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Colorful
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:CreationDate: 2015-03-08 16:15:30
:Id: anime/review/colorful
:tags: - anime
- review
:rating: 3.5
:original: http://www.easternkicks.com/reviews/colorful
First person visual, our point of view / protagonist is in what looks
like a train station: souls of the dead collect their ticket and
shuffle toward their transport, for the afterlife, or reincarnation.
Our point of view is intercepted by a boy, clearly not one of the
souls; he says that the protagonist has been selected for another
chance at life, and they can't really refuse: take it, or never again
be reincarnated. He'll be the guide, not quite a guardian angel, not
exactly a judge. The protagonist takes it, grudgingly, and falls
toward the world, toward the body of a just-deceased boy who's
committed suicide, Makoto Kobayashi. The not-dead boy opens his eyes,
and his crying mother and father are overwhelmed by joy.
Our protagonist then has to settle down into the life of Makoto,
trying to turn it for the better (he killed himself, he clearly didn't
think his life was that good), and also figure out what they did in
the previous life, what their sin was.
Thus starts "colorful", directed by HARA Keiichi (原 恵一) from a
novel by MORI Eto (森 絵都). The premise is interesting, but the story
feels weak: the protagonist seems a bit of an idiot, at times
considering Makoto's family and schoolmates as strangers, at times
taking what they do very personally, holding Makoto's grudges without
having actually experienced the slights. Yes, you can argue, knowing
how the story ends, that there are reasons, but I still wanted to
throttle the protagonist for not *doing* something to connect with the
family, to make friends, instead of isolating themselves. Then again,
I have that problem with quite a lot of characters from many anime and
manga…
The rest of the characters get just as much depth as needed for them
to support the protagonist's discovery of Makoto's and their own
lives: the bullied girl, the girl who can't settle into a simple
persona, the boy who's friend with everyone, the distant father, the
doting mother, the introverted brother. There's flashes of interesting
personalities, but they're not developed enough for us to get attached
to them.
Not having read the novel, I don't know how much of these issues
come from it, and how much are a result of the adaptation. Hara said,
in the Q&A after the first showing at the ICA in London, that he had
to cut something out to fit the story in 130 minutes, but he also said
that the whole part about the trains (easily 15 minutes long) was his
own addition, so I can't discount the possibility that the parts that
didn't make it to the screen could have improved the film.
The animation is quite good, and although the character design is very
simple, it's functional to the story: Makoto has intentionally a very
generic face, for example (Hara confirmed this).
Overall I found the message to be quite bland ("have a life, forgive
others, make friends") and bluntly delivered. It reminded me of "It's
a wonderful life", but with all due respect to Hara (I really like his
"Summer days with Coo"), he's no Frank Capra.
