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Voices of a Distant Star Directors: Makoto Shinkai, Steven Foster Number of Items: 1 Format: Animated, Color Running Time: 30 minutes Studio: A.D. Vision Product Group: DVD Release Date: 2003-06-10 Buy from Amazon

Customer Reviews: Total numer of reviews: 69 Average rating: 4.0 "Looking to the Future" "Voices of a Distant Star" won several short anime awards not only in Japan, but in Toronto as well. The unedited directors cut of the short is approximately 30 minutes long, however the DVD also offers another one of Makoto Shinkai short films from 1997, "She and Her Cat", a pleasurable 5 minute short from the perspective of a cat and his love for his mistress. "Voices" focuses on two young "lovers" who are split apart by Mikako's decision to become a mecha pilot to help defeat a strange alien race that had annihilated several Martian cities. As the distance between Mikako and Noboru grow, so too does their need for each other. Mikako has only her memories of Noboru to live through from trip to trip, fight from fight, but text messages Noboru as much as she can. Noboru has the text messages to look forward to day in year out. This frustrated love between Noboru and Mikako shivers with regret on both sides. As each day passes, Noboru tries to move on from his unrequited love Mikako, believing that she will never come back, not in this time, and not for him. Mikako lives day to day, eventually regretting her having ever left Noboru's side for something so trivial and self-satisfying. The strained relationship between Noboru and Mikako, growing ever distant can leave an empty void in ones belly. The key emotions of the movie are played up so well within the short, that one cannot help but feel the pain of a lost but not forgotten love. Makoto Shinkai elaborates on the distilled love very well, a very emotional film. I suggest "Voices" for the one who is looking for an impressive 3-D CG graphic anime that focuses on re-inventing direction with characters on a more personal and tragic view. This is a work meant to toy with new filming ideas, and Shinkai has managed to improve tension and bleed regret from animated characters in a stylistic enviroment that is picture perfect. Many ideas are explored in this film, and it is worth any enjoyer of anime's time and money. "Yo" If you're deciding wether to buy this movie or not. DO NOT!!!! OH MY GOD!!!! This is pathetic and sad. Its a copy of Gunbuster, minus character development, background storylines, in exchange for good animation and a story thats echo'd, well I should say stolen from Anime, all across the spectrum. I personally would have enjoyed a revamp'd version of Gunbuster had it been longer than 30 FREAKING MINUTES. It wsant even worth the 4$ I paid to rent it. Scenes that were similar to Gunbuster. The Starship Laser Firing sequence The Lone mecha against the single enemy capital ship. The Shields of the "Tracer" and the mech from Gunbuster. The design shape of the aliens. The scene of some sort of reactor looks exactly like the Gunbuster Warp generator The way the ships warped The way the mecha launched The organic appearance of the aliens The shape of the capital ships "It's what I was looking for in a short film" It is short, though that's no crime. Blood The Last Vampire was pretty short as well and was quite an awesome movie. I rather liked it, but that's my opinion. Way back when... being on the other end of the world was a world away... often times correspondances took days, weeks, months to reach their destination. In the modern world, talking with someone on the other side of the world is but about 20 digits on a touchtone phone, a mere double click in an AIM window, an Email Send-button click away. So being literally a world apart is nothing for todays technology... would that be so if you were trying to have a long distance relationship with someone who lived on, oh say... Pluto? Well this movie explores that idea of old in a time of hyperspace travel, internet, cellphone email and other wonders... this movie rediscovers that feeling of distance that no longer exists for just about everyone. The first part of the movie introduces the two lovers and gives you a look at to what their life was like on earth. Watching both, the english and the japanese offers, in a lot of places, a different view of the two (being geared towards the culture that spoke the recorded langugaes). The rest of the story is basically an exchange of messages between the two of them. At first the messages take a while, a day or two to reach him. Then her messages start to take months, as the fleet moves farther away. The farther it moves, the longer the messages take. So while her messages are traveling to him, he's living, moving on. And then he recieves her messages after what seems like forever... messages sent from when she was younger that are just now reaching him. The small film puts emphasis on her pain and his emptiness and on both of their survivals. The DVD also comes packaged with a short called Her and her Cat. It's a cute short film about a girl that lives alone with her cat and is all from the Cat's point of view. I suggest watching the 5 minute version and practising on your speed reading before hand, it's all subtitled and it moves fast. It's a short film, nothing grand and drawn out... no completely breathtaking story. It's a short that presents a philosophical message, the old time delima of space and distance that is no longer felt as much anymore. The opening presents the line "[I was always a phone call away]". I like it in my anime library because it is short. When I have a craving to watch a film I can get in Voices, Ghost in the Shell, Spirited Away and Grave of Fireflies in. A good chunk of anime instead of 8 episodes in a tv series. It's a nice artpiece. "Animated Poetry" I get upset when I read reviews of Voices of A Distant Star that whine about it being too short. 30 minutes is an eternity in terms of animation and it boggles my mind that Voices was made by a lone animator. Makoto Shinkai has created the animated equivalent of a one-act play or a novella, which will emotionally affect its audience for much longer than the duration of the work itself. The story is simple, poetic, and heart-wrenching. In 30 short minutes, Shinkai depicts a lifetime of emotion and I consider the film's brevity to be one of its greatest assets (Hollywood could learn a few lessons in this regard). "nice but too short" this is one very well animated movie.The problem is,its only 30 min which makes it more like an episode.