The Colors Within is a beautifully understated anime film about music, friendship and youth

click to enlarge The Colors Within is a beautifully understated anime film about music, friendship and youth
Youth's rainbow of emotions comes to vibrant life in The Colors Within.

About midway through Naoko Yamada's The Colors Within, a sweet yet deceptively somber anime film about a group of youths who form a band, a song plays that surprised me to no end. The song in question was memorably and magnificently deployed in one of the most opposite films one could imagine: Trainspotting. Without stealing this moment of its unexpected impact by revealing what is played, the song is a cover, a reinterpretation, yet still almost packed just as much of a punch while operating in its own quietly gentle register. Even as I'd heard the tune before, this cover created something new.

This is, rather fittingly, an encapsulation of what makes The Colors Within such a joyous film. Though it tells a rather familiar coming-of-age story, following the lonely young Totsuko (voiced by Sayu Suzukawa in Japanese and Libby Rue in English) as she connects with her former classmate Kimi (Akari Takaishi in Japanese and Kylie McNeill in English) and a new friend in Rui (Taisei Kido in Japanese and Eddy Lee in English) to form a humble band, it's how it does so that makes it all sing. It's a film in which color, both what it represents and how it is used, is everything. You settle into its rhythms as you just watch the images being painted before you with poetic patience and loving care for the characters therein. Imagine that the also sweet recent film Sing Street was made into an anime and then brought to life with a fleeting yet still frequently astounding vibrancy, and you'll have a pretty good idea of all that Yamada accomplishes here.

At the center of this is the ability Totsuko has to see people's colors, a representation of their aura, though she is unable to see her own. As she goes through the motions of her days at a strict religious school for girls, she desires something more for herself and finds it in the band that she essentially stumbles into. Indeed, much of the film feels like pieces falling into place with an unhurried and unbothered pace. There are moments of humor as we see how Totsuko is both bursting with sincerity yet also deeply shy, just as there is a growing sadness to the experience. The idea of being able to see others so fully without being able to be seen by them, or yourself, is an appropriately moving metaphor writer Reiko Yoshida handles with subtlety and grace. All these kids, each with their own struggles, are trying to figure out life. Their band allows them to express themselves in ways they don't get to otherwise and, even as the film takes its time in letting them loose to play, the getting there proves to be a profound experience we take in along with them. It captures the transient beauty and tragedy of youth with such precision that it hurts.

When we all look back on this time, with its joys, pains and everything in between, one can only wish it will look and feel like how Yamada brings it to life here. In every breathtaking color, with one brushstroke cutting across the horizon and becoming the landscape knocking the wind out of you, a portrait is being painted that sneaks up on you before laying you completely flat. Much like the closing performance where the trio finally get to play together in front of an audience, you can never experience this for the first time again. Even as you may wish you could — that there could be just one more song to play — that's not how life works. But the catharsis comes in getting to take it all in again in your memories, and The Colors Within delicately serves as a beautiful expression of that. When Totsuko sees herself, it's a moment of triumph that sends you soaring. Just as the youths all fly in their own directions, they'll always have the music they made and all of life's beautiful colors they helped each other come to see for themselves.

Three Stars
The Colors Within
Rated PG
Directed by Naoko Yamada
Starring Sayu Suzukawa / Libby Rue, Akari Takaishi / Kylie McNeill, Taisei Kido / Eddy Lee

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Chase Hutchinson

Chase Hutchinson is a contributing film critic at the Inlander which he has been doing since 2021. He's a frequent staple at film festivals from Sundance to SIFF where he is always looking to see the various exciting local film productions and the passionate filmmakers who make them. Chase (or Hutch) has lived...