Voices of a Distant Star

I can see that a lot of people liked it, but after watching it, it just left me feeling cranky and a little bit resentful of the author for giving me something boring when I expect top-notch work from him, considering how he's being hyped up. It didn't leave me with anything at all, it didn't impress me in any way. While it's nice that Mr. Shinkai did everything himself, is amazingly skilled, and all the rest of the praise, it's just that it was all for nothing: I didn't enjoy the animation or the story, my rating simply can’t go any higher. Maybe I'm just oversaturated with this type of "tragedy", or maybe I didn't even see the tragedy in it. To me, it's just the usual separation of two good friends where perhaps love was blossoming, but unfortunately the budding flower was trampled by distance – made more dramatic here by the girl flying off with the army into space to fight aliens. It seemed the same to me as when kids scatter to all parts of the world after ninth grade or high school. It's natural, why make it a tragedy? It just depends on the circumstances of where they send you... I just found it overly dramatic, unnecessarily painful on the boy's part (I understand that the girl missed him), and I didn't find it compelling or groundbreaking. Twenty-five minutes is more than enough; it's not wasted time, but it's also not something I'll be amazed at, or ever come back to. (03/22/2012)