Makoto Shinkai English Fan Forum and Site

Menasha · vc_bios_b960909 Joined: 27 Jan 2008 Posts: 822

Oh I thought we were talking about The Place Promised in Our Early Days. to be honest. Woops.

zitch · Posted: Wed Mar 05, 2008 1:37 am Post subject:

Well, Mikako was 15 (by her own words in her last message) at the end of the movie. Noboru was around 23. The thing is, special relativity may not even take effect here as it depends on how the ships "leap" from one point to another. This is a special situation where earth technology is at a point where it can take advantage of the one-way leap points that the Tarsian used to go to Sirius to travel faster than light, but they don't know the leap points back to Sol, hence communications sent back to Earth uses plain old radio technology (I guess Earth might use special vessels that jump through hyperspace to send commands back to the fleet, but that is never explicitly spelled out).

At the distances spelled out in the movie, the speed of communication is limited by the speed of light. Think of the pre-radio and pre-telegraph days, where communication response time is limited by the speed of horseback, foot, or ships. In this way, Shinkai sets up a scenario much like how a wife or mother may receive letters from a husband or sons at war during the times of the Crusades, and those letters may take months or years to travel back. In this modern day of instant IM chats and cell phones, we don't really experience this much.

So when Mikako sends that last message, she is over 8 light-years away, and it takes that long for the transmission to go back to Earth. From what I can tell, though, in reality, Mikako and Noboru haven't technically aged any differently, so assuming he was also 15 when Mikako left, he was still 15 when Mikako pressed send on the message from Sirius, and both are about 23 when he received it. It's only because they're over 8 light-years away that causes the lag time. In this scenario, it's possible that the ship Mikako was on could find it's way back to Earth (finding those leap-points back) before that message even arrived, but we're assuming this isn't the case. Basically, we're not seeing them at the same "time", but time bounces back and forth depending on whose frame of reference we're using. From Mikako's view, the whole movie takes place in probably less than a year. Hence, she possibly has gone through the battle at Sirius by the time Noboru got the message from when she was outside the Oort Cloud (1 light-year away). From Noboru's point of view, the entire movie takes place in about 9 years.

This is what the movie means by thoughts conquering time and space. Not only are they over 8 light-years away in distance at the end of the film, they are also over 8 years away in time. If you really want to take the sequence in events in cronological order, as best as I can remember:

Start to sometime between 6-months and 1 year - The movie starts the same and stay up until the fleet hyperspaces out past the Oort Cloud

1 year to between 1.5 and ?? years - From here, it is Mikako's story, all the way until we see her stranded after taking out the Tarsis ship.

Between 1.5 and ?? years - Noboru receives Mikako's message from outside the Oort Cloud.

Between 1.5 and ?? years to sometime after 8.5 years - Noboru receives Mikako's message from Sirius.

I hope that is clear enough, though I might build a timeline chart later to better illustrate what I mean about the chronological sequence of events. Which is why I think we're not seeing anything related to the Twins paradox or special relativity.

Phantast · Posted: Wed Mar 05, 2008 4:20 am Post subject:

I think I understand. Mikako was ~15 years old when it shows her sending the message, and then it shows Noboru receiving it 8 years later.

For some reason, I thought that he had received the message immediately, even though it was explicitly stated that it would take years for it to reach him.

Good heavens, I think my brain shut off every time I watched Voices. :X

Junpei · Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2008 1:21 am Post subject:

http://www.crunchyroll.com/media-...es-Of-A-Distant-Star-Trailer.html

To be honest, I don't think I've ever seen a trailer for Voices. This was my first time seeing one, ahh why is it so emotional when they both speak together.

davus0 · Tracer Joined: 19 Jan 2009 Posts: 22

I feel the same way about the unison lines in PPED =(

Shinkai's movies are so reserved for the most part that these magical moments are more prominent even than in real life