# Children Who Chase Lost Voices

Children Who Chase Lost Voices (Japanese: 星を追う子ども, Hepburn: Hoshi wo Ou Kodomo, lit. 'Children Who Chase Stars'), also known as Journey to Agartha, is a 2011 Japanese anime fantasy film written and directed by Makoto Shinkai, and produced by CoMix Wave Films. It follows an elementary school girl and her substitute teacher travelling to the depths of the world. The film was released in Japan on May 7, 2011. It was released on DVD and Blu-ray in Japan on November 25, 2011. The film was previously licensed by Sentai Filmworks in North America and released on DVD and Blu-ray in November 2012. On May 9, 2019 it was announced that Sentai had lost the North American license, causing the releases to go out of print. On March 10, 2022, GKIDS announced that they have licensed Children Who Chase Lost Voices, along with three other works by Shinkai, and was re-released the film on home video in 2023.

## Plot

11-year-old Asuna Watase has been forced to grow up, after her father died. Her mother is a nurse working long shifts at the hospital. Asuna spends her solitary days listening to the mysterious music emanating from the cat's-whisker receiver her father gave to her as a memento, accompanied by pet cat Mimi, who bears strange red markings on her fur.
One day, while walking to her clubhouse across a bridge, she is ambushed by a fearsome creature and saved by a mysterious teenage boy named Shun. Asuna treats him from fighting the creature, and later they both listen to the radio. Shun tells Asuna he is from another country called Agartha and that he came to this place to find something. He then gives Asuna a blessing in the form of a kiss to the forehead. Asuna leaves quickly and tells Shun she will return tomorrow. However, Shun falls to his death, while looking at the sky.
The next day, Asuna hears from her mother about a boy in the river, but she does not believe it is Shun. Asuna's substitute teacher, Mr. Morisaki, gives a lecture on a book for them to understand about Agartha, the land of the dead. When Asuna visits Morisaki, he explains to her that long ago, humans needed the guidance of Quetzalcoatls, keepers of the dead, until they matured and no longer needed them. They went underground along with a fewest ones who joined them.
Afterwards, Asuna goes to the hideout to find another mysterious boy, resembling Shun and standing on the ledge. Soon, a group of armed men, called the Arch Angels, appear and ambush them. The mysterious boy hides in the underground entrance with Asuna, and the two proceed further into the cave when the cave's entrance is bombed. The two meet a Quetzalcoatl who has apparently lost its physical senses and attacks the boy. He refuses to kill the gatekeeper, giving Asuna his clavis, a crystal, and fights back. The Arch Angels interfere, killing the gatekeeper. The Arch Angel commander captures Asuna and uses the clavis to open a gateway to Agartha. The commander and Asuna enter the gateway followed by the boy. Once inside, the commander reveals himself to be Morisaki and the boy also reveals himself to be Shin, Shun's younger brother. Morisaki tells Shin that all he wants is to resurrect his wife, Lisa. Shin leaves Asuna and Morisaki.
Morisaki tells Asuna that she must return home, but she decides to accompany him. They both go into the realm via an underwater entrance. Once inside, they journey to the Gate of Life and Death, which can resurrect people from the dead, along with Mimi (who had sneaked in inside Asuna's backpack).
Upon arriving in his village, Shin is told he failed his mission to retrieve the clavis, because Asuna has unknowingly returned with a fragment of one. Shin plans to stop Asuna and Morisaki from wreaking havoc in Agartha. Along the way, Asuna is kidnapped by a race of monsters called the Izoku. She awakens in a closed area and meets a young girl named Manna. They are unable to escape. The day begins to darken and the Izoku begin to appear, but they can only move in the shadows. In their escape attempt they encounter Shin, who helps them but is wounded by an Izoku during the escape. Morisaki finds Asuna and Manna down the river, as well as Shin and Mimi. Shin tries to retrieve the clavis crystal fragment that Asuna had. However, he is too weak to put up a fight and Morisaki easily defeats him. Asuna convinces Morisaki to take him with them while Manna leads them to her village.
Once there, the villagers are at first reluctant to help the "top-dwellers", but the village elder convinces the guards to let them in. The elder allows them to stay one night at the village because they have brought Manna back, but they cannot stay more than that due to past history in that top-dwellers always bring bad luck to Agartha. Meanwhile, Asuna checks up on Shin, but he tells her to leave the village.
The next day, Asuna and Morisaki leave Amaurot by boat, but Mimi stays with the villagers. Shin wakes up and finds that Mimi has died. Shin, Manna, and the elder proceed to offer Mimi's corpse to the Quetzalcoatl. When Shin sees the villagers riding away to kill them, he decides to follow, in order to protect Asuna. Morisaki and Asuna walk towards a steep cliff, when they are ambushed by the villagers but they are saved by Shin. Morisaki trades the gun for the clavis shard with Asuna, when she refuses to climb down the ledge. Meanwhile, Shin is fighting the villagers and is about to be killed when they sense that the clavis crystal has reached the Gate of Life and Death. They leave Shin to wander aimlessly, having betrayed his country.
Asuna stays in the river on the night, before accepting the truth that she came to Agartha, and that she was lonely. When the water dries up, she is ambushed and attacked by the Izoku, but is saved by Shin. The two return to the cliff after seeing the Ark of Life descending. They encounter a Quetzalcoatl. Before dying, he sings a song to send all of the memories into the world. Asuna realizes that the last song she heard in her world was Shun's. The Quetzalcoatl offers to take them to the bottom of the cliff.
They both find the Gate of Life and Death and enter it. Morisaki has already made a wish for Lisa to return. However, her soul requires a vessel. Asuna and Shin find Morisaki, who tells Asuna she should not have come. She is soon possessed by the soul of Lisa, but the price becomes insufficient. Morisaki loses his eye. To undo Asuna’s possession, Shin destroys the clavis crystal, despite Morisaki's warning. Breaking the crystal brings Asuna's soul back to her body, when she had an illusion. Before Lisa leaves Asuna's body, she tells Morisaki to find happiness without her. Asuna gets reverted to her normal self, but Morisaki is devastated and asks Shin to kill him. However, he tells him that carrying the burden of a deceased person can bring a curse, telling Morisaki to live on. Asuna says farewell to Shin and Morisaki, and heads back to the surface. A year later, an older Asuna looks out her window at the cliff side where she had met Shun and Shin. She returns to school for a graduation ceremony.

## Characters
### Asuna Watase (渡瀬 明日菜 (あすな), Watase Asuna)

    Voiced by: Hisako Kanemoto (Japanese); Hilary Haag (English)
    A 6th grader who is forced to grow up quickly after her father died. She spends her time at the clubhouse where she listens to strange music from a crystal radio given to her by her father.

### Shin Canaan Preases (しん)

    Voiced by: Miyu Irino (Japanese); Leraldo Anzaldua (English)
    A mysterious boy around 2 years older than Asuna. He was sent by his village to retrieve the clavis crystal from Asuna and Morisaki.

### Ryūji Morisaki (森崎 竜司 (りゅうじ), Morisaki Ryūji)

    Voiced by: Kazuhiko Inoue (Japanese); David Matranga (English)
    Asuna's substitute teacher who is very knowledgeable about Agartha. He wishes to bring back his wife, Lisa (リサ, Risa), from the dead with the power of the Gate of Life and Death. He is a father figure to Asuna.

### Shun Canaan Preases (しゅん)

    Voiced by: Miyu Irino (Japanese); Corey Hartzog (English)
    Shin’s twin brother from the land of Agartha whom Asuna takes a liking to after he saves her.

### Yuu Yazaki (矢崎 ユウ, Yazaki Yuu)

    Voiced by: Yūna Inamura (Japanese); Brittney Karbowski (English)
    Asuna's classmate and best friend from school.
Other voice actors include Fumiko Orikasa as Asuna's mother, voiced by Shelley Calene-Black in the English dub, Junko Takeuchi as Asuna's pet cat Mimi (みみ), voiced by Emily Neves in the English dub, Tamio Ōki as the Amaurot village elder, voiced by Sam Roman in the English dub, and Sumi Shimamoto as Lisa (リサ), voiced by Shannon Emerick in the English dub.

## Development

Shinkai visited London after working on 5 Centimeters per Second in 2008. He returned to Japan in 2009 to start working on the film. He released two concept drawings for the film in December 2009 and noted that most of his works in the past decade were stories about characters who have to part ways with those they hold dear, but he wanted to take the theme further and wanted to deal more specifically on how to overcome the loss.
In November 2010, he revealed critical information about Children Who Chase Lost Voices from Deep Below such as the title, plot summary, release date, and a teaser trailer. As with his previous films, Shinkai served as the director and screenwriter, Takayo Nishimura served as a character designer, Takumi Tanji served as a art director, and music composer Tenmon collaborated with Shinkai again.
Before the film was released in May 2011, manga adaptations were set to begin serialization in April 2011 in the first issue of the new magazine Monthly Comic Gene and in Monthly Comic Flapper, both by Media Factory.

## Broadcast

The film's English adaptation was broadcast on Adult Swim's Toonami programming block in the United States on November 5, 2016.

## Critical reception

Luke Halliday from Capsule Computers gave the film a perfect score, heralding the film as Shinkai's finest: "Children Who Chase Lost Voices is an astonishing film that truly feels like the culmination of Shinkai’s entire career up until this point. It is his most ambitious work to date and quite simply his crowning achievement in the art form." He continued on to highlight the film's significance to anime as an artform: "This is perhaps the most important anime film of the new millennium, because it marks an important changing of tides. It is films like Children Who Chase Lost Voices that remind us of how magical anime can truly be."