# Voices of a Distant Star



## Josuah (Apr 26, 2006)

Hoshi no Koe was an amazingly good short film. It's only 25 minutes but it's exciting, emotional, and poignant all at the same time. There have been some comparisons to The Forever War but they're really very different. In Hoshi no Koe, two friends are separated by the limitations of light speed. One has no connection with normalcy except through the SMS line, and the other is tethered by that line.

Human lives are short. It used to take weeks to send a letter by mail. And as the film alludes, your world can be measured in how far you can send a message to someone else. Today, you can easily send a message to someone anywhere else on Earth and it will arrive in less than a second. But once there are people away from Earth, the time to send a message will become measured in light seconds. In this particular case, the messages are taking much longer than that.

As a soldier on a battleship, traversing through the stars, you leave behind everything that is Earth. You also leave behind the people who represent humanity. And sending a message will take a very long time. Years may pass between replies. But that is your link to everything else.

For someone on Earth, to receive those messages, is like hearing from a ghost, but at the same time is someone whom you know to be real and familiar. That person is not gone, but by the time you've received the message, what was said is long past. And the world continued around you, as this message travelled through time to reach you in the future. And so you're trapped by your past. But it's not a trap you can simply escape from because doing so means abandoning something precious.

The worst part about it all is that there's always the chance someone you saw yesterday really died years ago.

blog post


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## Ayreonaut (Apr 26, 2006)

This was a really touching short story. I hesitated to fork over a rental fee for a 25 minute movie, but I'm glad I did.


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## Josuah (Apr 26, 2006)

Yeah, Netflix makes it easy to just watch something that you're not sure you want to pay for. Disclaimer: I work for Netflix.

This is a movie I'd buy, because I'd want to show it to other people / future kids and would watch again with those other people / future kids.


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## Sonnie (Apr 11, 2006)

> Disclaimer: I work for Netflix.


Seriously? I tried Blockbuster and Netflix and ran out of movies to watch after about 2-3 months... lol.

This sounds like a really strange yet interesting short movie. I may end up having to rent it just cause you got my curiosity up.


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## Josuah (Apr 26, 2006)

Yeah, I work for Netflix. I guess you must be really picky if you ran out of movies that fast.


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## Ayreonaut (Apr 26, 2006)

I have three queues, because I enjoy the TV series and concerts as much as the feature films.


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## Otto (May 18, 2006)

Sonnie said:


> Seriously? I tried Blockbuster and Netflix and ran out of movies to watch after about 2-3 months... lol.


Wow, Sonnie! Just curious -- what movies do you have that you were not able to find on Netflix? Or what movies would you like to have that aren't available on Netflix?

I _don't_ work for Netflix, just wondering... I find that they have pretty much everything. And, yeah, if you ever run out of movies to watch, there are some great TV series out there (as Ayeronaut pointed out).

To keep the thread on topic, I'll note that I added "Voices of a Distant Star" to my Netflix queue after reading the first two posts of this thread yesterday. I had initially entered "Hoshi no Koe" and it didn't come up, but it came up under "Voices...". At first I thought, "Netflix doesn't have this?!?!?!". Then, "nah, it's just gotta be under a different name." Don't think I've ever stumbled across something that wasn't available.


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## Sonnie (Apr 11, 2006)

Well it seems like I've seen about everything I'd ever wanna see that's old, from either owning it or renting it locally. Then a few months with Netflix and a few months with Blockbuster and I was pretty much caught up with what I wanted to see. Right now I'm stuck on new releases and we only seem to get a few of those a month that I care about. The only series I rent is Smallville. Not much else I care about in that department. I'm hoping our reviews will pick up here in this area and I'll find more to rent or buy... such as the one reviewed here, but that's only gonna keep me occupied for 25 minutes... :R


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## Josuah (Apr 26, 2006)

Hoshi no Koe is the Japanese title. All of the Netflix movies are searchable by English title. Personally, I wish somehow Netflix was able to grab Japanese anime closer to Japanese release time. But, unfortunately, I have to wait until some studio like ADV or Funimation buys the U.S. rights and does the translation and dubbing. :-|

Hoshi no Koe translates literally to Star's Voice, which isn't really a good translation because the meaning is a little lost. Hoshi = star, Koe = voice.


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