This isn’t the first animation to explore the relationship between colours and music through the condition of synaesthesia – the Pharrell Williams Lego animation Piece By Piece ventured into the same territory last year. But Naoko Yamada’s charming anime The Colours Within is certainly the most beguiling. The film views the world through the eyes of adorable space cadet Totsuko (Sayu Suzukawa), a student at a Catholic boarding school run by serene, sympathetic nuns. Totsuko feels colours: people have distinct “auras”; music is a shimmering pyrotechnic display. One of her fellow students, Kimi (Akari Takaishi), has such a beautiful and distracting aura that Totsuko zones out during a dodgeball game and gets flattened by a ball to the head.
From this inauspicious beginning, Totsuko and Kimi build a friendship, and together with quirky loner Rui (Taisei Kido) they start a rock band. And that’s pretty much it, in a story that teeters on the edge of tweeness. Yet with its wide-eyed lack of cynicism and the crystalline delicacy of the animation, this is a heart-swellingly lovely work.
In UK and Irish cinemas
