Adam Conlon, Curt Gowdy, Cynthia Martinez

This startling short anime feature was created entirely by one person, Maktoto Shinkai, on his home computer. Beautifully animated, VOICES OF A DISTANT STAR is the story of a young woman named Mikako ...( read more  read more... )and an alien race's attack on the human race. Feeling that she must help protect the Earth, Mikako leaves her true love, Noboru, and joins the resistance as a pilot. Sent to the far reaches of space, Mikako can only communicate to Noboru by cell-phone text messages. As time goes on, the messages take longer and longer to get one another, eventually taking a year or more. So, as Mikako lives and fights in the vacuum of space, staying the same age, Noboru waits and gets older, hoping that their love can survive the passage of time and the brutal war.

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88% liked it

5,499 ratings

Unrated

Directed by: Kevin Bender, Makoto Shinkai

Release Date: February 2, 2003

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DVD Release Date: June 10, 2003

Stats: 419 reviews

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Flixster Reviews (419)


  • January 22, 2009
    Most prior reviews have said what needs to be said: this is a brilliant short animated film, with a plot and theme that are at once sincere and beautiful simple human emotion yet also high concept and metaphysically reflective.

    The most striking thing about this project's creat...( read more)ion is that is entirely auteured. It begs the question that if one man with a bit of his wife's help can achieve this splendor, then why do teams of fifty plus struggle to crank out the slightly better than mediocre?
  • May 26, 2007
    Too short, but a very good anime.
  • March 20, 2007
    Shinkai Makoto really knows his stuff.This anime manages to effectively combine high-flying mecha space battles with a sweet, sentimental romance that spans the galaxy itself, and all in the span of 20 minutes. Though this may not sound like a formula for success, it works a hell...( read more) of a lot better than it sounds, and the end result of Hoshi no Koe is something so poetic and heartwarming that it gave me shivers.

    In short, Hoshi no Koe is not really trying to tell a long, drawn out epic of a story. It only wants to demonstrate the love between two young students and how it transcends any sort of physical or temporal boundary. The backstory or plot progression may not be incredibly powerful, but it is a fairly unique premise and certainly one that succeeds at what it's trying to get at. The characters and story make the perfect vehicle for reaching an emotionally charged climax and conclusion; they are simple and elegantly portrayed, used as tools for producing emotion in the viewer. Though forcibly attempting to invoke sadness in an audience very often ends in failure and melodrama, Hoshi No Koe goes about its duty in a very classy and understated way. On that note, there is not a lot to say about the characters in this anime, since they receive very little development in the short time span. Like the plot, they are merely used for the emotional message that this story propagates.
    My one nitpick is a very irrelevant one, and that runs on the principle of Murphy's Law. Why is the male lead still using the same cell phone that he owned nine years ago? Certainly he would have purchased some other portable device that had been invented, or at least an improvement on the one that he already owned. Perhaps, even though he claimed he no longer awaited Makoto's mail, there was still a little bit of hope locked away in the back of his mind...

    Hoshi no Koe is so romantic in the simplest and purest of ways. It has that infallible spark of hope to it, with so much heart that I couldn't help but appreciate it. Though I am not a mecha fan, the robot fighting was used in a very interesting moderation, and the relationship took the forefront. This anime is a wonderful effort by a single man, and worth anyone's 24 minutes.
  • November 19, 2009
    Poetic, beautiful, heartfelt, heartbreaking, mesmerizing, original, stirring, and that song that plays at the end is haunting in the most perfect kind of way.
  • October 31, 2009
    voices of a distant star
  • June 5, 2009
    Haunting. Screw Wall-E. Think on the implications of this one.
  • May 5, 2009
    a lot shorter than i expected it to be...
  • April 6, 2009
    A powerful piece with great sensibility...although it is set in outer space with a futuristic atmosphere, its universal theme is very grounded: love! Distance cannot curtail the feelings that one in love can bring. The characters are thorough, deep, smartly created; the plot ref...( read more)reshing; the storyline enjoyable, gripping and beautiful. The anime was quite sharp and spirited, nothing really amiss. Shinkai has a shrewd talent for storytelling and lots of heart! Wish it could have been longer, but this way the impact was a slam dunk.
  • March 4, 2009
    The animation isn't truly top-notch but the story is truly amazing. The backbone of the story is a very simple concept, distance between lovers, but it works splendidly on this one.
  • March 2, 2009
    Very touching story about keeping touch across the distance. Of waiting for that lingering phone call, that one message.

Comments


  • animallovertisha
    July 1, 2007
    i saw it during an anime class. this guy spent 7 years on this movie and did everything himself. it seemed like this guy was seriously deppressed when he made it.

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