I am following Shinkai's career right from the start, and while his stories always lacked complexity, he had his own way to provoke happy-sad emotion. With each movie he was getting better, so my expectations for this one were high. What a great disappointment it was to find that Hoshi o ou kodomo is just a bad imitation of Miyazaki's Laputa. Story lacks coherence, characters are shallow - I was bored out of my mind watching this. Animation is good, but not his best.