Colorful Stage! la película: Miku no puede cantar

I'm seeing a lot of reviews complaining about not knowing anything about the groups. There are 5 units which have 5 minute videos on YouTube that explain each units backstory and what they do. If you're not willing to put in the effort to watch a Colorful Stage movie about the video game, then please do not watch this movie and do NOT leave a review. This movie is strictly based off of the Colorful Stage game and I am tired of this movie getting bad reviews because people only want to see Miku. Try going to a Miku concert if you only want to see Miku.

Anyways, this movie covers heavy topics like being alone or wanting to give up on life. The main groups help Miku to reach those who are steadily giving up. Miku's voice can not reach them so each group helps her to convey her songs. This movie is warming and heartfelt, really something that both teens and parents could love and relate to. Each of the groups have characters that you'll fall in love with, like Mizuki and Minori, the energetic types, or Ichika and Haruka, focused on their work while still being calm and nice. This movie really has something for everyone, and you'll fall in love with the music.

I want to preface this with saying that I used to be a HUGE project sekai fan, being player rank 150, reading all the base stories and even beating master 34s and 35s. I was OBSESSED with the game for the course of a year or two, but eventually it fizzled out. When the movie was announced, I was really excited for what it was gonna be like. Turns out, I did not enjoy it as much as I thought I was going to (despite me having context behind all the characters).

I happened to love the art a lot in the movie, everything looked so stunning and that aspect was really cool. Also the music was, while I didn't really like the ending songs for each unit, except for l/n, really good! I especially loved the gunjo sanka orchestral rendition. There were also a lot of cool vocaloid references that I took notice to and thought they were really neat!

Now for the neutral parts: A lot of the dialogue felt like they were talking, but weren't really getting anywhere? It felt like banter a lot of the time. The comedy moments also felt in the same vain, where they were amusing and entertaining, but weren't really funny or something I would laugh at. The dialogue just felt meh to me.

Now for the negatives: The movies pace felt as slow as a snail in the first to third quarter. I kept thinking to myself "whats the conflict?", being bored out of my mind sometimes. There was 0 threat of anything, which made everything uninteresting. UNTIL the third act, which had a VERY BIG EVENT that was really dramatic, to the point where it was kinda funny and a little stupid (iykyk). And then immediately after that, the stakes get lighter, then they solve the problem and everything gos back to normal.

I think the biggest issue the movie has through is trying to focus on so many characters at once, bouncing back between so many at once. It felt like I truly had no time to bask in any of the ideas the story was presenting (only being exacerbated with the slow as hell pace and dialogue that didnt move anything forward). In the second act though, the problem got even BIGGER, as the conflict was widened up to all of japan and there was a montage of a bunch of characters struggling, and it felt like I could not truly submerge myself with any of the characters or ideas at hand.

OVERALL: it wasn't an awful or an even bad movie, It just feels like I walked out of the theatre empty handed. No ideas, plot-points, or new characters really stuck or made a mark on me do to it just being uninteresting, boring and hard to digest.

Ok so, let me start this off by saying:

I loved the animation and the music. I loved the references and this honestly felt like a love letter to fans of Miku and general enjoyers of concerts. The plot wasn't anything groundbreaking, but it was easy to follow, and although the ultimate threat was a little underwhelming, it was okay!

However (I dont know if I'm alone on this opinion, i was complaining to my family about it and i was the bad guy), the characters were poorly done, in my opinion. None of them really stuck out. To be clear, I do play the original game. I have been playing off and on for years now, faintly paying attention to characters and eventually coming to the conclusion that not all of them are just basic characters, so it disappointed me to see the characters handled like this. It felt more like they were blank slates than anything? Half the time, they were just repeating the same thing as each other. The other half the time, they're all doing the exact same thing. I don't know if I'm wording this correctly, but most of the characters felt blank. Ichika, Tsukasa, Emu, Kanade, and Mafuyu were the only ones who I felt stuck out from the crowd, and even they were very drowned out. I left the movie not feeling anything strong towards anyone involved and I believe it's because the characters are so underbaked.

I don't believe this to be a runtime problem, since most of these issues took place during the movie and easily could've been fixed by a switch of lines or a simple switch of position or reaction. Instead of having everyone react with shocked faces at something at the exact same time, maybe have someone react a little slower or be a little calmer than the rest. I dunno, just stuff that leans into their general characters more than whatever scraps we were given.

ANYWAYS! Final point of my yap session: Cool movie !! Don't go if you don't like concerts and if you want to see real character, but do go if you like good animation and music !!

I love the movie, you can literally just go in and watch it for Miku with no context of the game (I haven't played it) and just enjoy it. Random people who watch this like parents or random friends won't like it because they do not appreciate Migu, but you know that's pretty standard for normies. I don't know why people with no liking for Miku or anime are watching this movie. So many of the negatives are not understanding or just flat negative, more than likely Miku haters of this movie are jealous Teto wasn't in it. Definitely gonna watch a 3rd time and get it late on. I love Hatsune Miku and friends :D.

Hatsune Miku is an icon sadly this movie is not too friendly for people who are not familiar with the video game it comes from.

I say this because there are around 4 or 5 different groups each of them has around 5 artists in them, the movie jumps back and forth between them constantly and it doesn't explain very well who they're, what they do... (You can guess though) Why each of them has a variant of Miku and other Vocaloids.

Later on after investigating a bit i understood that these are recurring characters of a popular video game, so if you're not familiar with this then you'll be confused with these groups

Because of this i think the story wasn't very good, it felt like a bunch of things where happening just for the sake of it.

The animation itself is really good specially in the dancing & singing sequences.

Soundtrack is good but they left the catchy songs towards the end.

There's one thing to dislike in the Spanish subtitles: At least for the North America release the majority of subtitles are hard to read on colorful scenes because the text blends with it.

I thought just coming up to this movie just knowing "Hatsune Miku sings and it's popular" was enough to enjoy it but it was an overall confusing experience for me.