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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 "A thoughtful, must-see anime - "Voices of a Distant Star"" "Voices of a Distant Star" is not only one of the best animes I've ever seen, but one of the best movies as well. It only includes two characters, who's love and determination to keep their relationship going dispite the growing distance and time in between them makes the movie great. It is best classified as a thoughtful romantic film of the highest rating, for those who want to watch a deeply moving movie. The subtleties in it are what allow it to be so short while still telling the full story. In fact, much of the story is told by the text messages they send each other, by the music, and by their expressions. The story starts with both of them graduating junior high. The girl is selected to go in space to fight an ellusive alien lifeform, while the boy goes through high school. As the distance gets further between her ship and Earth, the text messages she sends take longer to get back to Earth. The boy decides that no matter how long the messages take, he will wait for them, and the girl clings to the hope of being able to see him again and of her messages getting through. Warning: don't watch this movie if you are looking for a light, happy movie, as everytime I've watched it, it's made me cry. "Speed reading anyone ?" I don't even know if I liked this movie as the subtitles were going by so fast it's scary. I do subtitles for tv, and believe me, I'd get fired for doing subtitles like that. I haven't watched the dubbed version yet, so I don't know how good it is, but, my advice is to watch the dubbed version. "Where's the Movie?" This "movie" is a whole 24, read it: twenty four, minutes long. The graphics in this piece are pretty superb but it really has nothing else to offer. The main individuals in this story are a rather inept, overly emotional 15 year old girl piloting a mecha (read: cheesy) and some stereotypical high school male heartthrob. For a sum up: This "movie" is really nothing more than a preview for a non existent anime. It will leave you very unsatisfied, pretty bored, and rather annoyed, as the movie ends with you still thinking, "sheesh, when is this going to get good and to the meat of its "tragic" story"? "Very very touching!" This DVD was a very very touching story. You can feel the sadness and the love between the characters, and the music sets the mood perfectly. It's an amazing anime, and one of my favorites. "If you're looking for trite angst, this is the movie for you" I think a lot of people get worked up about Voices of a Distant star because it was done by one person and because of the sound track. While both of those things are impressive, the plot, dialogue, and characters are not. One is almost forced to wonder why the two "star crossed lovers" bother keeping up their correspondence. By the end of this movie, they seem to have about as much of an emotional connection between them as I have with they guy who bags my groceries. Maybe less. Considering the length of this anime, it has a disproportionate amount of still shots. There's no climax or resolution. Because of the length and the lack of an ending, I actually thought I had read the box wrong and picked up the first episode of a longer series and not a movie. I normally love sad anime, but I would say Voices of a Distant Star is a force watch only.