Karafuru

Considering their target audience, youth issues tend to be a major theme in manga and anime. The animated format moreover tends to give creators rather more freedom to experiment with fantasy elements that can explore deeper underlying issues. Directed by veteran animator, Keiichi Hara, COLORFUL for example manages to touch on an important subject with a message that is perhaps rather more difficult to reach a younger audience through conventional live-action drama. That subject is teenage suicide.

Passing through the transit between life and rebirth, a dead soul in danger of obliteration is given another chance to reform and regain the right to rebirth. Brought back into the realm of the living, the soul is reborn into the person of Makoto Kobayashi, an artistically-inclined 14 year-old boy who has just attempted suicide. With the assistance of Purapura, a guide in the afterlife, the 'new' Makoto considers why someone from a seemingly happy family attempted to kill himself and tries to pull the young boy's life back together. COLORFUL is literally a 'finding yourself' film that considers the challenges facing young people who are finding it difficult to cope socially, to fit into the world and deal with the problems of friends, family and relationships.

The fantasy element of the film isn't the most convincing, but it does have a powerful pay-off at the end and it undeniably finds a unique way to tap into the mind of a young alienated individual and how he might respond to the world, particularly one who has been driven to attempt suicide. Keiichi Hara uses an animation style that is reminiscent of GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES in how it touches obliquely but incisively on the challenges facing youth. One seemingly irrelevant sequence based around the disused 'Tamada' trolley car, for example, is just beautiful and transformative. Using such techniques COLORFUL manages to cover a wide range of difficult issues and personality types in a realistic fashion and offer some measure of sympathy and understanding for its characters. It manages to do so moreover without ever becoming sentimental or talking down to its audience.