Voices of a Distant Star

I wrote this for a class, which explains why it's a bit more analytical/spoiler-filled.

Voices is a brief but interesting take on the common story of star-crossed lovers. Not much time is spent on character development, but you still get a feel for the relationship between the two main characters and how strong that connection is despite the growing distance between them. The details of their personalities aren't that important, what is is that they care for each other.

It's in the elegiac mode, with a strongly melancholic feel as their messages take longer and longer to send. The world's changing as their position in the war shifts, and they become hopelessly estranged through leaps in time. Someone made an interesting note about the swapped gender roles, with the typically male idea of going to war assigned to the girl, although this seems generally more common in anime than Western entertainment.

The style's a bit odd, and I think it would have worked better if it was made just a couple years later. The hand drawn characters are a little crudely animated and often don't look right, while the computer generated mechs don't mesh right with the characters and backgrounds. It still has an interesting look with some beautiful scenes, though.