Colorful: The Motion Picture

Serving up a handsomely animated variant on Heaven Can Wait's fantasy premise, filmmaker Keiichi Hara's Colorful introduces a nameless soul in the melancholy-looking afterlife who committed an unknown (although severe) sin and is compelled to go back to Earth and live again, in order to possibly achieve redemption. Thus the amnesiac protagonist revives in the body of 14-year-old Makoto Kobayashi, an artistic schoolboy who winds up in the hospital after killing himself. Although a strangely sinister little spirit-guide lurks around to advise “Makoto,” the revived boy (assumed by his dysfunctional family to have made a miracle recovery) is mostly on his own when it comes to piecing together for himself the household malaise of adultery and neglect—coupled with classroom drama—that led up to the suicide, and then somehow atone. The leisurely narrative (with a curious plot detour into…vintage trolley-car fancying?) may not appeal to audiences favoring anime action, although the forthright (but non-explicit) depictions of teen prostitution, bullying, and loneliness make this a more serious anime. Presented on DVD and Blu-ray on dual-language disc, rated TV-14, this winner of a Japanese Academy award for Excellence in Animation is recommended. (C. Cassady)