Voices Of A Distant Star

I bought this autumn 2003, it was my first order from Play.com. I'd read a lot about it and thought it would be cool to see it. Why did I think it would be so good? Well, rave reviews for one thing and the fact it was completely "home made." That's right, it was all done by one guy and a couple friends doing the voice acting. That means the animation, script, CGI and more by one guy. Look at it that way and this will blow you away.

Not only is the integration of "standard" animation and CGI arguably as good, if not better than most "professional" anime productons, but the whole animation is generally beautiful. Let's face it, in a couple of areas the animation is a little twitchy but in general its very high quality. The same is true of the artwork - its generally very nice (lovely mecha and alien designs) however a few bits look a little weird (the people's heads look a bit unbalanced on their neck and a little too round).

The major thing that seems to get me every time is the physics are a little over the top and don't get explained - in fact in my last watching I paused it half way through and had to ask my dad loads about it! This brings me to the next thing - half way through is 15 minutes! The whole movie is only about 30 minutes at best. I have to say its the shortest epic I've ever seen! However, to make up for the short story this comes with an abundance of extras - 3 versions of the directors mini-feature "She And Her Cat", interviews and more. But in the end its that 25 minute movie which hooks ya - it is very good for 25 minutes.

The plot takes a novel approach to an old story - 2 lovers are torn apart by a war in space - the man stays on Earth while his girlfriend speeds through space chasing the "invaders" known as "Tartians." Big deal you may think at first - however, and this is the trick, because she often goes at light speed she stays young while he grows old - their only means of talking to each other is a mobile phone, now as we all know text messages go at light speed, but that means the further and further away from Earth she moves the longer it takes for them to reach him (because she can go a light year in a few minutes), this starts off as days, then weeks until 8 years! So he must wait 8 years for a message from his girlfriend, while he ages and gets a job (at this point he's in his early 20s) she is still only 15 and out battling aliens. Which brings me to my next point. The fight scenes are few and far between but gorgeous, the animation is reminiscent of something like the Gundam Wing space battles but the mechs are a bit more like, say, Gasaraki here. The fights really are good stuff.

Well, Ross (the admin) is already gonna beat me for having this 120+ words over the limit so I'm gonna wrap stuff up now...