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Hoshi no Koe (ほしのこえ, Voices of a Distant Star) is a 30-minute Japanese anime OAV.
In Hoshi no Koe, Earth is at war with the Tarsians, a race of aliens. A high school girl, Mikako Nagamine, joins the U.N. Space Forces to fly a giant mecha. She soon has to leave Earth and her friend Noboru Terao behind. As the army follows the Tarsians on their retreat, the distance between Mikako and Noboru grows and thus, the short text messages Mikako sends to Earth with her mobile phone take longer and longer to send across space. In the end, the messages take eight years, but Noboru still waits for Mikako's return. The anime focuses on the bond between the two through their very-long-distance relationship, rather than on the space battles that Mikako must fight.
One of the primary reasons that Hoshi no Koe is often well-regarded is the fact that it was almost entirely created by one man, Makoto Shinkai. He wrote, drew and directed the story by himself and digitally animated it on his home Macintosh computer over the course of six months. In the original Japanese dub, Shinkai and his fiancée even provided the voices. (A second Japanese dub was later created utilizing professional voice actors.) The music was created by the composer, Tenmon. Shinkai and Tenmon also worked together in the making of the anime Kumo no Mukou Yakusoku no Bashou (The Place Promised In Our Early Days) and Kanojo to Kanojo no Neko (She and Her Cat).
In July 2002, ADV Films announced that they had licensed Hoshi no Koe in the U.S and would release the 30-minute short as the translated "Voices of a Distant Star." The finished DVD premiered in May 2003 at Project A-Kon in Dallas, Texas.
External links
- http://www.advfilms.com/favorites/voices (Official English web site)
- http://www.hoshinokoe.com/ (Official Japanese web site)
