The intangible discomforts of self-discovery have always found captivating, expressive purpose in the films of Naoko Yamada, one of the most idiosyncratic and influential directors currently working in anime. A music-driven story about three teenagers who bristle at the burden of expectations from their parents, even as they’re unsure what they want from them instead, Yamada’s new and wonderful “The Colors Within” is her first feature with Science Saru (a studio primarily known for anime directed by its co-founder Masaaki Yuasa), and it represents a major transition for her both on and off screen.
To that point, “The Colors Within” is appropriately amorphous — fluid like the auras of color which its protagonist Totsuko sees around everyone she meets, the result of a synesthesia-like condition that literally visualizes people’s vibe. The film’s loose and laid-back structure is accentuated by the contrast provided by the ostensible strictness of its setting: A Christian school for girls. Far from overbearing however, the sisters at Totsuko’s school do everything they can to encourage their student, and even bend the rules when she needs some extra wiggle room to flourish. But it isn’t until she forms a band with two other teens that our flighty and impulsive heroine finds the sense of direction she needs to move forward.
It’s a classic coming-of-age story that Yamada tees up like a rom-com, as Totsuko’s introduction to her first bandmate — a girl named Kimi — is treated like a meet-cute: Totsuku becomes so entranced by Kimi’s “color” that she doesn’t clock the dodgeball speeding towards her head. When Kimi disappears from school, Totsuku’s search leads her to a local bookstore where she bumps into a boy named Rui and spontaneously begins lying to him about her musical prowess. The goofy comedy of it all can’t help but charm Rui into joining Totsuko’s budding supergroup.
The members of this trip connect through an unspoken yearning, and the vibrant dynamic between them soon leads Kimi to wonder what her own color might be. The queer undertone of Totsuko’s curiosity — palpable if never explicit — is one of several ways in which “The Colors Within” feels like a spiritual continuation of Yamada’s “Liz and the Blue Bird” which also followed a budding musician who pined for one of her bandmates.
But music has often served as a conduit for clarity in Yamada’s films. In the series “K-On!,” it guides the bond of its two main characters. In “Liz,” it acts as a kind of emotional messenger between two besties in a one-sided friendship. In “The Colors Within” it effectively does both of those things, as music becomes a medium through which its three co-leads are able to share their various joys and frustrations without verbalizing them. It also becomes a major avenue for comedy, as Yamada mines solid laughs from the gulf in tone between the band members’ respective contributions; Kimi writes a moody song about the creeping specter of anxiety, while Totsuko’s fluffy lyrics are centered on stuff like eating ice cream (for his part, Rui plays “Giselle” on the theremin).
As with “Liz,” “The Colors Within” draws from a hypnotic mix of impressionistic color and naturalistic animation in a story about characters who are unable to categorize their feelings — those feelings expressed as an intangible something which can only be expressed through songwriting. Yamada’s color direction is deeply expressive from start to finish. One highlight can be found in the opening moments of silent reverence, which observe a spectral glow of light as it spreads over the floor of a church. Another occurs a few scenes later, when Kimi leaves school and all of the color drains out of Totsuko’s world in a moving spectacle of gradual desaturation.
Still evocative and technically dazzling, Yamada’s visual style has evolved some since her move to Science Saru. Though the flowing, shifting illustrations of Totsuko’s worldview sometimes favor expressivity, they’re still rooted in verisimilitude when compared to the rubber-hose cartoonishness found in her colleague Yuasa’s work. With the help of character designer and animation director Takashi Kojima, the characters here are drawn with somewhat gentler silhouettes than those in Yamada’s previous work; their natural colors are just subdued enough to make the vividness of Totsuko’s point of view stand out.
Even with that sense of realistic volume and weight, the animation is still abound with more exaggerated poses, all the better to accentuate the cast’s awkward antics. During the downtime between those moments of goofiness, it’s a pleasure to study the more delicate details, such as how the characters’ eyebrows are a collection of little lines rather than a single pen stroke.
This close attention to detail naturally bleeds into the film’s performances. Yamada approaches the practice of music creation with an almost religious devotion, lavishing attention upon everything from instrument maintenance and sound mixing as she illustrates the shakiness of her immature musicians. That sensitivity is of a piece with how Yamada approaches Totsuko’s faith; in lesser hands the film might present a contest between a young girl’s desire for growth and her school’s restrictive doctrine, but Yamada posits both music and religion as equivocal lanes for seeking understanding. If there’s any doubt about that link, the band practice in an unused church building on the island where Rui lives, while Totsuko’s ever-understanding teacher insists that a hymn is only as powerful as the feeling that it provokes.
Totsuko tries to reconcile those worlds herself, her struggle made all the more poignant by how Yamada maps it against the tension between guilt and forgiveness — a tension familiar to any teen who’s ever felt burdened by the loving obligation to follow along the life plans their parents have laid out for them. Funny, joyful, and brimming with confidence, “The Colors Within” chronicles its characters’ tentative first steps into a world outside of the ones built for them by their families and teachers, and it does so with a vibrancy that allows us all to feel as if we’re seeing that world through Totsuko’s eyes.
Grade: A-
“The Colors Within” screened at the 2024 Tokyo International Film Festival. GKIDS will release the film in theaters in the U.S. in January 2025.
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