Irozuku Sekai no Ashita kara

Despite the kaleidoscopic magic ingrained in everyday life, Hitomi Tsukishiro's monochrome world is deprived of emotion and feeling. On a night as black and white as any other, amidst the fireworks spreading across the sky, Hitomi's grandmother Kohaku conjures a spell, for which she has been harnessing the moon's light for 60 years, to send Hitomi back in time to the year 2018 when Kohaku was in high school.

Hitomi's mission seems unclear, but her grandmother assures her that she will know when she gets there. Following a trip through time aboard a train driven by a strange yellow creature, Hitomi finds herself in stoic artist Yuito Aoi's room, and his drawings flood her world with color. What is Hitomi's purpose there, and why do Yuito's drawings return such breathtaking color to her drab world?

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Tsukishiro, Hitomi Main

Ishihara, Kaori Japanese

Aoi, Yuito Main

Chiba, Shouya Japanese

Tsukishiro, Kohaku Main

Hondo, Kaede Japanese

Kazano, Asagi Supporting

Ichinose, Kana Japanese

Fukazawa, Chigusa Supporting

Murase, Ayumu Japanese

Yamabuki, Shou Supporting

Maeda, Seiji Japanese

Kawai, Kurumi Supporting

Touyama, Nao Japanese

Tsukishiro, Gen Supporting

Morikawa, Toshiyuki Japanese

Tsukishiro, Ruri Supporting

Ohara, Sayaka Japanese

Tsukishiro, Yuzuha Supporting

Han, Keiko Japanese

Maeda, Toshihiro Producer

Nagatani, Takayuki Producer

Aoi, Hiroyuki Producer

Ogura, Mitsutoshi Producer

Reviews

Mar 10, 2023

Sei_Shinohara484

Recommended

Color not only makes the world more beautiful but also expresses one’s innermost emotions. As Henri Matisse stated- “Color helps to express light—not the physical phenomenon, but the only light that really exists”, from which he clearly refers color as the mechanism through which abstract internal processes and emotions are realized.

Such can also be said for a series named Iroduku: The World in Colors (いろずく せかい の あした から Or Irozuku Sekai no Ashita kara) (2018). This series showed the story of Tsukishiro Hitomi, a young mage who lost her sense of colors despite being ingrained with kaleidoscopic magic. On a night as monochrome as ... usual, amidst the fireworks spreading across the sky, her grandmother Tsukishiro Kohaku sent her sixty years back in time in order to find her true purpose.

This series beautifully showcased the gradual change in Tsukishiro Hitomi as she tried to overcome her condition with the support of her fellow classmates. I liked how she started seeing colors through the artworks made by Yuito Aoi despite seeing everything around her monochromatically, which not only helped her to find what her true purpose is but also rekindled Aoi’s passion for art. I also liked how this series depicted it’s key plot elements- Photography, Art & Magic with respect to its story.

There was a sequence of dialogues in this series that I really liked-

“You know, when it comes to pictures, you can never take the same one again. Different people lead different lives, and after dark, the same light that was on yesterday might not be today. And before you know it, the scenery changes, never to be the same again”-Yamabuki Shou. In my opinion, it beautifully expressed the significance of portraying the events of daily life through photograph, which was also one of key plot elements of this series.

This series had quite beautiful opening and ending songs. Especially I liked Mimei no Kimi to Hakumei no Mahou (みめい の 君 と はくめい の まほう) by Nagi Yanagi (なぎ やなぎ) (commonly known as Yanaginagi) (Irozuku Sekai no Ashita kara Ending Song) the most.

I really liked the overall animation of this series as well,as it was made by the studio named Progressive Animation Works, also known as P.A.Works which is famous for making animes made with picturesque animation style such as, Nagi no Asukara, Shiro Suna no Aquatope, Hanasaku Iroha, Sayonara no Asa ni Yakusoku no Hana wo Kazarou etc. Especially I liked how the studio illustrated the transition from monochrome state to color state in the opening sequence, as well as the ending sequence of every episodes so beautifully.

Need to mention that, the place shown in this series is based on the city of Nagasaki, the capital of Nagasaki Prefecture.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Feb 27, 2024

hexashadow13

Mixed Feelings

tl;dr: A film with a few interesting aspects and great art in some respects but overall really weak writing.

Iroduku is an anime that has a very busy beginning. It’s starts out in the future so it has a bit of sci-fi going on. However, the protagonist Hitomi and her grandma are mages who can use magic, which her grandma suddenly uses to send Hitomi 60 years into the past. Hitomi suddenly appears in the middle of someone’s room and has to sneak out, leading to a strange misunderstanding in the process. And to top it all off, Hitomi is fully colorblind, meaning she sees in ... monochrome, as a result of some sort of emotional trauma. I really liked how it just threw so much at you all at once and thus I found the start of the anime to have quite a lot of promise.

However, as it progresses it shifts away from the extraordinary into something a lot more grounded. And unfortunately I can’t say I really enjoyed that much. It’s pretty much just an incredibly generic teen drama. It has all the standard tropes: a shy and gloomy protagonist slowly opening up and becoming more cheerful, a love polygon that causes conflict between two friends, a dense male character who is the only one that doesn’t realize a girl has a crush on him, a teenager contemplating their future planning on taking the safer path but being inspired to instead pursue their dreams, etc. I don’t think being generic or full of tropes is a bad thing. And I’m fine with a story being completely generic if the execution is good. However, I don’t think this was handled all that well.

I feel the biggest problem is that it’s trying to do too much while also trying to spend enough time doing nothing at all. It has a lot going on in terms of characters. The character’s may be tropey, but in the end they all do have stories and motivations and relationships. And the writing tries to flesh out all of this for everyone. This may have been possible in thirteen episodes if it was focused enough, but this is also an anime that’s trying to build a strong sense of tone and atmosphere. It spends a lot of time just showing Hitomi and the group of friends she makes just hanging out and doing random club activities. These portions do slowly demonstrate the growth and change in characters, but subtly and often not as the focus. As a visual novel reader, I’m certainly not opposed to that either as it can be a great way to build investment in characters, but the key thing is that it takes time to do so which this anime simply doesn’t have enough of. I also felt that the writing wasn’t all that great at comedy or amusing fluff, which made these portions less enjoyable than they should have been, leading to them feeling especially wasteful.

In the end the writing manages to check all the boxes it needs to, but it doesn’t feel like it does anything well. It’s very clear what each character’s arc is, it’s foundation, and why it progressed the way it did. But at an emotional level nothing really had all that much impact. There are scenes that I can easily recognize are very well written in a vacuum, but in context the build up to them just doesn’t feel like it’s built up enough investment for them to hit as hard as they should. This is especially true for the ending. Things take a much more serious turn and magic takes a much more important role in the plot. The writing also becomes more focused on Hitomi and her character arc so it manages to do pretty well by her. However, the lead up to all this wasn’t strong enough to really support it, and thus it falls pretty flat. Ultimately, I wasn’t particularly satisfied or unsatisfied with it, it just felt kind of dull.

The art is a mixed bag. The art is fantastic when it comes to backgrounds, both the standard backgrounds and the more unique ones involving worlds inside paintings. However, the art and animation when it came to characters felt pretty weak, especially for such a character focused work. And that’s coming from someone who likes Fly’s art style. Furthermore, even when the art was great I felt that it spent far too much time focusing on just the art which contributed to the feeling of things moving too slowly and not progressing enough. The OP and ED were both pretty solid in terms of songs and visuals. The soundtrack was also pretty good and worked well with the tone and atmosphere.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Mar 21, 2020

DenseMC

Not Recommended

Spoilers ahead. I wanted to watch something wholesome since I recently got back into anime. I had this as a recommendation but was left with a complete disappointment.

Let's start with the story. The story is non-existent. It's essentially about some teenagers in a club doing club things. Oh right, there is a mention of time-travel at the start but nothing really happens with the time-travelling aspect.

I mean, you can't really introduce your show by sending the main character back in time and then do nothing of it. What was the point exactly?

I won't call the story as story but rather as a concept ... or an idea, because that's what it is essentially. The idea is that a girl who is traumatized by her past gets sent back in time to find herself. For some unknown reason, the best way to find yourself as a person is to travel back in time and become friends with complete strangers and your grandmother. According to this anime at least.

I was honestly expecting a lot more development on the time-travel aspect. There are issues with time-travelling because it is a very difficult concept to grasp alone but seemingly this anime doesn't care about all the dangers that may arise and true complexity of time-travelling. You might think I missed the point. The point was not to develop the time-travelling aspect but to show the power of true friendship. Well to that I say, there are a lot of better ways to write your story without having the need of including something like time-travelling. Especially, if the story and the world building have a soft magic system.

It honestly baffled me to my core when the show started to randomly start drama between the characters. It was so unnatural and forced. By the time they introduce this forced drama, you already become detached from the show because nothing happens. How are you supposed to care for a set of characters that are bland, boring and uninteresting?

Magic is apparently also something the show wants to focus on. In this show, magic can be literally anything and everything. The magic is so vaguely explained and the characters who are magicians can also do anything. Anything in this case spans from creating a little bright star to creating a magic power to transferring humans into pictures to time-travelling.

I understand that magic and time-travelling are both tools that the author used in order to write his story and develop certain parts of it. But it would be nice to know limitations, caveats and dangers of magic. Instead, whenever some magical problem happens, it just happens and then gets resolved almost immediately. I am talking about when the protagonist messed up time and started disappearing. I honestly thought it was going to be more troublesome and have a lot more serious outcome on the protagonist but no. She started disappearing randomly and then re-appearing like nothing happened. And the biggest spit in your face as a viewer is probably towards the end where she stops disappearing and that thing is forgot about completely until the last episode.

The show is very slow-paced and can drive anyone to insanity. Nothing ever happens in the show except for the last three or so episodes.

The worst offender of this show was the characters. I really don't understand how you can write such characters and then publish a 13 episode long anime. The characters, if you can even call them that are so boring and unrelatable.

Given the high school setting, I was honestly expecting a lot more drama. But alas, everyone in high school is so kind and caring. There is no bullying, no one ever feels bad and everyone wants to help each other out right? What bothered me was the fact that all of these 'characters' never offered anything interesting to the viewer. Instead of being defined by who they are, they were defined by who someone else was. They were defined by the thought that you are who you are because you help other people. The underlying message is that by helping others you become a better human being yourself. In of itself, it's a powerful message. I appreciate the attempt of delivering a very positive and emphatic message. Unfortunately, the delivery of said message is pathetic. It falls short almost immediately. There are a lot of ways you can deliver a message by telling a good and thought out story. In this case, the show just re-iterated the same message in every single episode.

The characters have no real character development, there are no introduced conflicts aside from the forced drama which gets resolved in the same episode. Instead of having character development, the characters of this show have traits. The protagonist is semi-colorblind and wants to see the colors again. Others are not interesting characters at all. One of the characters is of very artistic nature and loves to draw. The others like photography, I guess? They really don't have any reason as to why they like photography or art, or at least that is never explained. They like art and photography because the plot requires them in order to move on.

In a nutshell, all the characters are bland shells. They have no self-interests, no personal values and nothing that would define them who they really are.

Romance? No. This part, where the show not only tried to shove drama down your throat as a viewer but also tried to make the protagonist the love interest of the club president. This doesn't really make any sense, whatsoever. I don't why they felt the need to even put it there. It's also never explained why or how the club president fell in love with the protagonist. All that is explained is that he saw her having a sad frown and wanted to make her happy. He's also very dense and doesn't understand that another character really loves him. It then creates this love triangle which is resolved with a scene of them talking it out in like less than a minute. The show shouldn't even have attempted any sort of romance at all, because the author seems to be foreign to that concept.

The visuals and the graphic design on the other hand is where the show truly shines. I don't have much to add to it but it was definitely more than your generic slice of life anime visuals. Some scenes were truly beautifully crafted and made you feel somewhat entertained and interested. The music was alright too I guess.

One potential development I would have love to seen in this anime was the find yourself part. It is even hinted by another character but is never developed further than a mention. It is difficult to find yourself, to know what defines you and what makes you really you. The dialogue they had was interesting, the girl with the glasses started talking about how she has a hard time finding what she really likes. She figured that photography is her passion and hobby but is jealous of her older sister. Her older sister is a lot more successful than her and she aspires to be like her but is almost always overshadowed by her. This would be a very interesting sort of side-story to the character where her inner conflict gets resolved by her finding what she really likes the most.

In conclusion, this show has absolutely no rewatch value whatsoever. This show isn't very entertaining, doesn't give you any sort of emotions when watching and definitely lacks a proper story. It's honestly sad to see that such graphics go to waste on an anime like this. I gave this anime a 4/10, because of the really good and intriguing start. I also gave it a 4/10 because of the underlying and powerful message. I would have loved to see this anime with a better story and definitely better written characters, but you can't have it all I guess.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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