Random Anime Review: Keiichi Hara’s Colorful
Unless you’re a thoroughly obsessed anime movie devotee, you’ve probably never heard of director Keiichi Hara, though you may be familiar with his most famous solo movie, the thoroughly odd period piece Miss Hokusai (2016). His most recent film was 2019’s Birthday Wonderland, a fun, if lightweight, family-friendly fantasy romp. Prior to these, his 2010 movie Colorful was released on US Blu-ray back in 2013. Although it received an English dub, it never found its way to the UK, and now the US disc is long out-of-print. Even his 2007 film Summer Days With Coo got a recent UK blu-ray from Anime Limited. I won’t let such things as obscurity and rarity stop me, though!
Before you read any further, I’ll issue a trigger warning. Colorful deals sensitively, yet matter-of-factly, with teenage suicide, depression, prostitution and parental marital infidelity.
If any of these subjects upset you, Colorful is not your film. I sincerely believe that cinema, even anime, is an important tool for exploring such uncomfortable subject matter, especially when treated (like in this movie) in a measured, respectful manner. In a way, Colorful is the kind of gritty (if slightly fanciful) kitchen-sink drama one would expect more from low-budget live-action indie filmakers, I don’t think I’ve ever seen another anime quite like it.
Colorful’s central premise is that human beings are messy, prone to mistakes, and are a profound mix of both good and bad — hence their “true colours” are myriad. Director Hara demonstrates multiple sides of each of his small cast of characters, refusing to judge any of them as purely correct, or purely wrong. Such moral judgements are left to the viewers, who are perhaps ultimately chided for making them. The concept that such moral judgements are superficial and lacking is expertly illustrated in the character development of protagonist Makoto Kobayashi.
At the age of fourteen, on the cusp of applying for High School, depressed and despondent Makoto takes his own life by overdosing on his mother’s hidden sleeping pills. In the afterlife, a nameless, memory-less disembodied soul is offered a final chance at reincarnation and redemption by an angelic-seeming boy, who places them into Makoto’s now vacant body. Awakening in a hospital bed, “New Makoto” shocks his grieving parents and brother with his miraculous resurrection, and attempts to integrate back into normal life. This isn’t easy, as new Makoto has no memories of his predecessor’s existence.
A lesser film might play this situation up for cheap laughs, but Colorful plays this deadly serious. New Makoto has issues of his own, some kind of repressed guilt from his previous life, plus he finds himself lost and disoriented in his new life. Previous Makoto was an accomplished artist, but New Makoto can’t bring himself to lift a paintbrush, only to stare at his older, incomplete artwork. It’s used as an analogy of his emotional impedance, of how he’s lost who he once was and is unable to move on.
Unfortunately, New Makoto begins to buckle under the same weight of melancholia that drove his predecessor to eventual suicide. Within his small nuclear family unit, his father is seemingly weak-willed and taken advantage of by his employer, working excess overtime for minimal gain. His mother recently ended a secret affair with her flamenco instructor, and his brother is distant and seemingly selfish with his academic ambitions. At school he has few friends, and the girl he has a crush on sells her body to middle-aged men in order to buy expensive fashion items. Makoto is particularly crushed when she offers to sleep with him instead of her most recent client “for only 20,000 yen”. The despondent expression on his face, juxtaposed with her clueless, smiling superficiality is heartbreaking.
Colorful isn’t afraid to portray Makoto as an utter jerk, especially towards his mother. Although his anger is understandable, especially in an emotionally immature adolescent way, the way he treats her is despicable. The woman is obviously trying so hard to make up for her mistakes, cooks for him, buys things for him and does everything she can to keep her family together, yet he is callous and even cruel. It’s the frequent mealtime scenes that are the most powerful, especially towards the end of the movie, when everyone’s “true colours” have been exposed to Makoto, and he’s forced to reassess his assumptions. I won’t lie, as a father and a husband, some of these exchanges made me tear up, they felt so real. Even his quiet, surly brother shows hidden, self-sacrificial depths (and justifiable anger at Makoto’s attitude).
Makoto’s relationships with his two female classmates make an interesting contrast. The object of his crush, the outwardly beautiful Hiroka, is the one who sells her body to earn extra pocket money. Although she hangs around the art club offering criticism to the painters, she never creates anything herself, instead offering tokens of candy as a transaction in place of true friendship. She admits later that often all she wants to do is destroy things. Their friendship is surface level, Hiroka doesn’t truly understand Makoto, and he is disgusted and disappointed in her.
Conversely, it’s the awkward, bespectacled and shy Shoko who notices that something about Makoto has changed, and in her own klutzy way acts like more of a true friend to him. Not that he recognises this until much later, after being horribly cruel to her. Makoto commits the sin of judging by her outward appearance, but once more must painfully reappraise his opinion.
One of the most heartwarming aspects of Makoto’s rehabilitation is his embrace of his very first mutual friendship. Joining him at the very bottom of the class academic ranking, Saotome is an easygoing boy who accepts Makoto for who he is. It’s this acceptance, and the simple pleasure of walking side by side with another, that convinces Makoto that life is perhaps living after all.
Colorful’s final twist helps to recontextualise the story as a strongly pro-life fable, where everyone deserves an extra chance, where life is always worth living. Suicide is portrayed as a tragedy, a waste of life that wreaks terrible damage within families and communities. In illuminating the circumstances that led to Makoto’s decision to end his life, it invites empathy even as it gently admonishes him. Although some results of Makoto’s suicide attempt are portrayed as positive (it brings his previously fragmented family back together, for example), Colorful makes it very clear that Makoto was wrong to throw his life away. Mental health isn’t commonly discussed in modern public Japanese life, despite an epidemic of suicide in young men, and the growth of the “hikikomori” (shut-in) demographic. I think it was brave of Hara to take this film on. He doesn’t provide any new solutions, after all in real life no-one who dies by suicide gets resurrected by a grey suit-wearing spirit guide, but Hara makes up for it in empathy.
As a Japanese cultural artifact, Colorful’s cosmology of the arterlife is very different to someone like me with a Western Christian upbringing. For one, the concepts of reincarnation/rebirth and the cycle of karma are foreign to Western religious thought, though Colorful does interestingly push the concept of a personal, omniscient creator deity. Despite these profound differences in religious concepts, I did very much appreciate this as a story of a supernatural second chance at redemption. It’s quite long at over two hours, but I found it never overstayed its welcome. Colorful’s emotional climaxes seem well-earned and profoundly human, for all the good and bad that implies.
The closest anime analogue I can think of is A Silent Voice, for its complex, conflicted protagonist who makes terrible decisions then must face consequences and make amends. Colorful isn’t quite as impactful, but then few anime are, and few studios can match the incredible quality of Kyoto Animation’s production. That’s not to say Colorful doesn’t have its moments — there are some beautiful, almost photo-realistic backdrops, and the section where Makoto and Saotome follow a historic tramline evokes melancholy nostalgia for a place I’d never previously heard of.
Considering the realistic, thoughtful interactions between Makoto and his friends and family, this really is quite a special film. Colorful is, so far, my favourite of Hara’s movies. If you can somehow track it down to watch, I thoroughly recommend it. Probably keep a box of tissues at hand for the inevitable tears, though. Thanks for reading, and I hope to write about Summer Days With Coo soon, so keep an eye out for that!
Colorful
Directed by: Keiichi Hara
Screenplay by: Miho Maruo
Based on the novel by: Eto Mori
Produced by: Sunrise
Studio: Ascension
Japanese cinematic release: August 21, 2010
US Blu-ray release: May 14, 2013
Runtime: 127 minutes
