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Spoilers, read only afterwards.

Theme:

Pale Cocoon is less about environmentalism and more about the preservation of our history and truth. The humans stuck on the terraformed moon gave up the on excavating the ruins of Earth because they thought they could never return to their mother planet. Faced with the past of knowing and understanding that their ancestors ruined themselves and the future, the excavators rather resign themselves to ignorance and forget, only burrowing themselves further downwards rather then accepting the bitter truth and seeking the origins.

The main character refuses to give in to this nihilistic ignorance, he clings desperately to the fading truth as ... the rest have abandoned it. He is the embodiment of the historian spirit, who uncovers no matter how dire and bleak. Even though in the end he dies without being able to reveal the new world, Pale Cocoon ends in an awe inspiring scene that offers a hope to those unwilling to compromise the truth.

Perspective:

Pale Cocoon's message of uncovering the truth is heavily dependent on the motif of perspective. The sham view that they are still living on Earth gets slowly dismantled by subtle acts of digital camera work. The video is flipped, backwards and pictures of nature in the background are in awkward, misleading angles, suggesting that the way that we are viewing the situation is incorrect. Both the main character and viewer reach an epiphany that where we are can control what we think. The use of equivocation in the usage of "Sea" also shows how easily our understanding can be faulty. Pale Cocoon tries to show how we be so easily tricked by presuppositions of our vantage point instead of looking at things critically. One great piece of camera usage is when the view backs out until we look at the characters through the monitor; hinting at the reverse nature of it. "What was she looking at?"

Other Thoughts:

Yasuhiro Yoshiura is oftentimes put as a Shinkai wannabe. That is lazy and demeaning to both directors and mostly to the one who said it. The motifs, stylistic elements and story message of the two are vastly different and focus on different emotions. Yasuhiro, from his three works focuses on society and its evolution through the ignorance while Shinkai does his work on mono no aware theme of drifting personal relationships. As such Voices of a Distant Star and Pale Cocoon, while both scifi, serious, and relatively indie are very different OVAs.

Texts from a Distant Star:

Story: Voices of a Distant Star is an update to the war letters to a loved one story, such as the real case of Sullivan Ballou's famous letters during the Civil War. The slow agonizing wait of reply is given a sci-fi spin as the characters age at different rates due to the effects of space travel. As Nagamine travels ever further into the depths of space, her texts take longer and longer to reach her childhood friend and lover, Noboru. The concept is very poignant and one can feel great empathy for the couple as the cold distance of time ... and space separates them, slowly tearing them apart. 9/10

The Problem:
The problem however is the bad execution of characterization in a very short time. The OVA is only 25 minutes long, which is not enough to build the necessary emotions to support the story. You don't understand their pain of time as the characterization scenes zip through haphazardly, undercutting the plot. Their emotions come off as cheap as little effort is made to construct their relationship, and the ensuing loneliness. Instead far too much time is put on glossy space battles and displays of background art that steal time away from character development. Everything is too rushed and the great concept is left unfulfilled.

Art:
The scenery of planets and mecha were very picturesque and detailed for its time, especially considering it's a one man production. However the characters suffer as their proportions are terrible and even for anime, their faces are misshaped.

Sound:
There is only three voices: Noboru, Nagamine, and British voice commander. Sadly the main characters have uninspired VAs that are emotionally unconvincing. The score is nothing memorable and doesn't set the mood well. The best sounds are the various beeps and blasts from the action sequences, again undercutting the emotional aspect. 5/10

Characters:
There is not enough characterization to empathize the characters. While the plot of distance and time separating them is emotional, they remain bland, unestablished, and unconvincing. 3/10

Overall:
Voices of a Distant Star is a flawed product, it's execution is poor and rushed. Shinkai misplaces his efforts in visuals instead of trying to tell a good story. Thus its potential remains unfulfilled. I recommend reading the superior manga adaption instead, as it properly focuses on the characters and their emotions. 6/10

Simplistic Silly War Melodrama

Following rave reviews from plenty of sources I came onto Now and Then, Here and There with guarded optimism. I was promised a brutal and uncompromising look on the atrocities of war that would bring real emotion from characters. The only thing phonier than that statement is how absurdly fake the main character Shu is.

Coming back from a devastating loss in Kendo, Shu notices a mysterious girl on top of a precarious smokestack. Deciding to investigate, he climbs onto another smokestack and engages with a short one-sided conversation with the blue girl named Lala-ru when suddenly a giant rift in time-space ... brings villains who have come to retrieve her. Lala-ru is able to call forth water from her pendant which is needed by King Hamdo, an evil dictator, to fuel his giant moving fortress Hellywood in order to destroy the world. An interesting if unoriginal story, but that is not the problem with the series. It’s the characters that fail to function like humans.
Story: 6/10

Shu is typical boy protagonist who is energetic and absurdly naïve. He’s the messianic “voice of reason” in the series who is the main problem with Now and Then, Here and There. Shu is thrown into a foreign world, tortured, whipped, beaten, kicked, hanged, shot, and pecked on by a bird yet his only thought in mind is to save the magic girl who he barely talked to for 3 minutes. His every other line is “Where is Lala-ru?” or “I have to save Lala-ru!” or simply “Lala-ru!” He suffers no psychological trauma from so much punishment and is still the moral compass for a “world gone mad” as a cheery cheeky Japanese adolescent. I’d rather ask what is wrong with him, is the Japanese education system so thorough that they include torture resistance lessons? Even Jesus on the cross asked “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Lala-ru is no better as she is the archetypal ice girl(or water in this case) with little dialogue and even lesser interest. She is simply an object to be fought over rather than a character. The chief antagonist is King Hamdo, who is a generic insane leader, he is a bore to watch. He rants and such, but his script and behavior is ever so recycled. These three inhuman freaks dominate the screen time while more nuanced and human characters like Nabuca, Abelia and Sara take a backseat.

Characters: 2/10

The animation is choppy and simplistic. While some the mecha designs aren’t bad, they hardly get enough attention to matter much. The faces hardly differ. Some episodes seem more like slideshows considering the slow frames. I thought several times I had accidently pressed pause when it was simply the animators being lazy.

Animation: 4/10

The sad violin main theme is used far too often for emotional scenes with very few musical pieces in between. It eventually loses its impact when you hear it in almost every episode. Character voices generally fit, though the little children voices do seem forced at times. Neither the OP nor ED is memorable.

Sound: 5/10

For an anime that brings up so many real problems of child soldiers, slavery, rape, abortion and war, it sure dodges any solution or resolution. The ending is so saccharin and unsatisfying, one must ask, what was the point? Shu repeats his mantra ad naseum, “As long as you’ve got your life, something good is bound to happen.” This lazy conclusion is sickening and pathetic when faced with these atrocities. Now and Then, Here and There tries to add realism to the majou shoujo genre yet its result is even more unrealistic and ends up worse off; it’s sad pathetic experiment for all the wrong reasons.

Overall 3/10