Geh

I’ve just about enough with MAGE and their incompetent editor. Flip through any page and I can point out a grammatical/formatting error for you. Not to mention their sypnosis of Hoshi no Koe, (Voices of the Distant Stars) which ticks me off because I really like Makoto Shinkai’s works.

When a mysterious alien force begins their annihilatioin of the human race, a young pilot feels called to join the resistance. But the danger of an interstellar battle is not Mikako’s greatest concern. For she has left behind one young man she loves. And as Mikako flies further into deep space, her only way to connect with Noboru is by cell-phone text messages. While Mikako risks her life to save mankind, Noboru waits. At first days, then months, then years for each new message that will let him know whether Mikako is still alive. And while she barely grows older in the timelessness of space, Noboru ages.

Wrong. I don’t know if the writer actually pays attention to the OVA, but the plot is so straight forward that I don’t see how he could’ve reached this conclusion that Mikako didn’t age. First let’s have a simple physics lesson. Radio waves, like light, travels at the speed of light, which, according to google, is 299,792,458 m/s. During the attack by Taursians, the Earth fleet warped to 10 light years out of the Solar System, which is roughly 9.4605284 × 10^13 km. Now think about it. it takes ten years for light to travel that distance, so naturally it takes ten years for her SMS messages to reach Earth.

Here’s the ENTIRE point that the show is trying to make and the writer of this article apparently missed. See, the OVA switches from Mikako of the PRESENT, who had just sent off her SMS due to arrive at Earth in ten years, and the Noboru who received the SMS TEN years later. NOTE: It’s not that Mikako didn’t age, it’s the scenes that is transitting between two different time! So here’s the GREATNESS of Hoshi no Koe, (which, I remind you, the writer missed) their feelings for each other crossed time! As Noboru looked at the SMS ten years later and as Mikako sat (floating) in her mecha ten years ago, their thoughts synchronized through time. Now Mikako did age, but not for long as she died in a skirmish a while after sending the SMS. So by the time Noboru had received the message, she was already dead for ten years.

But anyway, to make things short.
Final scene depicting Mikako = in the present
Final scene depicting Noboru = ten years in the future
Mikako did not age in the timelessness of space = false