Story - 6/10 (Concept - 10/10; Setting - 7/10; Structure - 5/10; Pacing - 5/10; Theme - 9/10)
The story has a really interesting setup. A person is revived from what appears to be "purgatory" at the beginning of the film. He then has to fill the shoes of a middle-school student who recently committed suicide, all while trying to prove that he's worthy of living in this kid's shoes after what happened to him.
Things start off well, with the plot being rolled out at a good pace, but after the beginning moments of the film, things start to slow down quite a bit, all the way up to the ending. Each scene feels like it overstays it's welcome just a little bit, making the whole middle of the film feel quite slowly-paced.
This isn't helped by the poor structure of the film, where things seem to happen without any cause or reason. Throughout the film, there isn't really an arc to the story. There's no consistent buildup to the climax, it's more like a bunch of peaks & valleys between dramatic moments and casual moments, with a bunch of different story threads intersecting one another, and no clear, concise plotline.
The film ends up redeeming itself by the end by tying all of those various plotlines up into a neat little package, with a good theme as the bow on top. However, despite the film having some interesting moments, getting to the end of it felt like a bit of a chore.
Characters - 8/10
Helping to alleviate some of that slow pacing and messy through-line of the story are the interesting cast of characters. Both the main and supporting cast consists of a bunch of enjoyable characters who are fun to watch on screen, while also having unique and diverse personality traits. There are a few characters who end up having a conflict, and while this is interesting, it also doesn't actually seem to develop them all that much. I thought the characters worked well for the duration of the story, but in the long run aren't very memorable. Still, they work for the moments that they're shown in, and I'd say they're the films second strongest point.
Art - 9/10 (Artstyle - 9/10; Animation - 9/10)
The film's strongest point would be the art. The backgrounds are detailed and gorgeous, and look very realistic. The characters are designed with a lot of realism, but they all still have defining characteristics that make them stand out and easy to tell apart. However, I think the artstyle, while good, isn't my favorite. It works well for the subject matter, but it's lacking a bit of... warmth, I suppose.
The animation is also really well done, with nicely done, subtle, realistic movement throughout. Characters emote nicely, with various expressions that help to make each scene just a bit more captivating. However, while everything was very solid and clearly done by masterful animators, there weren't any jaw-dropping moments with the animation, it was all very consistent, without any one scene or shot standing out, which I suppose may have been a conscious choice by the director.
Sound - 8/10 (Soundtrack - 9/10; Voice Acting - 8/10)
The soundtrack in the film was fantastic! The songs used in different scenes conveyed the tone of the scene perfectly, while also avoiding sounding like a score and instead sounding more like actual music, which made the soundtrack a lot more noticeable. However, it wasn't noticeable enough to distract me from the dialogue in a scene.
That dialogue was spoken by a cast of voice actors that definitely breathed some life into the characters, but perhaps not as much as one would hope. I watched the original Japanese dub, and while the important scenes all had really great performances, I felt like there were some moments in-between where the performances fell a little bit flat. Not flat enough to be jarring, but just enough to make those scenes somewhat more boring than the other ones. Some of the lines also sounded like they were recorded with a fan on in the background... and it's very noticeable in quiet scenes where the only thing being heard is a character's voice and they keep muting the dialogue track in-between each spoken line. That was somewhat distracting, but not too big of an issue.
Enjoyment - 7/10
Overall, Colorful is an interesting film with interesting characters and an interesting story. However, it has a few major flaws that keep it from being perfect. The inconsistent structure of the plotline, and the somewhat slow pacing of many of the scenes are both flaws that seem to bring the rest of the elements of the film down a notch. It's enjoyable, and worth checking out, but I probably wouldn't watch it again.
Overall - 8/10
