The Colors Within explores the magic of seeing the world in a different light

The Colors Within celebrates those who see the world differently, with the coming of age story focused on a young girl names Totsuko as she navigates school life while experiencing synaesthesia, a phenomenon which allows her to see people as colours.

Directed by Japanese anime auteur Naoko Yamada, the film is fused with the director's unique vision and charm — delivering a heartfelt story of friendship, found family, and most importantly colour. This comes about through Totsuko and the relationships she develops with fellow outcasts Kimi, who disappears from school one day, and Rui, a boy who is keen to start a band and asks them to join him.

While Synaesthesia is the jumping off point for Totsuko's experiences in the movie, the story itself is meant to be more than just the sensory phenomenon Yamada shares: "I didn't intend for the way that Totsuko feels colours to be some kind of special ability. It's just her way of seeing the world, I deliberately didn't refer to it in the form of synaesthesia because when you put a name on it, it becomes one thing or the other.

"I think there's more nuance in the way that people see the world, there are a whole number of ways of seeing and feeling the world, and Totsuko's way is just one of them. And the reason that I chose colour is because when we meet people, when we talk with people, sometimes we get a kind of a sixth sense about that person and in Totsuko's case that takes the form of colour.

"I hope that people watching, maybe they see the world in a different way but they will be able to empathise with Totsuko for the way that they get a feeling about people — in Totsuko's case it's colour."

The magic of seeing the world in a different light

The filmmaker has previously made stories featuring differently-abled people such as A Silent Voice, about a bully trying to make amends with the death girl he targeted in their youth. The Colors Within is just another example of Yamada trying to explore a different way of depicting the world.

"At the time [I was making this film] I just thought everyone's way of sensing the world is so different that I didn't want to label it," she explains.

"The film as a whole is about, in a way, not being able to put a name to feelings. That early stage of a feeling when you're not able yet to quite say what it is, it's the early stirrings of the heart. The shoots that are starting to appear before you can say that you like something or you love something.

"It's that early step, and I didn't want to make it too simple and sum up those individual experiences and phenomena by putting a word to them."

What was important was making sure the animation and the colours she used created an emotional response from viewers who are watching, in the same way they might when looking at a particularly beautiful and colourful painting.

Yamada says: "The colours needed to be pleasant for the audience to look at but the thing with the colours is for Kimi she feels blue, for Rui his colour is green and at the end for herself she senses the colour red and these are the three colours of light.

"I thought of the colours as the colours of the light because as different kinds of lights mix it becomes even lighter, whereas if you mix different colours of paint they become muddier, murkier. So when I was speaking with the colours as being light it was like the Impressionist painters trying to express lights on canvas. That was what I was attempting to do."

Relatable challenges

What was most important for the filmmaker was for her lead trio to not be faced with external conflicts, favouring instead a low stakes drama that explores the characters internal struggles with their feelings and finding a place in the world. It is through each other that they come to understand that meaning, that purpose.

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"I deliberately didn't have any obvious obstacles or baddies in this film because the individuals that I depicted have their own sense of guilt, and their own lives and have their own sense of internal negativity that they are trying to face and trying to fight," Yamada says.

"They're all struggling with their own sins, but although they may not be able to accept themselves they are able to accept each other. They are able to reach out to the others and that was the kind of relationship that I wanted to create."

Creating the music of The Colors Within

Colour may be a key part of Totsuko's experience but so is music, it is the thing that connects her to Kimi and Rui — she even learns to play piano just so they can all be in a band together. Kensuke Ushio created the catchy pop soundtrack that viewers will hear, and he shared that he and Yamada had an interesting collaboration process.

"When I first heard from Yamada-san that she wanted to make this kind of movie she had the words for the song about planets, and I read it and it just came to me in an instant, that main song in the film.

"We came out of a discussion of what kind of people they are, what kind of worries and concerns they have. Why are they writing these songs? And the songs, they didn't come about until I had a better idea, a clearer idea of the characters and their feelings, and I could write songs that I thought that they would write."

"Whenever I work with Yamada-san we always start with concept work when it comes to writing the soundtrack," he adds. "It's quite conceptual, and the concepts themselves are difficult to explain even in Japanese but, if I were to try and put it into words, I would say that in this case one important concept was that of place... For me, it's like putting a band together."

Yamada mirrors: "Our collaboration is very abstract, we bring these keywords to the table that aren't really related to the film and then together we try to delve into the core of that. It's like carving a sculpture, and it's a really delicate back and forth.

"If I try to explain it into words it kind of stops being true, it stops being real. But gradually, little by little, we start to understand what it is at the core and also misunderstand each other, and misunderstanding kind of gives us a little bit more room, a bit more space. That's how we kind of build it together."

The Colors Within is out in UK cinemas now.