Hoshi No Koe (Voices of a Distant Star) is a remarkable work in many ways. It’s a very short anime at only around 30 minutes playtime. It’s also a ‘do it yourself’ work, created solely by its writer-director Makoto Shinkai. Shinkai did most of the animation work on his Macintosh. Shinkai-san and his fiancee even did the initial voice-over work for the OVA. Sounds like a low-quality flick, right? It’s actually remarkably good.

Hoshi no Koe was Makoto Shinkai’s first animated feature. It tells the tale of love and longing between two junior high classmates, Nagamine and Noboru. The girl, Nagamine, is selected to fight in Earth’s avance army against alien incursion. After she ships out to a fight 8.6 light years away, Noboru gazes at the sky longing for her return. Their only method of communication is the email link between their mobile phones. As Nagamine gets farther and farther away, their messages take longer and longer to be delivered. Can their love traverse the span of both time and space?

This an amazing work that tells a beautiful, touching tale in a very short amount of time. The feelings that the two lovers hold for each other despite the test of time is extremely well portrayed. I found myself really caring for these characters.

If the sappy stuff isn’t really your thing, there’s also a lot of giant-robot-mecha space battles to please the eye and satisfy the action junkie. The OVA uses a mix of 2D and 3D animation, with a surprisingly good level of quality.

This is a bit of an obscure title that I think needs a lot more attention. Shinkai is really just starting to grow as an anime director, but some believe that he’ll be the next Hayao Miyazaki. Hoshi no Koe certainly shows that there’s a lot of potential for that to happen.

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