Colorful Stage! The Movie: A Miku Who Can't Sing

It's been a while since I discovered Hatsune Miku's music, and when I found out that there was a game franchise based on the same Sonic products as the character, I almost fell over backwards. And when I found out that they were going to make a movie based on the games... This movie was made by a not very well-known studio, P. A. Works, and it's about a group of teenagers who discover Miku as a program on their cell phones, and start making music as a way to show their passion for her. The movie is very cute, with strangely memorable songs, and excellent animation, by the way. It doesn't have a wonderful, deep or emotional story, but you can see that the team loves Hatsune Miku and tried hard to do the best they could for the fans. I highly recommend watching it, especially if you like 2D anime singers and musical comedies. The fact that it's barely out and has a 9.6 on IMDb (subject to change) is proof of that.

My friend and I went to the opening in the United States, and loved it. The story at first I didn't know how it would go, but it really came together well toward the end and was cohesive. The plot was sweet and had a good message, and the songs were awesome-especially Nightcord's song. The animation was absolutely beautiful, even with some CGI parts, and the voice acting was great. I thought the comedy landed well, and you didn't have to know too much going on to enjoy yourself. Even my friend, who doesn't know much about Colorful Stage, found it really great!!! Overall a wonderful experience, and I can't wait for it to come out to where I can watch it again at home.

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.

I went into this movie very unfamiliar with the world of Sekai and Vocaloid, so it took a while to process all the characters being thrown on the screen. But once I knew who was who and got settled into the movie... all I can say was wow. The animation in this is really colorful and vibrant, so it keeps us engaged and makes it pleasant on the eyes. The songs had me dancing in my theater seat with my food because they were very well-done and easy to dance to. But what I found best about the movie was the poignancy and the writing. The writing felt so motivational and touching that it wants you to learn something valuable: no matter what you are feeling, no matter how much weight is thrown down on your shoulders, no matter how much you hit rock bottom and do nothing but hate yourself... DO NOT GIVE UP AND DO NOT STOP POSITIVELY HOPING!!!! Your voice will be heard if you just speak up about what is bothering you, and it can make an impact on others who feel the same way as you!

Overall, this was one of the best recent animated movies I've watched, mastering the art of combining beautiful animation and an original story with a motivational screenplay and several dashes of poignancy, knowing what this unique Hatsune Miku has been through. 10/10.

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.