‘The Colours Within’ movie review: Naoko Yamada’s technicolour spectacle is a tender treat

A still from ‘The Colours Within’
| Photo Credit: Crunchyroll

Naoko Yamada has always been a filmmaker with a painter’s eye and a poet’s heart. Her films have the uncanny ability to pluck at the emotional chords of adolescence, often with the quiet strength of a single note played on a piano. With The Colours Within, her latest collaboration with the endlessly inventive Science SARU, Yamada trades the sprawling, heavy emotions of A Silent Voice for a more delicate, introspective story. The resulting pastel-toned gem shimmers with a gauzy warmth, even as it occasionally wades into melancholy.

Meet Totsuko Higurashi, the kind of oddball protagonist Yamada loves to champion. A student at a Catholic boarding school, Totsuko doesn’t just see people — she sees them, thanks to a synesthetic gift that transforms personalities into swirling auras of colour. Totsuko’s earnest sincerity, quite hilariously unguarded, is often offset by the sheer overwhelming splendour of her technicolour world.

A still from ‘The Colours Within’
| Photo Credit:
Crunchyroll

When Totsuko sees the brilliant blue aura of Kimi, a mysterious classmate just unattainable enough to ignite a full-blown obsession, she finds herself mesmerised; smitten even. But when Kimi abruptly vanishes, Totsuko embarks on a meandering quest to find her. Along the way, the two stumble across Rui, a bashful music enthusiast whose idea of making new friends involves nervously noodling on a theremin. Together, this odd trio forms a makeshift band in an abandoned church, their friendship blossoming into something warm, messy, and unexpectedly symphonic.

The film’s Catholic school backdrop comes with all the trappings of strict tradition, but Yamada paints the nuns as refreshingly human. Sister Hiyoko, the school’s wise and disarmingly modern head, and the rest of the nuns act as guides —  their sternness softened by a genuine desire to see their students flourish. In a lesser film, Totsuko’s religious devotion might clash awkwardly with her burgeoning sense of self. Here, it feels like a natural extension of her character, a lens through which she seeks to understand a world too vast and vibrant to be neatly categorised.

Totsuko’s relationship with Kimi is painted in subtle, unspoken hues — neither labelled nor confined, but undeniably intimate. Kimi seems to fill Totsuko’s world with a brilliance that borders on the overwhelming. There’s a quiet reverence in how Totsuko watches her, as though Kimi is both muse and mystery, an impossible puzzle she’s content to marvel at without ever solving. Their moments together are charged with a kind of delicate electricity and Yamada masterfully walks the line between friendship and something deeper. It’s in these silences that the film’s queer undertones glow most vividly, shimmering like the colours Totsuko sees but can’t quite name.

Science SARU’s animation is, predictably, a marvel. The studio’s attention to detail — from the chipped paint of an abandoned church to the uneven stack of books in a dorm room — imbues the film with a sense of lived-in authenticity, and every frame feels like a lovingly crafted painting.

A still from ‘The Colours Within’
| Photo Credit:
Crunchyroll

Dandadan collaborator Kensuke Ushio’s score also deserves special mention. The theremin, that wonderfully bizarre relic of sci-fi yesteryear, takes centre stage here, infusing the music with an unearthly charm that feels tailor-made for Totsuko’s prismatic worldview. By the time the climactic concert rolls around — an exuberant, toe-tapping anthem of teenage chaos and catharsis — you realise Ushio’s compositions have served up a manifesto for individuality and a love letter to the glorious, cacophonous mess of growing up.

While The Colours Within may not reach the emotional heights of A Silent Voice, it doesn’t need to. Yamada’s visual poetry feels more than content with its small triumphs, quiet revelations, and the simple joy of finding one’s own colour. 

Perhaps its greatest triumph is this self-same sincerity. There are no melodramatic villains and no earth-shattering conflict. Instead, the challenges faced by the trio are refreshingly grounded: sneaking past nuns, getting over social awkwardness, and finding the courage to perform at a Christmas fair — just three young people figuring out who they are and who they want to be. 

There’s more to The Colours Within than meets the eye and Yamada’s gentle nudge seems to remind us that it was never just about finding your colour, rather, realising you’ve been glowing all along, even when the light felt dim.

The Colours Within is currently running in theatres