I'm sorry, but I just don't understand why there's so much praise over this short film.
OK, so it looks nothing less than amazing, mind you everything was animated by one young Japanese man armed with nothing but a 2-year old Mac. Maybe I expected too much, considering I paid $20US for a DVD that didn't tell me that "Voices" piece was only 25-minutes long.
But by what the summary on the casing told me, and from other reviews I had read, "Voices" LOOKED like a deep, thought-provoking, action/drama with some of the most wonderful animation this side of the galaxy. However, the translation is quite poor, and therefore is hard to wrap your mind around.
Since this piece is quite short, you can't really sympathize with the 2 lead characters and their heart-ache, since their young-love relationship is literally flashed before your eyes in between gory mecha battle action sequences.
Even this young-love thing is VERY ridiculous, even if it is just a movie. The male love interest, who's been left by his Elementary School love for the Armed Forces in space, is just a god-awful and unbelievable character. We are expected to believe that this guy's love for her is so strong, that even after 20 years they left each other in Primary school, he will still wait for her, communicating only through e-mails sent through cell-phones.
My last complaint is about the animation. Everything is perfect. And I mean PERFECT. The cell-shaded CG mech battle scenes are a sight to behold themselves. But the actual human characters look very amateur-ish and totally out of place, so when watching "Voices", I felt like I was watching just a very long opening CG sequence to a Playstation 1 game.
So, I usually rate movies in my head by grades, which is much easier that percentiles, or "stars" and all that other mumbo-jumbo. I would have to give "Voices of a Distant Star" a D. Disappointing, to say the least, but then again, maybe I just expected an animated classic like I was told it was. If you just want to have something just for artistic value, maybe you might like this. If you're looking for any truly beautiful when it comes to dialog and story-telling, look elsewhere.
OK, so it looks nothing less than amazing, mind you everything was animated by one young Japanese man armed with nothing but a 2-year old Mac. Maybe I expected too much, considering I paid $20US for a DVD that didn't tell me that "Voices" piece was only 25-minutes long.
But by what the summary on the casing told me, and from other reviews I had read, "Voices" LOOKED like a deep, thought-provoking, action/drama with some of the most wonderful animation this side of the galaxy. However, the translation is quite poor, and therefore is hard to wrap your mind around.
Since this piece is quite short, you can't really sympathize with the 2 lead characters and their heart-ache, since their young-love relationship is literally flashed before your eyes in between gory mecha battle action sequences.
Even this young-love thing is VERY ridiculous, even if it is just a movie. The male love interest, who's been left by his Elementary School love for the Armed Forces in space, is just a god-awful and unbelievable character. We are expected to believe that this guy's love for her is so strong, that even after 20 years they left each other in Primary school, he will still wait for her, communicating only through e-mails sent through cell-phones.
My last complaint is about the animation. Everything is perfect. And I mean PERFECT. The cell-shaded CG mech battle scenes are a sight to behold themselves. But the actual human characters look very amateur-ish and totally out of place, so when watching "Voices", I felt like I was watching just a very long opening CG sequence to a Playstation 1 game.
So, I usually rate movies in my head by grades, which is much easier that percentiles, or "stars" and all that other mumbo-jumbo. I would have to give "Voices of a Distant Star" a D. Disappointing, to say the least, but then again, maybe I just expected an animated classic like I was told it was. If you just want to have something just for artistic value, maybe you might like this. If you're looking for any truly beautiful when it comes to dialog and story-telling, look elsewhere.