Colorful (Movie)

Despite a wonderful opening sequence and captivating premise, Colorful turns out to be a mediocre disappointment that doesn't manage to attain much depth despite its attempts to do so.

The film's main failure can be attributed to its lack of focus and scope, choosing to jump between several different characters that were related to the life of the protagonist. Whilst each of these characters and their inner conflicts had the potential to be very interesting upon exploration, the film never delves too deeply into any of them, choosing to take more of a touch and go approach, jumping from character to character, and developing none of ... them fully. It is due to this that it often feels as if there are jumps in characterization - most notably with relation to the crush of the protagonist, who is left forgotten by the film after a chilling and memorable scene, only to be brought back at the very end in what seems to be a very clumsy attempt to tie up loose ends. Much of the film feels that way - Despite it taking 2 hours, it doesn't really feel as if we really got to know the characters.

Beyond that, the film can sometimes come across as preachy - it oftentimes lacks any subtlety at all. The message of the film is simple, about how us humans are often multifaceted and multicolored, how each of us have many different sides, and how each one of us are often suffering under our own burdens under the facades we put up. We are not alone in this world - your depression and sadness is not something that only you feel - but rather something that everyone goes through, and that we must push on and live life to the fullest even through sad times. It's a beautiful message indeed, but I personally don't feel that it is delivered well. Most of it is literally spoken out by the characters to the audience, most notably in the closing scene of the movie. It's a weak way to deliver a message, and it probably would have worked much better if the film found a way to show it more rather than simply preaching it in our faces.

That said, the film does do some things well. For instance, the final twist, as predictable as it might be, works wonderfully for such a film, and would perhaps have been much more effective if the rest of the film had managed to develop a stronger emotional attachment to the protagonist. It's also beautifully animated and wonderfully drawn, making for a great visual experience at times.

Overall, Colorful is a film that is perhaps brought down by the weight of its ambition. It tries to tackle a range of important issues and explore how we humans tick, but it never really delves deep into the characters and at most times only lightly touches on them. Jumps in characterization and relationships are probably the most problematic point within the film, and it simply doesn't make good use of its runtime.

One night I'm challenged to watch this movie with friends.
They were pretty hyped for it and so I followed, in antecipation, waiting for a good movie. What did I get? A terrible one.

Where do I start?
The plot starts off pretty interesting, it makes you question, it leaves you hyped for a really cool movie, which unfortunately turns out to be pretty lame.
It consists essentially of a kid struggling with common life problems (be it family, friendship-related, school-related, etc.) who gradually goes about making sense of it all, understanding how to look at life, making friends, becoming a new kid entirelly, culminating with a plot-twist which ... I honestly saw coming and which didnt affect me much to be honest.
As far as the plot's concerned I'll give it a solid 6/10., it's neither good nor bad, it's just a plot.

I must also note that the MC has a terribly emotionless personality and I couldnt get attatched to him very much.

Now let me get into what really fails in this movie.

The art is pretty, but oh god did I have to lower the rating on it.

The CGI was like something from the early 90s, which DIDNT BLEND AT ALL into the anime, and what were they thinking when they decided it would be cool to put real life photos as backgrounds?? WERE THEY SERIOUSLY HOPING WE WOULDNT NOTICE? WAS IT SUPPOSED TO BE NOTICED? It was hideous.

The music is forgetable.

The time I wasted on it will not come back.

Overall it was an ok movie but only because I watched it with friends, it's again, one of such movies where most 8s and 9s out of 10 come from weeboo "anime appreciators" who clearly cannot tell the flaws of a movie and although singular opinions are to be respected, it should not be expected of me to understand such opinions when there is clearly so much flaw to be seen in this movie.

It is NOT that great and overall I give it a 4/10.

(TLDR at the bottom, thanks for reading.)

Colourful manages too something that seems impossible, it is simultaneously to long and too short.

It's almost like the staff working made the film but the realised that the script and storyboards only cover an hour of screen time, so they decided to emphasise certain bit of the film to make it longer but only achieving making the overall pacing of the story was way longer than it needs to be. So even though this is a two-hour film, it barely achieves anything of value. It's one of those anime that is made so at the moment you think ... it is really profound and deep but when you end up thinking about it a few months later the only think about the film you can remember is the final few minutes. As I am writing this review I am having to go back and rewatch sections of the film because the only thing I remember from my initial viewing is criticisms that I made (and the opening and ending scenes), and when the most memorable part of a film is the reasons you don't like it that is when you realise something went horribly wrong.

The film starts with the rather effective hook of someone in the afterlife, a young boy, who is given the chance to relive his life and to prevent his own suicide. The overall directing of this scene is quite impressive. The camera is positioned in such a way that Purapura (the spirit guiding the souls of the dead) is always in the centre of the screen, his upbeat tone and boyish look clashing with the overall morbid nature of the scene, our main character (who we know nothing about) has his own voice muted and replaced by white words on a black background. The other souls represented by translucent 3d models in direct contrast to the 2d background and too Purapura who still takes up a large portion of the screen, the dichotomy between these models and 2d drawings is really effective at bringing across the uncanny nature of this scene. These entire few minutes, while impressive, probably hurt the overall experience as it puts the viewer's expectations higher than what the film can actually deliver.

But after this opening scene the film throws us directly into the life of Makoto and its liner through line all but disappears as the viewer ends up watching Makoto live his day-to-day life, his encounters with friends and school, his relationship with his parents, the stresses of finding a new school and other fairly typical events in someone's life. Since the main focus is meant to be on the life of Makoto it is more of a collection of a bunch of random scenes with only some of them contributing to the actual plot and themes of the film, you could cut out a good chunk of the scenes in the middle of the film, and it would really detract from the film. There isn't much of a plot to colourful, there is the whole idea of Makoto being reincarnated, but that is mostly you used in the start and end of the films with the actual meat of the experience being the interpersonal relationships between Makoto and the rest of the cast, the problem is that Makoto is just an annoying character. He is arrogant and rude and bairly has any characterisation that can make him appealing despite his personality, maybe this lack of characterisation is done to make him seem like a typical school boy, but it just is one of the many issues that makes the time spent watching the film unpleasant. He does develop as a character but all of his development is kept to the final quarter of the film, so while it is great that he does develop most of the film we are stuck with and annoying MC and his development isn't particular noteworthy as it is just him learning to be a better person. The rest of the cast aren't any better, a lot of the characters that are around Makoto's age are similarly annoying or just have some really lacklustre characterisation that they are just boring to watch because their entire purpose is to talk to Makoto about some random event. There is one scene in the middle of the film where Makoto and his friends skip school and just end up walking around the town and talking about the history of it (it's more of Makoto's friend talking at him, though). But this scene is a bit of a waste of time as all it does it prove Makoto has a friend and due to the naturalistic approach to voice acting the series takes all the characters sound extremely uninterested and the lack of anything else to spice the scene up (like a good ost, impressive directing or noteworthy animation) the whole scene is just boring and has no real place in the story, and for the over all length of the scene it barely impacts the actual film.

And after some heart-to-hearts between Makoto and his parents the film stumbles into its ending, where its entire message is made clear in an overly ham-fisted and preachy way, that people are multifaceted, you could even say that people are “colourful” and the film wants to make sure you understand this by saying it multiple times, the staff were trying so hard to make sure that the viewers understand this message that they have the big conclusion that the answer is spelled out right in the title. My main issue with this isn't the lack of subtlety or the obtuse nature that the film takes in preventing its themes, it's that it is fairly obvious to most people. We've spent our entire lives living around over people and learning that they aren't black and white or easy to fit into categories. In the anime community to outsiders it might look like we are one homogenous group but as you can see there are plenty of different types of people, you'd have to be colour-blind to think that life is not colourful and then for this film to come round like it has made some grand revelation on human nature just feels wrong, we already know what the film is trying to say so no matter what the film does say we already know these messages and then combined this with the lack of anything conclusive happening to Makoto just makes the ending sub-par.

Even with all of these issues, the film just isn't that entertaining.

TLDR: Too long with sup-par voice acting leading to a disappointing conclusion.

Colorful begins from the first person perspective, with the hero’s words being written rathen than spoken. I have to admit, this is a very interesting choice for an opening, which reminded me of visual novel games a bit and got me instantly interested in what was about to happen. As it turns out, the main character has just died and is now given a chance for a resurrection. In order to have it given to him, he has to pass a certain test. His soul is transported into a body of young boy who nearly passed away in a suicide attempt. The task that is ... given to our MC will require him not only to be able to continue living as a new person, but to remember and atone for the sin he commited during his own life as well.

Unfortunately, I am not really sure of how accurate that summary was. And this is not due to me hardly remembering the movie (which I kinda wish was the case) or it having a very complex plot, making it hard to give a decent explanation of it within such a brief paragraph. Instead, I have to put the blame on what seems to be the this title’s largest shortcoming - it’s a complete and utter mess.

This is a little surprising, seeing that Colorful doesn’t bring up a whole lot of characters or themes, but it still manages to continuosly forget about the ones it did thgoughout its duration. As a result, the movie ends up with a line-up of people who are not only not given any kind of development, but are left halfway through their exposition when the ending credits roll in.

The only character which I felt was decently introduced and deserved their place in Colorful was Saotoma. His subplot seems to be the one that actually pushes the protagonist and the plot into some kind of direction, too bad it takes place exlusively within the last one-third of the movie. As a result, we are left wondering what is even the whole point of it throughout the rest of the time. Although, to be frank, I’m still not 100% sure about what it was even now.

To give you a better example of how severely Colorful lacks any kind of focus, let’s talk about some more adult-like themes it throws at the viewer. And there are at least two big ones, namely betrayal and prostitution. I won’t go into details to avoid spoilers, but if you watch it expecting some kind of an actual look into those issues, you’ll come out dissapointed. It’s a bit like virtue signaling, except the authors don’t even have balls to actually condemn those sorts of behaviours, they just throw them into vacuum and never do anything with them. Maybe this was an attempt to make the movie seem more edgy and appeal to certain types of demographic, but instead it came out totally out of place.

However, the absolute cherry on top when it comes to lack of direction in Colorful was the moment when its creators realised they forgot to actually put its keynote into it. To fix it, they decided to make the protagonist blurt it out in the middle of the dialogue with barely no context, while the person they were talking to just nods silently, listening to an explanation of the movie’s title. Unfortunately, I cannot bring myself to fully hate this moment, because while the MC was talking, his school’s graduation song was also playing in the background and I happen to have a particular weakness to those. In the end, I had a very weird moment of contrast, when the worst and the best thing I was able to hear throughout this movie both happened simultaniously.

Speaking of contrast, this words also deserves its place when talking about Colorful’s visuals. I definetely have to apploud the backgrounds - while they’re not quite on Shinkai’s levels, they are still really well made, vivid and detailed. On the opposite side, the character designs are pretty poor, even scruffy. Their animation is even worse, especially when it comes to walking or running, which seems very sluggish and at times the framerate for it is really low. You can really tell the difference between the level of detail put into those respective aspects and the overall impression is similiar to a poor green screen effect.

I was hoping the whole mess in the direction would eventually be given some kind of explanation, but in the end all of it was left to my own imagination. Was the movie trying to be an elaborate metaphore of our own lives, which can be very chaotic as well? Unfortunately, this is but a poor excuse for the Colorful’s very apparent issues and I can’t bring myself to handle it to it.

The ending doesn’t help much either. Instead of leaving me with a good final impression, it brings the exact same resolution I was guessing would happen six minutes into the damn thing. And to make it even worse, it gives hardly any explation as to how the protagonist was able to solve the puzzle, making it even less satisfying than I was expecting.

All in all, watching Colorful was but a waste of time. I might end up being a bit salty about it, seeing that is was the first anime I decided to watch in the new year 2018, but the rating I decided to handle it is what I give to series that might have some pros to it, but are largely overshadowed by their cons. I believe this is what constitues as a fair judgement for this movie.

I've never felt the need to write a review about anime before, but colorful was an melodramatic waste of time The main character is a spoiled brat. It was very hard to sympathize with a whiney self absorbed teenger who has very few redeemable qualities. The moral lessons are shallow and predictable. All the conflict in the stories is concluded in the expected fashion. It is just another boring coming of age story with a new twist on it it. I would not suggest this anime to people who enjoy larger than life characters, or cool animation styles.

Oh my god, what a boring stooorrrryyyyyyyy

This movie starts off great. The main character arrives at the after-life metro (?) station and they don't have a body. They don't have a voice. The movie's point of view is THEIRS, which means that basically they're "the camera". That made me feel like I was that character, so I liked that straight off the bat.

But then the "real" movie starts when they possess Makoto's body and Makoto goes back to his home with his family. God, what a boring family. What a boring life.

I didn't feel sympathy for any of the characters. After over an hour of ... movie, all I really "knew" about them was their appearance and what their "role" in the story was (the girl that makoto liked, his mom, his dad, his brother, this weird ugly chick in his art class, and that's about it). There was no depth to them OR makoto.

The plot, if there were any, moved slower than a sleeping sloth. I literally fell asleep THREE TIMES while trying to watch this movie, and whenever I caught myself dozing off, I had to figure out at which moment I was last awake (because the story is so mundane, so every scene looks exactly the same as many others you've already watched before).

And the art? it's ugly. I'm sorry for the brutal honesty, but IT IS UGLY. At least Koe no Katachi (which I disliked as well) was very pretty. THIS adds to the whole "boring" atmosphere the movie has going on.

So... the idea of the story is interesting, but the execution left a lot be desired.

TL;DR - Watch something else.

Art: Pretty good. It's not exceptional, but as someone who does not really watch anime, I appreciated how the people looked like real people and not the typical anime-style characters.

Sound: Music is not particularly memorable, but it is not bad either.

Characters and story: The movie starts strong, but proceeds to fall spectacularly flat. The plot moves with the speed of molasses for the first hour, after which things improve marginally. It appears that none of the characters have any real depth to them. A very central element of the overarching story is revealed in what felt like 10 seconds near the ... end, without any real development to it whatsoever.

The protagonist does an about-turn in a single day near the end, going from someone who is generally apathetic to everything to a changed, wised-up person. The trigger for this change is laughable. I've had people telling me that this had been developing for some time, but I must be blind, because all the change I observed is the protagonist changing from someone generally disconnected with everything to someone who does not care what happens to him(not in a heroic way) as long as he enjoys himself, and then in an instant to the wise, reformed guy I mentioned.

To elaborate on characters - the protagonist does something very tasteless midway through the film. This action is forgiven by another paper-thin character, who is on the receiving end of said action. This scene serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever. It does not even serve to portray the protagonist as a flawed human being, because of said piece of paper accepting his apology. I bring special attention to this scene, because I have no idea why it exists. There is no reason to include something like this in what purports to be a deep film if you just toss it away near the end.

The only character with any depth or complexity is Hiroko. This is simply unforgivable in a film that deals with the colourfulness of human life and personalities.

This film is mediocre at best, and I'd highly recommend watching something else.