Children Who Chase Lost Voices

星を追う子ども (Hoshi wo Ou Kodomo)

10.0(1)

OtakuDen

7.5(104,202)

MAL Score

Ranked #2181

Popularity #1237

Adventure
Fantasy
Romance

Episodes: 1
Duration: 1 hr 56 min
Aired: May 7, 2011
Status: Finished Airing

Synopsis

If memories could be woven into music, what kind of melody would they become?

Asuna Watase spends her days excelling at school and managing the household while her mother is away, finding quiet refuge in a secluded mountain spot where she listens to an old crystal radio. When she happens upon an unfamiliar, mournful tune, her routine is interrupted in an instant.

Not long after, a mysterious boy named Shun rescues her from a dangerous creature, and Asuna is pulled into a journey toward a long-forgotten realm far beyond anything she’s known—one that reshapes the gentle rhythm of her life into something deeper and more haunting.

Otaku Consensus

Children Who Chase Lost Voices is Makoto Shinkai’s most overt adventure-fantasy feature from this period, and its strongest assets are his tightly controlled visual authorship, Takumi Tanji’s background art, and Tenmon’s mournful score. The film’s mythological scale and underworld-travel structure give CoMix Wave Films a wider canvas than Shinkai’s earlier intimate dramas, but the most common criticism is that its emotional impact and pacing feel less precise than 5 Centimeters per Second and his other early work.

Why You Should Watch

Watch Children Who Chase Lost Voices if you want Shinkai’s sky-lit melancholy pushed into full mythic fantasy rather than another compact romance of distance and missed timing. It scratches a different itch from 5 Centimeters per Second: less diaristic, more folkloric, with gods, lost civilizations, and philosophical grief built into the world design. Viewers who care about background painting, color direction, and atmosphere will get the most from it, because the film is unusually authored at the image level: Shinkai is credited not only as original creator and director, but also for color design, photography, and editing. It is best approached as a visually dense, elegiac adventure film for fans who want wonder with unease, not a clean emotional catharsis.

Key Characters

A
Asuna Watase(VA: Hisako Kanemoto)
Asuna anchors the film through disciplined solitude, making her a Shinkai heroine whose curiosity is inseparable from responsibility rather than simple escapism.
S
Shin Canaan Praeses(VA: Miyu Irino)
Shin gives the fantasy side of the film its guarded human face, with Miyu Irino playing him as more restrained than heroic.
R
Ryuuji Morisaki(VA: Kazuhiko Inoue)
Ryuuji Morisaki is the film’s adult counterweight, turning its adventure framework into a debate about grief, obsession, and what people demand from the dead.

What Makes It Stand Out

1
This is an original Makoto Shinkai film rather than an adaptation, with Shinkai credited as original creator, director, color designer, director of photography, and editor. That concentration of roles helps explain why the film’s lighting, cuts, and color palette feel unusually unified.
2
The background art is repeatedly singled out by reviewers as the film’s most impressive element, even over the character animation. Takumi Tanji’s art direction gives the film its premium-cinema texture and supports its high AniList emphasis on Mythology, Lost Civilization, and Gods.
3
Tenmon’s score continues the early Shinkai musical identity, favoring lyric melancholy over action bombast. Anri Kumaki’s theme song performance further places the film in the tradition of anime features that use the ending theme as an emotional afterimage rather than a simple credits track.
4
Its tag profile is unusually philosophical for a one-film adventure: AniList marks Philosophy at 85%, alongside Mythology at 95% and Lost Civilization at 93%. That combination reflects why the movie is discussed less as a straightforward quest film and more as a fantasy about mortality and memory.
5
The reception profile is consistent across databases and fan commentary: a solid but not universally beloved Shinkai entry, with a 7.5 MAL score from 104,202 votes and a 71/100 AniList score. Its popularity is sustained by visual craft and atmosphere more than by consensus that it reaches the emotional precision of Shinkai’s best-known works.

Fun Facts & Trivia

Fun fact 1: Children Who Chase Lost Voices opened in Japan on May 7, 2011 as a single theatrical film, not a TV series or OVA. On MAL it sits at #1237 in popularity and #2181 in rank, reflecting a film with broad visibility but divided critical enthusiasm.
Fun fact 2: CoMix Wave Films produced the movie, keeping it within the studio most closely associated with Shinkai’s auteur image. The credits reinforce that identity by assigning Shinkai several technical authorship roles beyond directing.
Fun fact 3: Takayo Nishimura handled character design, while Manabu Oohashi is credited for layout and Takumi Tanji for art direction. That division is notable because critical discussion of the film often privileges its environments and spatial staging over its character archetypes.
Fun fact 4: The main cast combines Hisako Kanemoto as Asuna Watase, Miyu Irino as Shin Canaan Praeses, and Kazuhiko Inoue as Ryuuji Morisaki. The trio gives the film a clear generational spread: adolescent perspective, mysterious peer, and adult grief.
Fun fact 5: Fan and review commentary repeatedly frames the film as visually stunning but emotionally less devastating than Shinkai’s earlier 5 Centimeters per Second. That comparison has become central to its reputation: admired for craft, debated for dramatic force.