And did I power up my projection system with high expectations.
And guess what? It's beautiful! I didn't even have time to think
about what I was expecting!
You'd think that the exaggerated lighting could get annoying, but no,
it never does. It's like the moving lights give more life to the
film. And with help of time and other artists, drawings have improved
a lot since "Hoshi no Koe."
Of course, it's not perfect. Watching the included promotion clips, I
can see that the film took a slightly different path than originally
planned, and 90 minutes simply doesn't feel like enough time for the
complex story to fully spread its wings. But in the end, it's
beautiful beyond my expections and I am left with even higher
expectation for his next work. You could say that Shinkai-san has his
own genre, different from everything else, like how Ghibli's works are
different from other anime.
Oh, by the way, if you downloaded the promo clips, you don't need them
any more. This DVD contains all three (original, 120-second clip, and
90-second clip), and all in better quality, too.
I had to stop myself from capturing hundreds of screenshots. I
stopped fairly early. You should all be going out and buying the DVD
for yourselves anyway.
Rest are from interviews of the main characters, Fujisawa Hiroki (voiced by Yoshioka Hidetaka), Shirakawa Takuya (voiced by Hagiwara Masato), and Sawatari Sayuri (voiced by Nanri Yuuka). Note that neither Yoshioka-san nor Hagiwara-san are seiyuu. Nanri-san is, of course, seiyuu. And finally, the man himself. I see he upgraded his monitor and put what used to be his main monitor as secondary. Good for him!
