The animated Japanese boarding school drama “The Colors Within” begins with disorienting flashes of light and sound. The movie that follows both is and it isn’t the coming of age story that it first appears to be. Meet Totsuko Higurashi (Sayu Suzukawa), an effusive and naive loner who may or may not suffer from synthesia. She appears to be a textbook case—she sees and is overwhelmed by people’s auras, represented throughout as undulating strands of bright, vibrant colors—even if nobody really talks about her condition as such.
Totsuko chases after Kimi Sakunaga (Akari Takashi), a popular, but withdrawn classmate who mysteriously drops out of their idyllic, bustling Catholic high school. Totsuko’s puppy-love infatuation with Kimi might lead you to imagine that this sweet and finely observed coming of age story is also a teenage romance. Yes and no.
Totsuko and Kimi take an immediate liking to each other. They form a band with a new friend, Rui Kagehira (Taisei Kido), whom they meet in a secluded island chapel. Rui takes care of the rectory and in exchange, he’s allowed to practice his, uh, theremin.
So Totsuko and Kimi join him, with Kimi on guitar and Kimi playing the synthesizer. Their meeting, just like Totsuko’s condition, is fairly innocent and frank. They’re drawn to each other and for a while, Totsuko seems to find the peace that she seeks whenever she prays (aloud) a variation of the Serenity prayer. It’s only half of the famous mantra, the part about accepting the things that you cannot change. Sister Hiyoshiko (Yui Aragaki) reminds Totsuko of the other half, to ask for “the courage to change the things we can and the wisdom to know the difference.” That conceit is lightly held enough throughout, but is baked into the movie’s wistful plot, as well as its enchanting animation style and vivid character design.
Joy and companionship are both fleeting in “The Colors Within” and it shows in many brief, but consistently impressive flashes of memory palace-type details. You’re looking at a moment in time that seems trapped in amber for the movie’s central protagonists, and it shows by the way that time passes and is experienced not only by Totsuko, but her friends, too, and even kind, nurturing Sister Hiyoshiko.
You can, in that sense, see “The Colors Within” as an earnest and mostly convincing expression of religious faith since so much of the movie is not only set in various Christian churches, but also begins by showing us the world through the eyes of an eager, immature young woman who at one point bluntly says: “I’m praying for peace of mind.”
After a while, it becomes clear that the movie’s point-of-view isn’t exclusively tethered to Tetsuko’s experiences. The time that she and her friends share together has its season and it passes with some climactic twists that the three main protagonists couldn’t possibly have experienced or observed first-hand in such fine detail. The filmmakers behind “The Colors Within” still take their time in approximating what this story feels like, both within and outside of the characters who experience it.
The only thing holding “The Colors Within” back from being an unqualified great movie is its overly familiar plot. The kids bond, share and improve each other’s music, confide in each other, and ultimately get ready to perform together at school. Still, the filmmakers often find the lyrical and dramatic potential in every long-ish take, each one of which gives viewers a better sense of the characters’ world and how it feels to be passing through it.
Go back to the beginning, when the world opens up for the first time. Here, we see that Totsuko and her friends’ move with a lyrical sort of integrity even when they play dodgeball together. Their steps are punctuated with an eccentric rhythm that likely doesn’t make total sense to the people moving. Then Totsuko gets distracted by Miki and gets hit in the face. “Beautiful,” she murmurs to herself. The ball hops and baubles before coming to a short stop across the gym.
Our senses are often drawn to the unity and idiosyncrasies of any given space, whether it’s the bookshelf in a used bookstore or the way that a room full of bookcases looks across the room, with two freestanding bookcases and three wall-length bookcases full of books that are organized in bunches, leaning, standing, or laying flat.
Characters are often positioned in longer-than-average takes to show how, even when they’re the center of attention, they’re never as big as they feel. Their school also has its own dimensions and gravitational pull. The tall windows let in yellowish, milky/faded white over-exposure and the intimidating staircases seem to go on forever, despite always being shown in bits and pieces. It’s time in a bottle and a pleasure to soak up.