Voices of a Distant Star

...we are far, far, very, very far apart...
but it might be that thoughts can overcome time and distance.

This short film touched my heart in a special way. Maybe it's because I can relate to film's theme: Distance.

Voices of a Distant Star (ほしのこえ, Hoshi no Koe) is a Japanese anime OVA by Makoto Shinkai. It chronicles a long-distance relationship between a teenage couple who communicate by sending emails via their mobile phones across interstellar space.

Hoshi no Koe was written, directed and produced entirely by Makoto on his Macintosh computer. Makoto and his fiancée provided the voice acting for the working dub. Makoto's friend Tenmon, who had worked with Makoto at his video game company, provided the soundtrack. This half hour OVA also represents the "long distance" relationship between Makoto Shinkai and his wife, as Shinkai spent often long hours in the studio and communicated with his wife via text messaging.

A middle-school girl named Mikako Nagamine is drafted to the UN Space Army in a war against a group of aliens called the Tarsians, named after the Martian region (Tharsis) where they were first encountered. As a Special Agent, Mikako pilots a giant bipedal robot or mecha as part of a fighting squadron attached to the spacecraft carrier Lysithea.

When the Lysithea leaves Earth to search for the Tarsians with Mikako on board, Mikako's friend, Noboru Terao, remains behind. The couple continues to communicate across interplanetary, and eventually interstellar space via the e-mail facilities on their mobile phones.

As the Lysithea travels deeper into space, the e-mails take increasingly longer to reach Noboru on Earth, and the time-lag of their correspondence eventually spans years.

(Read more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voices_of_a_Distant_Star)

Though only 25 minutes long, the film delivered so much bittersweet emotion that I couldn't help but cry. The dialogue was simple and earnest, and that made it even more heartbreaking. The animation is... for lack of a better word: stunning. For Makoto Shinkai to single-handedly create such beauty on a humble laptop is amazing. The music complimented the story perfectly and the song for the final scene was painfully melancholic. I've also watched his most recent film 5 Centimeters per second which also revolves around distance. The animation for 5 cm is like 10 times more breath-taking than Voices. Seriously. I think Hayao Miyazaki is the only person I'd rank above him.


Towards the end, the messages between Mikako and Noboru take 8 years, 224 days and 18 hours to arrive. Imagine waiting that long for just a simple "I am here.", let alone her returning to Earth. Would you have the strength to love and wait for someone who may never return? Would you?