Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

Humaira Grant It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Mathilde the Guild Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

bcheng93 ...the guy made this short anime from his home by himself on a Mac-book 3 and had his wife do the voice of the girl and he did the voice for the boy. those were the only 2 characters in the short. what he accomplished, major studios with major money could not do.this is the third film i've watched by Shinkai, the first being 5 centimeters per second. right away you see similarities in the artwork, the rain drops falling, trains leaving the station, flowers blooming and all this is done to evoke the feeling of loneliness and works very well. i know that every time i watch 5 centimeters i either cry or get the feeling of loneliness. his most recent movie " children who chase lost voices " is another one that basically deals on the same subjects. i guess all his films deal on the same subject, but the way he does it, nobody in the world can do.the story is about 2 junior high kids about to graduate and go to high school, a boy and a girl. the setting is Japan 2046 and space travel is now possible and we have developed warp technology which can take us anywhere in the universe. there are also aliens that we are fighting with in outer-space. the girl gets recruited to pilot a mechanized robot in outer space to fight aliens. they are both 15 years old at the time. when she goes off to fight and explore in outer space, the only way they can communicate is through text messaging, but the further away her mission takes her the longer it takes for the messages to reach earth. at the furthest distance it takes over 8 light years for the message to reach earth. she longs for him and vice versa, her age stays at 15 but the boy when they are at their furthest distance apart has aged to the age of 24 and he hasn't gotten a message for over a year. he promises to himself to do what he has got to do and not stress himself out thinking to much about her. meanwhile in outer space she is going through life and death battles against aliens in her mechanized suit. every time she gets a chance she thinks about him and planet earth and you really get an over-saturated feeling of loneliness to the point where some viewers cried. i didn't cry but the film did make me feel sad and lonely.if your in a sad and lonely mood, unless you want to cry, don't watch it cause you are going to cry. hey, at least crying lets us know we are alive and only real humans cry, it is a good emotion. might want to make us better humans too.

Jose Cruz It is incredible that this short film was made by a single person. It is very touching and not particularly deep in artistic terms, though it has some serious merit as a work of art. I have watched also the feature length 5 Centimeters per Second, made by the same director but with a much bigger budget (still not big, though, only much bigger than this one) and one can see this little film as an less refined version of the ideas he later developed later.Also, I don't like how in anime there is a tendency for characters to operate giant robots, a-la Gundam style. Though that's perhaps a product of Japanese culture, even though all my favorite anime films are devoid of those silly elements.

imalmostgone Voices of A Distant star is a wonderful Sci-Fi love story running at a brisk 25 minutes, chronicling the parallel yet inverse experiences of two adolescents as distance and time isolate them from one another. This is a reoccurring theme in Makoto Shinkai's works and is executed so effectively here, that it creates an emotional space-time echo, while vesting the viewer heavily within the character's ordeal, it manages to play on the theme that emotions can travel the expanse that perhaps not even technology can conquer.Being as close to a one man project as anything you'll see that maintains such high production value, Voices comes off more like a story you wish would never end then an Anime short. Shinkai wrote, directed, and animated the entire project only handing off sound responsibilities to others. In the original directors cut the only two speaking roles were voiced by himself and his fiancé.Most notable are the settings, for which the director is perhaps the best there is in the medium. Here, the vivid backdrops and beyond realistic lighting play so prominent that they rival the characters themselves. As one Youtube poster put it, Shinkai's works are like, "scenery porn, with story lines that make you cry buckets." Voices of A Distant Star is one of the best original video animations, scratch that, one of the better shorts period this viewer has ever seen, while serving as the perfect introduction to his work, it also underscores the fact that the only limit animation has is the imagination itself.

jwmagpies First of all, Japan should be producing this caliber of work more, rather than producing endless episodes of meaningless animes.In this film, the action, lighting, sun rays, backgrounds, stills, and cgi are done beautifully. I like them very much. The concept is also pretty unique. The photography and colors are pretty brilliant.But what makes it a pity is the hand-drawn characters. they are not professionally drawn and animated. Proportions are often off. Animation of the hand-drawn characters are not natural. It could have been a much more perfect film with much better feel and look if the characters are done right. What a pity. Generally, a pretty good animated short film.