisaki) and follow them through an underground world to play God and revive ... the dead. Ambitious, you can call them, though it is an understatement. The concept of resurrection is certainly very interesting to explore, though this movie doesn't really do that, even if it is a main focus. It lead to a very anti-climactic ending. They made very quick work of the ending. They could have really explored more about resurrection and be more imaginative, but instead it felt lazy. Everything leading up to the end felt cliché and predictable, thus, a little boring.

The characters didn't really standout, either, though they aren't terrible. Asuna is a fun little character, always happy and optimistic, though also a little bland. Morisaki was also a little boring, always serious and never letting loose. They could have played around with him a little but we got nothing. The same can be said about most of these characters. They're pretty one-dimensional and not very believable.

Of course, I have to praise the art. "Scenery porn" as many like to call it. The landscapes are all very beautiful and detailed; they remind me of shows like 5/cm. It's probably (okay, definitely) the strongest point of the movie. The lighting can be really exquisite at time and DEM CLOUDS. I can jerk off to those clouds all day, but I digress. Being a movie, the animation is very good but not exceptional. Standard movie stuff.

Overall, the music is nice and fits the scenes well. They used the music well, as well as silence for those tense moments. The only qualm I have with it is that it just isn't memorable at all. It's hard to recollect any song from memory. Voice acting is decent, but even they couldn't save the sort of bland characters.

This movie is just another fantasy story that doesn't standout or offer anything new. It isn't really remarkable at anything, except perhaps the art. The story left more to be desired and a lot felt somewhat unexplained, especially near the end. I still kind of enjoyed it though. The characters were a little boring, but I still enjoyed their interactions with the new world. If you're looking for something just to enjoy on a boring night, or need a movie the whole family can enjoy, you can give this a try. If you're looking for a masterpiece, you should probably look elsewhere.

So this is what happens when someone with a huge boner for Miyazaki and Takahata , but not half the writing skill, makes a movie. I mean come on, Heidi, Alm-Öhi, and Teto were in the fucking movie, not to mention homages to the God Warriors, Lupin/Laputa robots, and more.

I can't say I didn't enjoy parts of the movie, but it would have been much better had it had a competent writer that didn't depend on tired cliches. It would have also been nice had it tried to be original, instead of just stitching together concepts from Miyazaki and Takahata's work.

For what it's worth, the ... art was really beautiful.

While the animation is absolutely gorgeous, Children Who Chase Lost Voices is a movie that lacks story content and character development.
The characters have potential, put they fail to meet even half of that potential; leaving them boring and incomplete. Asuna is, in my opinion, an irritatingly unoriginal character who fails to create any sort of attachment to me, thus leaving me indifferent as to what may befall her.
The story was dry and, while the concept was interesting, the execution was poor. They did not follow up on very important concepts regarding their world, and lacked logic or understanding.
If you are looking for good ... sound effects and animation, then this movie is perfect for you. However, if you are looking for a deep, well written story then Children Who Chase Lost Voices is - quite frankly - not the ideal choice.

This movie is boring, really boring. I actually fell asleep and had to rewind to see it all though, after making it to the end I realized I shouldn't have bothered. Despite being a very pretty anime the story overly complicates a simple concept while pretending to explain what is supposed to be happening and giving you characters that I just didn't care about. I think this movie will only appeal to people who don't mind overly dramatic tragedies.

This right here is the definition of mediocre. I came into this movie with good expectations and was severely let down. It took 3 sittings before i could finish it.

Lets start off with this movie's one and only strong point. The art and animation. It's right up there with one of the most beautiful animations, paired with a pleasing art style. I felt myself hooked on the visuals of this movie. But that's where the fun stops.

Most stories follow the same tension over time graph. Starts off slow, the tension gets higher and higher until it reaches the climax. Then it settles ... down again at the end. However, Hoshi wo Ou Kodomo's tension was all over the place. It felt like it had 3-5 different climaxes, making it a not very enjoyable roller-coaster ride. The story was too fast paced and left me unattached and uninterested in the development of the characters and story. Parts where it was obvious the viewer should be sad or happy or on the edge of my seat, left me feeling nothing.

The sound for this movie also felt lacking. It was too quiet a lot of the times and i feel that if the soundtrack was a bit more present, this movie would have improved more.

Overall, this movie was bland with good art and animations. It definitely had potential, but just wasn't executed well. I wouldn't recommend anyone to watch this

This movie is so unbelievably strange.
Let's start with the positives; it is a pretty good film. The art style is captivating, especially with the use of light and shadows throughout. It's a beautifully fantastical world with so many twists. Watching the characters grow as they interact with each other is really great. Overall I did enjoy watching it.
But there are so many scenes where I felt like I had to physically stop the film just to comprehend what the heck is happening. Just rattling off there's a scene where a little adorable cat is eaten by a creature in a really gorgeous and ... tear jerking way, the main characters get eaten, there's a giant hole in the middle of the earth, multiple people die like multiple times like it's nothing, and that's just the tip of this very confusing ice berg. By far the most confusing is the adult dude (I forget his name) because I don't what his deal is. The whole movie is really just trying to figure out if he's a good protective figure to the others or a creepy adult that needs to be kept 50 feet from the nearest school.
Basically no matter what you're going into this movie blind. At no point did I know what was going to happen next but by the end I was satisfied where I ended up. If you like more mythical films like the Cat Returns, Tales of Earthsea, etc you're probably gonna enjoy this film.

I’m a big fan of Makoto Shinkai’s work. When I first saw Voices of a Distant Star in the early 2000s, I was amazed by how beautiful and touching it was, especially when considering that Shinkai initially did everything other than the music and female voice acting himself. The Place Promised and 5 Centimeters then showed growth for Shinkai as a director and displayed what he could do with a higher budget and more fleshed out staff. Fast-forward about a decade and I was blown away by Your Name when I saw it during its US theater run and it immediately became my #1 favorite ... standalone anime movie. However, there were two big holes in my consumption of Shinkai’s work which I recently finally filled. The Garden of Words was a simple yet wonderful addition to Shinkai’s filmography, becoming my second favorite of his work. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about my feelings towards Children Who Chase Lost Voices.

Before I watched Children Who Chase Lost Voices (Hoshi wo Ou Kodomo) I had pretty low expectations, but also had hope that it’d at least be a fun and pretty fantasy story. I’d heard many people describe this as being Shinkai’s attempt to create a Ghibli/Miyazaki-style movie and sadly that may have put an unfair bias in my head by the time I viewed it, especially since I’m kind of “over” my old love for Miyazaki’s work. But I did my best to go in with as open of a mind as I could and this movie still came out as my least favorite of Shinkai’s major works. Maybe even my least favorite of ALL of his works. I mean, at least his animated commercials are over quickly.

But before I go too far here, let’s get into my category breakouts:

-----Story - 4 out of 10-----
What is there to say about the story? Well, I was rather bored throughout most of it. The setting is modern Japan maybe around the 1980s? There is also a fantasy world that is under the surface. A girl meets a boy from that world after encountering a fantastical beast and falls in love pretty quick. This eventually triggers a journey for her within the fantasy world below with her substitute teacher at her side. They meet some people and bad creatures along the way to reach a particular goal dealing with bringing the dead back to life. And that’s mostly it. It’s a rather basic story that is stretched out over a nearly 2-hour runtime and I could really feel it. The pacing of the story was mostly decent for what it was, but it didn’t have much momentum or feel like there was much meaning or feeling behind what was going on. Unlike Shinkai’s other work, I didn’t feel any personal weight behind the relationships between the characters or their feelings overall which is really odd. The theming and connection between scenes just felt off during the entire movie. There was also some integration with real-world history (such as Hitler) which felt very awkward. By the end I just didn’t care and there wasn’t any kind of payoff to tie everything together. I just couldn’t get into this.

-----Art - 8 out of 10-----
The main shining light of this movie. At least it was pretty overall. However, this is when the blatant similarities between this and Miyazaki films begins. The movie largely looks like it’s trying to emulate an older more classic style with its art and designs. I’ll get more into this in the “Characters” section, but most of the characters and creatures can be seen as nearly direct analogs to those in Miyazaki works. And while the art and animation is overall pretty, it honestly feels a little flat compared to Shinkai’s past work as well the works he seemed to have been inspired by.

-----Sound - 5 out of 10-----
For the most part, things just felt serviceable in the sound department. The voice acting was good overall and the music sounded alright. However, while the score sounded fine on its own, it also felt very intrusive at times. Whenever there was a big artistic shot of a landscape, a big epic booming yet generic-sounding section of the score would call out almost like a laugh track in a sitcom, like it was yelling at you saying, “Hey! This scenery is meant to be awe-inspiring! Be in awe!!” But unfortunately, it just didn’t have the desired effect with me. As mentioned in the “Art” section, while the visuals were pretty, they also felt a bit flat and I didn’t ever really feel that “awe” and the score seemed to try too hard to force the effect. While Tenmon’s music worked well for Shinkai’s previous movies, I felt like he was a bit over his head in scoring an epic tale and I’m kind of glad that Shinkai’s subsequent works used different people for the music.

-----Characters - 5 out of 10-----
In general the characters feel a bit empty. I rarely cared about them, although there were a few genuinely decent moments of emotional manipulation. But when it comes to the characters, this was the most obvious homage(?) to Miyazaki works. So here’s a quick rundown of characters from this movie as Miyazaki character analogs: Asuna was essentially a copy of Satsuki from Totoro with a touch of Nausicaa. Shun was business-casual Howl. Mimi was a total rip-off of Teto from Nausicaa. Pretty much all of the other creatures felt derivative in some way to things from Princess Mononoke. Shin was mostly a copy of Ashitaka from Princess Mononoke. And Morisaki-sensei was pretty much a combination of Jigen and Zenigata from Lupin III. I could probably draw more comparisons, but there are a few Miyazaki films that I haven’t watched, probably the most relevant being Castle in the Sky (I tried to watch it once but fell asleep, sorry). But yeah, while the characters had a few nice moments, they were very few and far between and drawing comparisons to Miyazaki characters is probably the most fun thing about them.

-----Enjoyment - 6 out of 10-----
So my personal enjoyment score (what I put on my actual anime list) ended up being a 6. I was originally going to give it a 7, but after thinking about it for a bit, that felt far too generous. Hell, even a 6 here feels a little generous. Again, while the visuals were rather pretty in general and there were some good moments, I was mostly bored throughout the movie. I didn’t get much of an emotional connection to the story or the characters and I really felt the time that I stent watching this movie. I still have some appreciation for what Shinkai did here and the fact that he tried something very different from his usual stuff, but it didn’t really stick the landing.

-----Overall - 5 out of 10 (Conclusion)-----
That brings me to the final overall score of a resounding “Meh.” While this is an interesting piece of work at times and it is indeed pretty (I’m really milking that aspect of this film), it just doesn’t make for much of a cohesive or interesting story overall and doesn’t have strong enough characters to carry it either. Again, I still appreciate this for being a piece with which Shinkai is trying something different and I think it helped him grow as an artist, but as an isolated work there just isn’t much here to love. It is easily my least favorite of his films and I am glad that he went back to something simpler and to his strengths when he made The Garden of Words. Maybe someone who is a bigger fan of Miyazaki works can appreciate this more, or maybe they would dislike it just as much because they’d see it as derivative? But if you’re a fan of Shinkai’s other works, I’d personally say this can be one that you skip unless you’re a completionist.

I feel im being nice with this score 6, since this movie is boring.
This is a ghibli wanna be, a ghibli withouth sustance movie.

I can use this movie as an example on how nowdays anime care so much about aesthetics over plot, just cuz something is beautiful doesnt mean not to care about the writing .

Art: 10/10
This is the only reason i continúe to watching this movie, is very beautiful, however its like i was watching a mash Up of a lot of ghibli movies, like howls and laputa , and the valley of the wind desings.

Sound: 8/10 nothing special

... Characters 3/10
Something i love about ghibli movies IS the characters, they are so unique, they have goals, ambition, motivations, and more important, hayao love a female lead, a strong one, all her female character are so rich, so powerfull, this girl did nothing in the whole movie, she needed to be SAVED all the time by all the made lead, and thats so sad, as hayao himself mention, all her characters needs a companion, not a savior, they can save themselves.... This kid, Well she is a kid, but withouth the males she could have been killed several times.
The only character with a goal was the teacher, but i didnt feel any conection for him.

Story: 1/10

This is the worse part of this movie, feels like a bunch of movies at the same time but is slow and boring, i have to pause It 3 times to be able to end It , is so boring, anime shouldnt be like a burden. No plot, too much exposition, too much "let me explain" instead of showing, the pace is weird , so many questions , feel empty, a nice beautiful aesthetic movie withouth a reason

Overal/ enjoyment: 6/10
The good score is for visual, i love them, and IS the only reason i keep watching, but no plot or nice characters to remember, wouldnt reccomend to Anyone, only if the person is mega bored and has nothing else to do with his time

I struggled with this one. I love Makoto Shinkai and his work, but I didn't really jive with this story. It was beautifully animated and the music fit it perfectly (I really loved the main theme「Hello, Good Bye, and Hello」). Like all Shinkai films, it makes you really appreciate how beautiful the artwork is, but at the same time, you wonder who hurt him in order to produce so many films with either lost or broken love in them. This film also made you think about life and death, as well as human morality. All in all, a good film, but just not one of ... my favourites.

The best way I can describe this film is "Diet Miyazaki". If you like films like Laputa, Princess Mononoke, or Nausicaa, you will probably find something to like here, as it's clearly trying to emulate that style, and while it largely fails to match up to any such natural comparisons, I can't really call it a bad film.

At the least, it's a very pretty movie. While the characters don't have the same sort of life and distinctive visual appeal as their Ghibli progenitors, they do come close, and the landscapes and backgrounds are absolutely stunning. The monsters and magical beings that are ... encountered along the way are, like the characters, not quite there but close, and they show a decent amount of creativity as well as their obvious influences. The film sounds alright too, though I always find sound somewhat hard to rate.

Unfortunately, the film stumbles in two of the most important departments: Story and Character. For characters, we have three leads throughout the majority of the film: Asuna, who is something of a naive, nice everygirl with fairly confused and inconsistent motivations; Shin, our harsher mystical fighting-type boy also with confused and inconsistent motivations; and Mr. Morisaki, who mercifully doesn't have the same problem with confused and inconsistent motivations and instead suffers from the fact that despite the fact that his story is possibly the best told with the most emotional gravitas, it doesn't get the emotional focus it needs because he's more of an antagonist type (even if I wouldn't call him a villain).

And I think this brings me to the critical problem with the movie, that underscores most of the rest of what it does wrong: the film is trying to be and do too many things at once, when one thing would have been more than enough. The closest thing the film has to a good, well-rounded plot is Mr. Morisaki's quest, but since the film is more focused on Asuna it doesn't have the room it needs to be really compelling.

And while Asuna is the focal character and you sort of get that she's probably a nice person it's a little difficult to follow her because nothing ever adds up. At the start of the film, she's listening to a magic crystal based radio and hearing a mystical song, which could have been a plot hook all on its own if they bothered to develop her past "nice girl" with some curiosity and adventurous spirit. After that, it looks like she's forming a strong bond with another character, but that gets halfheartedly not-quite-discarded for the meat of the film too. Once she's in Agartha she has two potential motivations to go on the magical quest served to her on a silver platter, but she never addresses either of them. The film tells us she felt a calling, tells us that she's lonely, and never really addresses why this causes her to make the choices that she does, which ultimately leaves her just along for the ride.

Shin, meanwhile, at least has one consistent desire, but her pursues it in a very scattered way and his reasoning and actions don't ever seem to add up. One scene he has a serious issue with honor, doing his duty, and paying his debts, the next he's more of a softie who doesn't want to see an innocent brought to harm. I suppose that could work, saying he's grown or formed some sort of bond, but it's not treated that way; we aren't really let in on how he's changing or even that he is really changing so when he says and does things at odds with his stated purpose, it's just jarring, especially when he indicates a resentment he never seemed to hold.

And even beyond the arcs of the characters, if you can call them that, the movie has a lot of elements that start nowhere, go nowhere, and never seem to add up. There are scenes, even entire threads of plots, that seem like clues to a mystery that doesn't exist. For instance, Asuna's magic crystal from her dad would seem to indicate that one or both of her and her father have some connection to Agartha, and we even get some tantalizing hints as to what that connection could be, only for it to never be mentioned, addressed, or the pieces put together in any way, much less one that would be logically and emotionally satisfying. We get a lot of mini-scenes and talks, however brief, about these supposedly deep philosophical ideas... which could be deep if the entire movie picked one and tried to focus on it. Instead it's sort of about the cycle of life and death but it also throws in an anti-war bit that could have been played up to a strong main status instead, and halfheartedly tries to suggest maybe an environmental message sort of that never gets followed up with, and so on.

It sort of makes me sad, because there are bits of great movies in here. And I don't just mean the great movies that clearly inspired this mediocre offering, but great movies that could have been. In one alternate universe there's a great movie about Asuna's crystal radio and how it draws her into this intrigue about a spirit world connected to our own, that spins a tale of global conspiracies and dying gods and humanity growing up. In another alternate universe there's a film about Asuna's journey to the world of Agartha, a world to which she is more deeply connected than she realizes, that has a lot of great and beautiful things to say about identity, and finding your place. In another alternate universe there's a movie about conflict and greed, that follows up on the snippets of Agartha's history we get in our version, that tells a great epic story that touches on the flaws of human nature. And of course there's the alternate universe with the great film that's closest to what we've got, that actually follows through with the emotional gravity of telling this tale about life and death, grieving and letting go. And there are more besides those that taking some elements of this thing a different direction could really make shine.

But in our universe, rather than getting a single, brilliant, great film, we got Frankenstein's monster: Cobbled together out of great parts, or at least parts with great potential, but in the end a shambling, patchwork sort of thing that doesn't do any of its components justice, coming out as truly less than the sum of its parts.

This is a film that wants to be epic and deep, but doesn't know quite how to do it, and so instead ends up flat and epic only in the potential it squanders.

Yet despite this, as I said at the beginning, there's enough to like here that I can't really bring myself to call it a bad film. I was entertained watching it, and don't really resent the two hours I spent that way. It's Diet Miyazaki: nowhere near as fulfilling as the real thing, but still likable and full of beautiful, creative vistas, so if you're really in the mood for a somewhat melancholy magical adventure and have it at hand, I'd say go ahead. Just don't go in hoping for too much.

Story: 4
Art: 9
Sound: 7
Character: 4
Enjoyment: 6
Overall: 6

Makoto Shinkai’s massive success for the past decade, which even he seems to be surprised by, has led to him being incessantly called “the new Miyazaki”. Why? Why would he be called that? The compliment is effectively a result of Western media being incapable of discriminating wildly distinct filmmaking styles and its tendency to just label any breakaway success in Japanese animation as a competition to find the next Miyazaki.

This sort of cartoonishly oversimplified heuristic thinking reminds me of a particular gag from The Big Bang Theory. If you’re unfamiliar, TBBT features an Indian (dots, not feathers) character, Raj, who has a crippling fear of ... women, to the point that he literally becomes mute when in their presence. However, if he ingests alcohol, however little, he becomes very relaxed and able to speak freely. On one such occasion, when Raj is competing with another main character for the good graces of a woman they were both trying to seduce, he is troubled and at a disadvantage until he finds some alcohol. Once he has had a drink, he immediately starts to successfully flirt with the girl and develop great chemistry with her. To that, the guy he was in competition with bitterly remarks: “Do you believe him? Normally, around women, he has the personality of a boiled potato. Put one beer in him and he’s M. Night Charmalarmalan.”

See, in spite of the show’s harsher critics, I’ve long defended it as not being the superficial mockery they purport it to be, and I’ve always been able to have a decent time with it and found it, dare I say, funny. It was this gag, however that changed things for me. It just hit me over this one joke. Why? Why is that funny? Why does that joke work? What do Raj and M. Night Shyamalan have in common to make that joke work? Is M. Night known for being a smooth talker? Is he known for being a ladies’ man? Is he known for being an alcoholic? No to all of the above? So, then the only connection is that they’re both Indian? That’s it? M. Night’s name was the only famous-enough Indian one you were reasonably sure your audience would recognize? That’s all there is to it? Yes. This dude is Indian and, uh, that guy is also Indian, so they’re like, uh, kind of the same, right? Sounds good enough to me. Run it!

It's the same kind of cultural ignorance that Makoto Shinkai’s comparison to Hayao Miyazaki is borne of. They’re both Japanese and they both write and direct feature length animated films that make a lot of money. It comes down to nothing more than that. It’s as deep as a puddle. It would be the equivalent of calling every single Hollywood director who makes a moderately successful movie “the next Kubrick” or “the next Coppola”.

That being said, to Shinkai’s credit, he’s seemingly always tried to distance himself from the Miyazaki comparison. It’s easy to find interviews in which he states that he not only is no Miyazaki, but that it’s foolish to try and copy him. He has stated in an interview that while Castle in the Sky was the first movie he paid to see at the cinema, and that he’s both a fan and admirer of Miyazaki-sensei, his style has always been pointedly different and not really comparable at all. Just in case we’re keeping track, he is indeed correct in saying that.

Which then begs the question, why did he renege on all of that and make a Miyazaki rip-off? I mean, Children Who Chase Lost Voices is still arguably a Shinkai film at the end of the day, seeing as trains and shots of feet have made it into this movie, as well, but his signature identity is so faint, it’s nothing more than window dressing for an off-brand Miyazaki creation. The amount of direct references to Miyazaki’s work, both in the visuals and narrative, reaches an extent that greatly exceeds tribute and enters the realm of plagiarism, but with very little understanding of what to do with the elements it plagiarizes. We have Asuna, our archetypal Ghibli girl protagonist à la Chihiro, who we learn is generically kind, hardworking, curious, and adventurous, as all Ghibli girls are. That’s it. That’s her entire character description and development for the whole movie. She then meets, Shun, her classic mysterious and handsome Ghibli boy, à la Haku or Howl, whose entire point in the story is to be handsome and mysterious. We also learn she has a cute animal pet as a mascot à la Kiki’s Delivery Service, because of course she does. She also has a magic glowing rock à la Castle in the Sky. Then we have the dumb bad guys in uniform representing state violence à la Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Then we have the weirdly unnerving supernatural creatures à la Princess Mononoke. And then we have the aforementioned bad guys in uniforms senselessly destroying that which they do not understand and cannot value à la… basically all of the above. It’s virtually impossible to even enumerate all the little animations and facial expressions which are lifted straight from Ghibli films.

However, just because you have access to all the same ingredients as Gordon Ramsey and all the same tools as Gordon Ramsey, son, that don’t make you Gordon Ramsey. The whole thing feels like a fundamental misunderstanding of Hayao-sensei’s work. Sure, Miyazaki films can be quite dark and violent for the standards of family entertainment, but they don’t exactly contain huge blood splatters from some dude chopping monsters in half with his sword, and the dudes with modern military gear and weaponry and helicopters clashed so badly with the film’s fantasy aesthetic, it just took me out of the experience entirely. To be clear, I believe the aesthetic clash was intended, but that does not obviate the calamitous effect it had. I may be harping on the Ghibli comparison a lot, but I feel it is incredibly misguided to wholesale copy the style of a man literally regarded as a god in the domain of animation.

As an adult, I would posit that it’s entirely possible to have a decent time with the movie. For one thing, the background art and a lot of the visuals are breath-takingly beautiful, and for another, there’s really nothing offensively bad in it. I didn’t hate it. It just did not speak to me – at all.

The closest thing I can liken it to is Tales of Earthsea. That movie was written and directed by Gorou Miyazaki, Hayao-sensei’s son. It is Ghibli’s worst rated film, but I wholeheartedly disagree with that consensus. It’s just as long and similarly slow, but Tales of Earthsea is a Ghibli film made by someone who understands the essence of Hayao-sensei’s work and decided to take it a different direction. Children Who Chase Lost Voices is a Ghibli film gone wrong made by someone who does not understand the essence of Hayao-sensei’s work, but attempts to imitate it anyway.

All of that is to say that if you’re in the camp that hated Tales of Earthsea, you’ll hate this even more.

Still, the film was a critical and commercial success, even if it doesn’t come up often when people talk about Shinkai-sensei’s work, so maybe you’ll see in it the same entertainment value that so many of his fans clearly did.

So this girl sees these monsters and is saved by a boy from the underworld. And she goes there, and she is chased around by some freaks and… WHAT IS THE POINT IN ALL THIS?
Disappointed! This is how I felt after I finished this film. Wanna know why?

1) The director
Makoto Shinkai is quite famous for his tragic romantic tales. Voices of a Distant Star and 5cm per Second are amongst the few romances even an uncaring bastard like myself enjoyed. So it was reasonable to expect yet another film regarding a tragic romance. Because, duh, Shinkai never made anything else. And to my amazement he ... now did. And it wasn’t good.

2) The studio
Studio Comix Wave is new but has made an impressive work so far. The thing is, with this film it feels like it is trying to rip-off Ghibli Studio instead of trying to find an identity or style of its own. I had to check three times to make sure this WASN’T a Ghibli production. I mean, IT IS SO ALIKE! In my mind there can be only one Ghibli and now I see someone trying to become its copycat? This is an outrage! Yes, pretty damn good visuals and soundtrack, but they all look and sound like a damn robbery from one of the most famous studios around. I couldn’t enjoy the overall film because of it.

3) The story
You think the similarities to Ghibli stop only at the visuals? Heck no, the story itself was a mix of various Ghibli works. At the same time it is hardly as captivating as those films, with far less context, complexity, interesting situations, and plot. So not only it is an imitation, it is also a bad one. If you just sit back and think of the plot of the film you will immediately realize how linear, simple, and eventually forgettable it was.

4) The characters
Not even one of the characters in the film is memorable or interesting. They all play their generic roles to the fullest yet none of them manage to stand out from their counterparts in a myriad other children fantasy stories. To the most part all you see is the heroine being chased around by monsters and being saved by a handsome fighter from a magical land. It couldn’t get any cornier. I saw fifty times more in the far similar premise of Escaflowne, where everyone there was far more complicating than he appeared to be at first. And in case you try to excuse it by saying this is a movie and not a series to demand drastic character development, then I will reply that in this case a movie should not be full of useless characters. Yet look at this, there is a whole school filled with children, a whole village filled with people, a WHOLE MAGICAL LAND FILLED WITH CREATURES and you get NOTHING out of them. They are just standing there, irrelevant to the main plot, and boring since they are not doing anything.

5) The motivation
There is no clear goal for most of the movie. The characters are running around almost apathetically, without really caring or making us care about whatever they want to accomplish. And even when they accomplish it, it feels hollow and pointless, without nothing interesting for you to remember about. There is absolutely no emotional engagement with whatever is going on in it.

6) Plausibility
Furthermore, the movie hardly tries to convince you of whatever happens. Monsters attack our world, the army attacks them with helicopters, and nobody in the surrounding areas besides the heroine takes notice of them. And then the movie ends and she returns and her mother has apparently popped in the story, and she keeps living her life like nothing matters. SO WHAT WAS THE POINT OF ALL THAT?

Although most viewers will probably just stare at the cool visuals and vote this a 9 or 10, I am a far harder to please man. I expect emotional engagement, development of the initial concept, some plot twist to be taken back for a few seconds, some characters who manage to escape their stereotype, something that doesn’t feel like a lesser rehash of older productions. Well I got none of the above in this one. It was hollow, boring, and made Makoto Shinkai to look like a failed Miyazaki wannabe when he always had his own style and identity. His specialty always was tragic romances, he was so good at it, he had no reason to stray off to something far more childish and stupid like this. Although he tried to pull of something similar here with the myth of Izanami and Izanagi, he failed completely to make it plausible and engaging. His previous works were all quite realistic to the most part, without silly magical powers to offer panacea to any problem encountered. But this? This is a stupid romantic fairy tale for little girls (yes, girls, not even boys) and one so generic that you will forget as soon as you watch the next generic fairy tale that comes along. Heck, watching a low-budget stupid Barbie 3D movie is more than enough to get over it!

COMPLETELY DISAPPOINTED! GO BACK TO REALISTIC ROMANCES SHINKAI! LEAVE BEHIND THESE STUPID MAGICAL LANDS! And above all DON’T TRY TO GROW A BEARD AND ACT LIKE MIYAZAKI! BE YOURSELF!

The first thing you’ll notice about this movie is that it’s made by Makoto Shinkai which means “Oh wow look at dem gwaphics”.

I never really understood why people compared Makoto Shinkai to Miyazaki until I saw this film. Prior to watching this my whole experience with his work was sadboi cuck shit (5 centimeters per second), sadboi foot shit (The Garden of Words) and Freaky Friday (I forget which movie this one was…it probably isn’t important), none of which seemed even close to anything Miyazaki had ever done, yet within the first 10 minutes of this film I understood that this was a Miyazaki clone. ... I’m not going to say too much on this point as Digibro (fuck…it’s Digi-Nee) already did that in her (or should I say his video since Digi identified as male when he made that video) Makoto Shinkai video but it feels wrong to not address it at all.

That being said, the film is surprisingly morbid for a Ghibli clone, especially considering how the early tone, while still a bit dark didn’t seem too bad. The girl met a jumpy boy and they just had a gay old time together. Then about half an hour later some spoopy boys are coming to fuck her up. Seriously. What happened.

Well, an old guy in glasses’ wife died and he’s still not over it so he’s taking it out on this innocent child. Pretty much immediately you can tell what the message of the film is going to be, which I don’t think is necessarily a bad thing. This is a Ghibli cone after all, and I don’t think thematic subtlety has ever been a strong point when it comes to Ghibli films. And despite Digi’s insistence that there is nothing more to the theme’s in Shinkai’s film, I would beg to differ.

Birth is a far more subtle element of The Children Who Chase Lost Voices than death is within the narrative, yet this juxtaposition does wonders for the overall thematic placing. It’s especially notable towards the end where this Quetzalcoatl swallows the two kids and lovingly strokes it’s belly like a pregnant mother before bringing them down the cliff that Gendo almost died trying to climb down. If Gendo wasn’t so eager to bring the dead back to life, he would have had a much easier trip down the mountain, and considering how he seemed to have just barely entered the portal thingy, it’s not like he saved that much time in the process. Choosing life over death is clearly the message that Shinkai was trying to present to his viewers, and despite how bluntly he portrays this message, I find the overall result to be a relatively charming film.

Despite all this, it’s not like I don’t understand why you might not like it. The initial portion of the film, setting up Agartha seems unnecessarily slow, and while I find that once they reach the fantastical land the film immediately livens up, you shouldn’t have to wait half an hour for your film to start.

Furthermore, the relationship between Asuna and Shun never really felt that engaging, so the idea that I should care about her entering Agartha because of this always felt kind of forced.

This Review is actually the script to this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRoWQs6lIfk

Check that out and subscribe to the channel if you want to see more reviews like it.

Ah, Hoshi wo Ou Kodomo. A true masterpiece in the world of anime. This film has it all: adventure, romance, and a healthy dose of confusing plot points.

The story follows a young girl who embarks on a journey to find her missing father, meeting various strange characters along the way. It's like Alice in Wonderland, but with less tea parties and more ancient relics.

The style of this anime is truly breathtaking. The animation is so beautiful that you'll forget all about the fact that you have no idea what's going on. The colors are vibrant, the landscapes are stunning, and the character designs are...well, they're ... definitely unique.

Speaking of characters, we have the typical anime protagonist who starts out as a clueless child but eventually becomes a strong, independent young adult. Then there's the mysterious and brooding love interest who has a tragic backstory. And of course, we can't forget about the quirky side characters who add some much-needed comic relief.

The music in this anime is simply sublime. The haunting melodies will stay with you long after the credits have rolled. It's like they took all the best parts of a Studio Ghibli soundtrack and made it even better.

Overall, my enjoyment experience with Hoshi wo Ou Kodomo was a rollercoaster of emotions. Confusion, awe, and a slight headache from trying to keep up with the plot. But hey, isn't that what makes a great anime? 7.57142857142857/10, because I still have no idea what the ending was all about.

I did not want to write this review, but I am so disappointed that now I have to. Makoto Shinkai is fucking overrated. He has made one good movie: Your Name (2016). Everything else he made is shit, a good-looking turd, but still a piece of turd. His art style is eye-pleasing, I won't deny that, but his stories are so dull and messy that I can't even imagine that he is the same guy who wrote Your Name.

Children Who Chase Lost Voices (CWCLV, dumb title) is, in my opinion (and in many others), an attempt to create and capture the charm of a Miyazaki ... film. There are direct and indirect parallels between this movie and Howl's Moving Castle or Princess Mononoke. Aspects like the look of the characters, the world design, and the themes seem derivative of (but not as good) Ghibli films. The music is boring. The characters are one-dimensional. The fantasy backdrop is unfinished and shallow. Everything is so dull and unoriginal, non-sensically messy and pretentious—it's an absolute disappointment.

SPOILERS AHEAD (If anyone cares)
Asuna (the protagonist) does nothing in this movie except be a damsel in distress and the complete opposite of her initial setup character. She was there because of circumstances. The movie tried to make a big deal out of this, but the answer was always plain and simple: She was, literally, dragged in there and the story. What was the lesson? To forgive someone who literally tried to kill you and your friend and put their wife's soul inside you? I thought they were going to be filling the roles of father and daughter in each other's lives. But after that ending, I don't want him anywhere remotely close to her. If only they did not ham-fisted unnecessary characters in their story and instead spent that time fleshing out the essential ones.

I know that it's not meant to be realistic. But come on, use that fucking gun, at least on those shadow crawler thingies. And this is not the only nitpick that annoyed me. There are a lot of other moments where they don't pay any attention to the details, which takes me out of an already sloppily written and bland movie. The dialogue is unnecessarily philosophical—Like you are a child, why are you talking like this? And if you are talking like this, why are you so dumb regarding everything else?

At least Shinkai tried to do something different in this one, and that's as far as my praise goes. It's so annoying because I know that he is talented, but he has put himself into a corner by writing the same type of stories again and again, especially with Your Name and Weathering With You. I want him to make something new and original, more thought out with better world-building and atmosphere and better multi-dimensional characters, as he did in Your Name. Let's see what he does with his new one. This tho is--Not Recommended.