Voices of a Distant Star - A Relationship Across Time and Space

     Considering the very limited production team, The Voices of a Distant Star was able to effectively portray the struggles of a long distance relationship in a way that made me actually care about what the characters were going through within only half an hour. The paradigm of Mikako and Noboru sending emails between one another, with the sending time increasing drastically is a great way to illustrate what it's like to have to simply wait for something. Without creating a plot driving element that is too complex, the send-time going from 6 months to 1 year to 8 years is something that I think a lot of people can relate to - although those numbers are quite large to have to wait for someone to respond. Whether it's friends, a boyfriend or girlfriend, or even your parents - we've all been in a situation where we would try to send them a message and they would not be able to respond immediately for whatever reason. 

Do they not like me anymore? Do they think I'm annoying? Did they DIE? 

 

Whatever it is, simply waiting for a response without knowing what's happening on the other end allows for intrusive thoughts to pervade our minds before we eventually run out of the energy to care. This exact thing happened in the film, when the email send-time went from 6 months to 1 year - Noboru thought Mikako had decided to stop responding because he hadn't gotten anything from her in a year. He ran out of the energy to care simply because he didn't know that she had jumped even further in space.

Ultimately, what I really like about the message of the film is that, the act of simply waiting - being forced to wait - is something that can test the emotional strength of an individual. Waiting can be very taxing, especially if what you were waiting for leaves just as quickly as it arrived. Is the time spent we spend on some things worth it? In many cases, I'd argue that it is - especially in the realm of maintaining relationships. Waiting is something that we all have to do, right - we have to be patient. But I think patience is finite - although some people have much larger reserves of it - and it can only be a matter of time before the voices of that distant star become too far to hear.

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind

 

      The first volume of this story was a pretty nice journey into what Nausicaa, as a character, is going to be for the rest of the series. There was a decent amount of development that Nausicaa, and even her mentor (?) Yupa went through as they were discovering the influence that Nausicaa can have on the world. Her fearlessness and drive to lead her people, from warding off the soldiers sent by the emperor to dealing with the Ohmu's, felt like a great highlight in that Nausicaa is a force to be reckoned with, although Yupa states that she has a power that is meant to heal. I personally have a little bit of a soft spot for stories that deal with coming to peaceful resolution - but violent resolution is a good way to go too, narratively - so it was easy to take a liking to Nausicaa and the people that she stood for. 

     I also found myself wondering what the hell is going on with the forest - I know that the Yupa mentions that, after seeing Nausicaa's secret spore lair, the forest is meant to cleanse the planet. From what I was able to gather, the insects of the forest are to help speed along that process - there's quote that says something along the lines of, humans are the reason for the heavy pollution. The dynamic established between the forest and the insects that reside within it made wish that there was more Ohmu speak going on. The fact that their thoughts go beyond space and time and allow them to communicate their thoughts/feelings to people is a really fun trait for creatures to have - the first thing I thought of when it was revealed that the Ohmu can speak, more or less, were Jabun and  Valoo from the Legend of Zelda the Wind Waker. They are a giant fish and dragon, respectively, that speak an old language that manifest as low-pitched resonating hums. They feel powerful - they feel like characters that have knowledge that we don't know and may never be told (up front) - and the Ohmu elicited similar feelings especially near the end when one of them says that "They are needed elsewhere." 

     The setting that Nausicaa was able to establish in the first volume alone was one that is much larger than man itself - a world who's traits are almost too large to imagine in its entirety. We get to just see pieces of it and I think that left a lasting impression on me. 10/10 will continue reading.