This album contains the theme song and background music for the anime Voices of a Distant Star. This anime is notable because it is almost exclusively the work of one man, Makoto Shinkai. He wrote the story, scripted it, and animated it all by himself on a computer in his apartment, over a period of about half a year. The end result is an entertaining and surprisingly thought-provoking story about exactly how far love will reach. The music for the anime is not written by Makoto Shinkai, but is written and performed by an artist named Tenmon - except for the vocals in the theme song, which are written by K. Juno and sung by an artist named Low. The music itself is fairly simple; seemingly all done on an electronic keyboard. It is mostly quality material, though, and does a good job of supporting the anime. The question with a soundtrack album, however, is how well the music stands on its own.

The album starts out with the vocal theme to the show, "Through the Years and Far Away". Interestingly enough, this song is sung in English, though the singer has a strong enough Japanese accent that some of the words are hard to understand. Still, the use of English is an interesting artistic choice, and it means that for once I actually have an idea what an anime theme song is about! Still, while the song is perfectly competent, it really doesn't grab my attention. The music is fairly simple, and the singing quality is pretty average, about the quality of what you would find from a good singer at a karaoke bar. Overall, I was not impressed with the artistry of the song.

Luckily, after that we get to the good stuff, the piano work by Tenmon. Tracks two, three, and four are all beautiful, if short, pieces that accurately capture the sadness and longing of the two main characters in the story. Track three, especially, is really impressive, sounding a little bit like the works of American piano great George Winston. It has a playful feel to it, though never straying from the emotional restraints of the story. Track five is the dramatic battle music, done on a keyboard with full use of sound effects to add a little bit of chorus and (somewhat cheap sounding) orchestra. This song doesn't hold up on its own very well, and it feels out of place when put directly alongside the quieter, more introspective pieces on the album.

Unfortunately, after this, the album really starts to go downhill. The reason for this is that songs begin to get repeated. You should know that this isn't really the fault of the musician, as it is simply a by-product of the fact that this is the soundtrack for an anime that runs for less than 30 minutes. Also, none of the songs get exactly repeated. What you do get is a lot of variations on themes you have heard previously on the album. For example, tracks two and eight are very similar. They are in different keys, and there are a few differences in the notes, but other than that you pretty much have a "remix" of the earlier song. It is a good song, so I can't complain too hard, but at this point in the album you really begin to think that you've heard these songs before. And you have. They are arranged a little differently than before, but other than that you are hearing the same songs again. Actually, truth be told, tracks two and three also bear some real similarities in their underlying melodies, even though the songs are taken in different directions.

This gets even worse starting with track nine, as this track is another version of the theme song, which wasn't too great to begin with. Track ten is the same song again, though sung in Japanese this time, and track eleven is a remix of that song. So, on an album with twelve tracks, you get to hear four different versions of the theme song. Add that to the fact that most of the instrumental numbers are all worked around the same melodic theme, and what you end up with is a twelve-track album that only contains at most five different pieces of music. No matter how big a fan of this anime you may be, it will be difficult to justify spending full price for what really amounts to five songs which aren't even very long. I applaud ADV for licensing and producing anime soundtracks, but this was probably not the best of choices for them, as there really isn't enough variety in the songs on this album to warrant a purchase unless you could get it at a significant discount.