Anime Club: Colorful
Hello everybody! Check out our newest addition to the anime club family, Colorful.
COLORFUL
DIRECTED BY: Keiichi Hara
STARRING: Kazato Tomizawa, Aoi Miyazaki, Akina Minami, Michael, Jingi Irie, Keiji Fujiwara, Akiyoshi Nakao, Kumiko Aso, Katsumi Takahashi
GENRE: Surreal, Drama
YEAR: 2010
COUNTRY: Japan
Upon reaching the train station to death, a dejected soul is informed that he is ‘lucky’ and will have another chance at life though he does not want it. He is placed in the body of a 14-year-old boy named Makoto Kobayashi, who has just committed suicide by an overdose of pills. Watched over by a neutral spirit named Purapura in the form of a little boy, the soul must figure out what his greatest sin and mistake in his former life was before his six-month time limit in Makoto’s body runs out. He also has a number of other lesser duties he must complete, such as understanding what led Makoto to commit suicide in the first place and learning how to enjoy his second chance at life.
Oh Colorful…you have been sitting in my queue for way to long. Colorful has a very interesting narrative, slowly (and do I mean slowly) dragging you in until you either completely hate or pity our main protagonist. Normally, I am pretty decent at catching on to twists in the narrative, but this one completely surprised me. I recommend the film for the story alone. This doesn’t overshadow other aspects of the film too, as the animation is retro-scoped over pictures and it turned out insanely well.
Despite how fulfilling Colorful is overall, be prepared to sit and let the time crawl by. Colorful is insanely slow for a film of its subject matter, and the two hours it actually took easily felt like four. Not to mention I absolutely hate our so called protagonist…but that is due to some fantastic storytelling. While I don’t want to ruin anything for fans who are going to watch it, but they try to redeem him in the last moments of the film and I don’t feel that it paid off.
PROS:
- Beautiful retro-scoping.
- Interesting narrative.
- Hateful character, but done well.
CONS:
- Slow build-up.
- Failed redemption.
SCORE: 8.5 / 10
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Great review!