The Colours Within is a film about a band made by a band. Well, sort of. Directed by Naoko Yamada, who’s 39, with original music by Kensuke Ushio, who’s 41, the poignant coming-of-age anime is the Japanese duo’s third time working together after 2016’s A Silent Voice and 2018’s Liz and the Blue Bird. If the band is a trio, then the third member is Reiko Yoshida, a screenwriter who also scripted those three projects.
“It’s hard to say if we’re a band, since she’s the one that hired me,” says Ushio, via an interpreter in a King’s Cross Hotel, occasionally breaking into English.
“Ushio-san is a musician who doesn’t tend to work with other people,” says Yamada, who is sitting next to Ushio and also using an interpreter. “Sometimes he says he feels like he’s in a band with me, and that makes me happy.”
“The guy ends up leaving the band in the film,” says Ushio. “That’s worrying for me, if you think of it like that.”
Set in a Catholic boarding school for girls, The Colours Within primarily follows Totsuko, a forlorn teenager with her own form of synaesthesia: she not only sees colours in music, but in other people. Totsuko is especially drawn to the warm shades visibly emerging from another girl, Kimi, an amateur guitarist who abruptly leaves school without explanation. A chance encounter in a bookstore leads to Totsuko and Kimi forming a band with a third loner, Rui, whose instrument of choice is the theremin. Just as Totsuko’s synaesthesia is animated with literal flying colours, the theremin is a visual delight that generates sounds out of thin air.
As in Yamada’s A Silent Voice, the charm of the film is in the quieter moments – the awkward gaps when shy teenagers converse; the subtlety of the restrained 2D animation – but, this time, there are louder sequences, primarily the trio’s jam sessions that explode in colour amidst synthy pop. Ushio’s songs for the fictional band are not only catchy, they could conceivably be performed by three young amateurs. When the music became too technically proficient, Yamada would make Ushio simplify the instrumentation.
“I looked at British 80s New Wave music where they would play keyboards using one finger,” says Ushio. “I wanted them to have this feeling of: ‘We’re not good technically, but we’re going to go for it.’” Which 80s bands in particular? “New Order.” He notices that I’m wearing a hoodie celebrating The Cure. “The Cure! But sorry, I’m with New Order.”
“It was Ushio-san who thought of 80s New Wave,” says Yamada. “I was thinking of Thom Yorke.” Aren’t Radiohead very technical? “Yes, but in the film they make music from loops that don’t really go anywhere.” One loop-related highlight is when the band rehearse a cover of “Born Slippy” by Underworld, a trance anthem made famous by Trainspotting. “Totsuko and Kimi are doing the naughtiest thing they’ve ever done in their life,” Yamada explains. “If you’re doing something naughty as a teenager, ‘Born Slippy’ is the best song for it.”
If they’re rebellious, why is their music so melodic and not like, for instance, Merzbow? “They don’t want their own voice to be heard above all else,” says Yamada. “They’re starting from a place of wanting to make music the three of them can enjoy together. In one song, there’s a bit of guitar feedback that’s like a cry from the heart. But it’s minimal. They’re not entirely there yet, and I think that’s very sweet.”
When it comes to the senses, there’s a limit to how much you can explain with words, and animation can express that all visually – Naoko Yamada
Ever since K-On!, Yamada has been one of Japan’s most acclaimed anime directors, carving out an affinity for the interior lives of young outsiders. A Silent Voice followed a deaf girl and her bully, who, in turn, becomes bullied himself and views school kids with imaginary crosses over their face until they’re willing to treat him with empathy. In Liz and the Blue Bird, an anxious teenager finds creative release through playing the oboe in her school orchestra, but is utterly heartbroken when she drifts apart from her only friend.
While A Silent Voice and Liz and the Blue Bird were adapted from popular mangas, The Colours Within is an original screenplay, which may explain its radical lack of story for the sake of story. As the patient drama unfolds, it’s apparent that there’s no real antagonist, nor is there any love triangle. At school, the nuns encourage Totsuko’s artistic endeavours, with one telling her, “The guitar riff was wonderful. The muted strokes resonated with my heart.” Any tension is more intriguing and understated: Totsuko has questions about religion; Kimi hasn’t informed her relatives she’s stopped attended classes; Rui feels overwhelming familial pressure to be a scientist. “Each one of them has guilt about the lies they’re telling,” says Yamada. “That’s what they need to fight and overcome.”
While Yamada doesn’t have synaesthesia, she acknowledges her own relationship with colours and music. For The Colours Within, she considered the three primary colours of light – blue, green, red – and how, when mixed together, they form a shade close to white. “We applied that phenomenon to the film’s colour and sound,” she explains. “When it comes to the senses, there’s a limit to how much you can explain with words, and animation can express that all visually.”
In fact, some viewers have detected that the synaesthesia – Totsuko’s condition isn’t diagnosed, and so the word “synaesthesia” is never uttered – might be a metaphor for queerness. Totsuko’s secret yearning for the colours of Kimi’s aura is a power she doesn’t understand, nor can she control it. However, Yamada seems baffled and pleasantly surprised when I bring up the existence of queer readings. “There are different ways of interpreting the film,” she says. “Sometimes people come up with ways I haven’t thought of.”
During our hour-long conversation, Yamada explains that the film is set in a Catholic girls’ school to demonstrate how Japan in multi-religious, Ushio details his personal connection to Underworld as a touring musician, and both praise Into Great Silence, a three-hour, soundtrack-less, French documentary about monks that shaped the silences and soundscape of The Colours Within.
When my time is up, there’s only one way to end the interview. What colour do they believe themselves to be?
“We can’t say because we don’t see ourselves in the world,” says Yamada. “Should we say each other’s?”
Both take a long pause.
“Yamada-san comes across as this beautiful, pure, off-white colour,” says Ushio. “At the same time, she’s someone who works really hard, and gets her hands dirty, down in the mud. I’d say she’s a muddy off-white.”
“Muddy?” says Yamada, laughing.
“Very muddy,” says Ushio, who gets his phone out, types in something, and then brings out a picture from Apocalypse Now. “There’s mud on your face, but it’s also a little green.”
“Ushio-san is very clever,” says Yamada. “He’s quite strict. He comes across as cool, intellectual, and elegant. But I think that’s an armour. If you strip away the armour, he’s a soft, milky blue.”
The Colours Within is out in UK cinemas on January 31. More information can be found here
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