Sometimes, a single look and a chance encounter are all that it takes to form an intense fascination. For a girl with black hair (who I’ll call Kuro since she doesn’t actually have a name), she sees a girl with pink hair (who I’ll call Pinku, because again they have no name in-text and their pink hair is one of their defining physical features) out by the train station. For a fleeting moment before the train goes by, they make eye contact. That expression that Kuro saw matches that of the boy who just recently joined their class. A thought occurs to her as she lies on her bed and turns over – “Is this the same person?”
As time passes, Kuro cannot directly get an answer to her question. But as to why? Well, it’s certainly not for the lack of opportunity. After all, if this boy and Pinku are the same person and they happen to be in Kuro’s class, then wouldn’t walking up to them and just bluntly asking be the most-sensible thing to do? The problem though is that asking about such a private matter is, needless to say, horribly unwarranted. For someone who has such an intensely personal way of being, particularly because of something relating to sex or gender, that’s not the kind of thing that Kuro, both by politeness and her own shyness, is able to just ask about, no matter how innocent the intent. But Kuro actually asking that ultimate question is, ultimately, not the point – rather, the COLORs MV is a rumination on an answer always being just slightly out of reach, either in terms of its literal or metaphorical meaning.
And it’s because she never gets a proper answer that Kuro is dogged by the thought in numerous ways. We as audience members know the truth through numerous audiovisual clues, yet Kuro, the one who is not in the know, constantly finds her curiosity and intuition thwarted by circumstance or her own inability to muster her courage. Director Araki Tetsurou (Bubble, the Studio WIT seasons of Attack on Titan, and Death Note, among others) built every almost-encounter to touch on the possibility of “what if,” before beautifully backing down and letting the unfortunateness of the moment set in. Kuro passes by a café where Pinku is drinking something (which opposites a portion of the second verse), but decides to catch up with the people she’s walking with instead. She spots Pinku at a festival, but before she decides to go find and talk to them, Pinku has had plenty of time to move somewhere else, not knowing that Kuro was even there. All Kuro can do throughout the animation is observe Pinku from a distance, captivated by the glorious array of color and light from the fireworks that surround them.
The image of Pinku, rather than the boy from class, is what dominates the MV. So, as the MV’s story gradually unfolds, we learn that it is Pinku’s impression on her, more than the boy, that is likewise what dominates Kuro’s imagination. We can only guess just how many nights Kuro spent wondering about them. And every time that they just miss one another in some way, and the end of the MV hits with its perhaps exaggerated but non-literal climax, there’s always the underlying thought that how would what we see transpire if they did, in fact, meet early? Would their destinies have changed, or would they just drift apart again?
Yet maybe that’s a fool’s errand because Kuro’s question is far too simple. We are also privy to seeing the Pinku that Kuro is not able to see, as we spend time with Pinku talking with figures whose faces are obscured. Pinku’s double-life as an idol is itself a double of what Pinku really does, showing that, in a truly nuanced fashion pertaining to sexuality, there is always more than simply what a clean label would insinuate. The beauty of COLORs is how it combines its themes of doubles and surface-level questions about sexuality to show the multifaceted complexity of a person. When the ending arrives, it’s a foregone conclusion that Kuro never could have averted because her understanding of Pinku would have been dominated by only one impression of one half of who they were. For as much as Kuro fascinated (or idolized, to use a more textually-applicable term) and developed a complex about Pinku, distance would always be kept no matter how close they got. It therefore becomes less that “she could have asked” but also “she wouldn’t have truly found out,” nor that she should have to. Pinku, both as an individual and in the power dynamic between them and Kuro, owes the world nothing.
All the while, Sawano Hiroyuki and Hata Morihito’s music plays with its beautiful swirl of electronic sounds. Even from the first time that Kuro sees Pinku, the gradual descent of the bass fades in and out, as though it itself is as uncertain as Kuro. The verses stay relatively low and are melodically constrained, with few disjunct motions and often accompanied by descending motions. It’s rather unassuming, as though mirroring the image of the boy that Kuro saw on that fateful day when he joined their class. But as we realized, there is something behind that visage, and the chorus is what happens when you pull back the curtain. Structurally, it acts in much of the same way as the verses, but in raising the overall register of the vocals, it allows the piece to adopt a more exclamatory air. The jumps are also more frequent and starker, powerful statements of presence. The voices, which double and harmonize to encapsulate Pinku’s double-life, are also allowed to trail off and slightly down-pitch at the ends of certain phrases, emulating a musical sigh as though Pinku themselves was breathing a sigh of relief that they can now don the pink hair and clothes that they wear with such poised confidence.
That confidence, and the wider breadth of expression retained with all the characters, is vital to making COLORs work, especially since sex, gender, and performativity are so integral to the overarching metaphor. Yoneyama Mai, whose previous efforts include the visually-lush “YOKU” MV by Eve, manages to accomplish precisely that through her phenomenally-delicate character designs, as do the numerous animators who brought these creations to life. At times seemingly gliding and at others creating powerful bursts of physicality and emotiveness, Pinku is always caught in a sensuous whirlwind (sometimes the wind is more literal) that visually highlights their double-life. Particularly during the brief dance sequence, the presence of blue, white, and pink allude to the colors of the transgender flag, and coupled with the burst of exertion and the use of close-ups, mediums, and distant shots, shows that Pinku is at their most physically and emotionally liberated when in this state of dress and performance. Animated by osumin, it is a dance of celebratory self-actualization.
COLORs is beautiful. Delicately put together, the story told within is aided by such a mouth-wateringly beautiful aesthetic and manages to come across both as heartfelt and large in scope despite the brief runtime. Always striking and always succeeding in its resonance, it has entered a realm of musical entertainment that I am always searching for – unbridled creative expressions of depth and poise where each viewing or listening shows me something new.
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