I guess my expectations after watching "5 centimeters per second" were too high, that's why I was a little bit disappointed with "Hoshi ...".
The story line is not that original as "5 centimeters" or "The Place Promised in Our Early Days". I can see scenes which are based on "Princess Mononoke", "Spirited Away", "Kaze no tani no Naushika". It looks like Shinkai watched all Hayao Miyazaki pictures just before making his own. Of course story line is not based on any of those, but some scenes, characters or plots are. There is also possibility that all are based on the same mythology or same symbolism that European person like me is not similar with, but I guess you can see lot of analogies with other anime movies. But this is not that bad, story is still very absorbing, you cannot wait to see what's gonna happen next, and you wait for the happy ending. My rate for the story is 7.5.
But as you can expect visual side of this movie is masterpiece. I'm going to watch it second time today, just to see how great those scenery is, how nice is play of the light, how detailed world is. Landscapes made by Shinkai are something like French impressionistic paintings (especially Monet's) but they are much more detailed, with better colours and lighting. I'm not big fan of character animation in this movie (or anime character animation generally) so it not impress me much. But still the whole picture is rated 10. GREAT.
Music is another Tenmon line. It's somewhere in the background, not killing reception of visual side. I think it's accurate, sometimes it reminds me "5 centimeters .." sound track, but it's different. It fits here great, but it's a bit less then visual side. So my rate is 9.
I thought that movie gonna be better than any Shinkai movie or any anime at all, but for me it's not. I guess this is because of story line. It's touching but not that touching as "Grave of Fireflies" or "5 centimeters". I got tears in my eyes like twice watching this and yes I lost someone close too so I should feel the empathy for the characters, but I didn't fully. But my expectations are always very high, so there is no doubt they were too high here. Anyway great movie, guess one of the best movies of 2011 (or the best).
Final score is 9.
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