Feb 4, 2025
Wouldn't contest that this is Yamada's best-looking work yet. Movement here is so beautiful and well-realized that it looks nearly effortless. Her trademark leg-shots never looked so insightful.
Unfortunately, I guess, it's the Yamada work I ended up having the most trouble connecting with. There's a drama tag here, but - and though in some ways you can feel a sense of internal drama just by virtue of all the visual language this shares with A Silent Voice - it's not... really a drama. This is pure slice of life at its most artfully and serenely boring. The conflicts aren't really conflicts more than they're discomforts.
...
There are painful emotions sometimes, but they're introspective and self-inflicted, out of step with the reality of the situations these characters are actually in.
And that's not a problem, that's just a core tenet of slice of life as a genre. The problem is more that I wanted more than what this movie was able to offer in its runtime. It's most similar to the K-ON! movie in its "things just sort of happening, but there's cute girls there and they're having some type of feelings about it"-ness. And I love the K-ON! movie. But that had an entire two season series behind it to sell me on these characters and the inherent value of their aimless vibing.
The Colors Within only has itself. What it does have is a cast of characters with great - GREAT - designs (how often do you get a chubby moe girl?), sensitive and sweet personalities, and who believably care for each other despite their apparent distance. But in the grander scheme of their lives, this really is just a slice. I wanted to see so much more of them. I wanted to see them hangout more. To the extent I wondered if maybe some of these lingering, languid scenes around the school could have been excised...
I suppose it didn't help I had to watch the dub, since it was the only showing available at my theater. With very limited exceptions, dubs affect my average watching experience like having a cold affects eating a nice meal. The sense of something missing is difficult and frustrating. Though, the dub for this movie is really impressive. Particularly among the main cast, there are some wonderful and extremely endearing line reads. But there were also plenty of distracting ones that just made me twitch, knowing full well they probably sounded more natural, more suggestive of characterization in the original JP. Curse of being a fucking weeb.
The concert is wonderful, though. Some actually great music. And I've never seen insert songs actually get dubbed and end up sounding amazing - like nothing had even been changed. I need to find the insert album for this shit pronto.
All told, inoffensively good, even if I felt a little unsatiated. I'm just glad I got to show up for a Yamada joint.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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