Anime Review: Voices of a Distant Star

So sorry for the radio silence- life happened and updating this took a back seat for a while.


But in true fashion, I rise like the phoenix with yet another anime review. This time its something that made me outright sob for the entirety of the 25 minute "movie/original video animation thing" and also for a good ten minutes or more afterwards.


The cursed ending song plague hits me in the feels again. (Yet another time that somehow anime makes me react more than western media when it comes to most anything- except horror. The West likes some jump scares. I personally do not. Only other time I reacted for this long was the end of Samurai 7 which hit me for a few days of sad and still gets the tears a going.


So "Voices of a Distant Star" is a bit dated. The plot is set in the late 2040s and 2050s (thanks to light speed travel- will explain. And yet it has phone technology that is right in the early 2000s (This was made in 2002.) And the mech CGI is showing its age, never been a fan of CGI because of the hindsight of something like this.


So plot- pretty standard one episode fare. Girl likes guy, girl goes away on a scouting mission into deep space to protect the world from aliens, romance, sad unresolved ending. Now after some searching- there is a manga that resolves it a bit better- but not much. It is still left semi-unresolved on their reunion or not.


But this isn't that kind of story. It has a nice arc of trying to explain long distance relationships and the guy has a ridiculous love for our heroine. (I would put their names but unless you are an anime lover- some people don't care. While this was praised- probably due to its story potential for the ime restraint- it isn't a well known anime. I had to slowly search for it and even I was blindsided about what it was all about.)


I do have to say that having aliens vs. humans isn't not an original trope- Burrough's Barsoom novels, H.G Well's War of the Worlds, Martian Successor Nadesico, The Cthulhu Mythos, Evangelion, Gundam, Super Sentai, Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, Mars Attacks!, It, et al. use this trope.


But even with that- I do have to say that the themes of romance- long distance at that, and surprisingly well-written emotion tugging content are nice. I am never one to say to listen to the subbed version of an anime (though that has changed just a little with how much I loved the Garden of Sinners anime movies- tangent of course) but watch this on subbed- I couldn't find it dubbed and thought it was actually good- and when there was random English sentences- they didn't have engrish stuff happen and butcher it with Japanese pronunciation- so I think it was a good thing.


Score: 8.9/10- only due to the shortness of the OVA and now dated CGI effects of some of the foreground space sequences- but when it is good, it's dang good.


Other things by this director/creator (who I will continue to check out)- The Place Promised in Our Early Days, 5 Centimeters Per Second, Children Who Chase Lost Voices, and The Garden of Words. He reminds me a little bit- a little- of Hayao Miyazaki in his vision- cause even in Voices of a Distant Star, there was some very good emotional moments. Also he pretty much did Voices mostly by himself with little input or help from anyone else- cue why it was only 25 minutes and is probably on of his shortest works.


But yeah check this out a bit if you like some feels. Or romance because for what it had to work with- it was well put together.