Review: Thoughts on Colorful

“It’s good to have a tomorrow.”
PuraPura, Colorful

                                                                          

Colorful

                                                                Genre: drama, slice of life, supernatural
                                                                                     Studio: Sunrise, Ascension

The Story
The plot of Colorful is was made me want to watch the movie. What I expected for this movie was completely different than what I received. This is a good and bad thing in my case. The first thing I’d tell anyone bout Colorful is that the story takes forever to actually get to a point of climax and development. Until the point of climax, Colorful is a pretty depressing movie where this “spirit” inside of our main character, Makoto, is angry, rude and doesn’t care about much. I’d say after the first hour is when the movie gets interesting.

Colorful is about a nameless main character who has died and committed a sin. He is given a second chance at life and is sent to live in the body of a 15 year old who committed suicide, Makoto, until he is able to figure out the sin he has committed and his own identity. He uses this journey to figure out conflicts with his family classmates and future with some help of his guide, PuraPura.

One thing Colorful is good at displaying is the values of the smaller things in life such as sharing a bun with a friend. For the first half of the movie, “Makoto” is a very cold kid. He’s mean to his mother constantly and will not eat her cooking and hardly listens to her. He’s rude to his classmates and doesn’t really aspire to do anything. After about an hour, Makoto starts developing a new attitude towards life once he makes his first friend ever, Saotome.   

Characters
For me, he characters of Colorful are quite bland. None are exactly memorable but many had potential to make the movie more interesting. I couldn’t really give you full descriptions on the characters so it’s going to be a little short.

Makoto: Being the main character, he is the most dynamic character of the movie. I wouldn’t say his character ever fully develops, because for the entire movie he is constantly going back and forth between nice, confused, and asshole.  His change came from realizing who he really was and going back to his old self.

PuraPura: PuraPura left me wanting more. He was probably the most interesting character in Colorful. I want to know his full story up to death and I never will.

Mother: His mother had potential as a great character, but instead she sits around crying on the couch all day and makes homemade dinners every night.

Father: His dad was a peacekeeper of sorts and on of the more ok characters.

Mitsuru: Mitsuru also had potential, but was a waste instead. He had two good scenes which was at least something.

Sano: I feel that if Sano wasn’t in the movie, it wouldn’t have made almost any difference in the plot.  She makes Makoto feel awkward a lot.

Hiroka: Wtf happened to Hiroka? Her and Makoto had a really good scene together and then we don’t see her again until the end. Once again, we had great potential with a character and it was wasted.

Saotome: Saotome is the first real fried of Makoto and plays a big role into his remembrance of who he is and his sin.

Animation & Setting
Dos anyone else think the animation is similar to that of Ghibli’s? Although I’m not really a fan of the animation itself, I do respect how natural it felt.  The movement of the people and many smaller details was realistic and nicely done. The characters are designed with realism that gave them distinct looks. Although the animation had some good strong points, it wasn’t amazing. Nothing stuck out, which is okay because if I was watching this for the animation I wouldn’t be writing this review! xp

The background was the better part of the animation. The skies were pretty and in general, the scenery blended well with it’s colors and designs. A lot of the setting looks fairly realistic such as the classrooms and other buildings. The scenery where Makoto and his father went fishing was refreshing from the city scenery. It was colorful and a bit unexpected, but much appreciated.

Sound
The music, for me, was good but definitely forgettable. I don’t remember much of the sounds from this movie, and to me it’s not  huge deal. I remember when I was paying attention toe sound that it portrayed the moments tone well. I had to force myself to listen, though. If I wouldn’t have, then I truly think I wouldn’t have anything to say about the sound due to be being easily forgettable.

The voce acting was actually pretty great. The voice actors displayed the emotion of their characters in a way that made the emotions seem believable. I felt like there was background noise when it was quiet and the characters were talking, which bothered me only when I was listening for it.

Overall
I was surprised at how much I ended up disliking Colorful. Before watching it I saw so many positive reviews and almost no bad ones. I wanted to drop this movie just before it started to get climatic because I was honestly just bored with it.

However, I did enjoy the last half very much. I would only recommend this movie to someone who enjoys a slow paced film that fits the definition of slice of life to a T.  I feel this movie fell way short to the potential it had, which heavily saddens me.