Observational and deeply empathetic, the film unravels with a steady, rhythmic beat.

| Original Score: 10/10 | Mar 29, 2025

For the anime fan, it’s perhaps an unexpected foray into uncharted territory. For the music fan, it’s a compelling story of experimentation and determination. For everyone else, it’s just a darn good movie that tugs the heartstrings much like a guitar.

| Original Score: A+ | Mar 21, 2025

There are no big dramas, save for a call up to the office for skipping a school trip. Reiko Yoshida’s script instead foregrounds sincere friendship and the joyful mechanics of songwriting.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 28, 2025

The film’s finale absolutely hits with the power of a dodgeball to the face that still makes you beam uncontrollably.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 24, 2025

...[The Colors Within] will intoxicate anyone who lets themselves be carried away with a light that will accompany them beyond the movie theater. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 21, 2025

Fills the heart with warmth and hundreds of emotions. [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 19, 2025

The Colours Within is a deceptively simple film that uses elaborate methods to illustrate feelings most viewers will relate to. Uplifting and sincere, it’s an animated film without a hint of commercial cynicism.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 7, 2025

All this wholesomeness might sound cloying and unnatural, but director Yamada Naoko handles it with supreme confidence.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 6, 2025

There’s amazing beauty to be found in Naoko Yamada’s aural odyssey – even when a film about matters of the heart gets a little caught up in its own head.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 4, 2025

The Colors Within is an endearing character-driven film about the love of music, friendship and the discovery of your own unique colours.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 4, 2025

The Colors Within is a lovely and low-key anime drama about three teenagers who become friends when they form a rock band together. Each band member has different reasons for keeping the band a secret.

| Jan 30, 2025

The Colors Within is sweetly dreamy, as soft as the snowfall captured in a snow globe—picture-perfect images of life held close—and the music is sweet, too.

| Jan 30, 2025

The Colors Within is a beautifully rendered film – if you can keep your eyes open long enough to see it.

| Jan 28, 2025

As sensitive as ever to teenagers’ growing pains, animator and director Naoko Yamada paints an exquisite rainbow of adolescent blues.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 27, 2025

Fitting snugly into [Naoko Yamada's] oeuvre’s focus on youthful hopes and desires, the film follows a trio of teenagers as they form an ad hoc rock band, delving into their personal lives with a refreshingly low-key and compassionate touch.

| Jan 26, 2025

Yamada and Science Saru’s latest is an empathetic coming-of-age tale that leverages animation firepower to eulogize connections born from music.

| Original Score: 8.5/10 | Jan 24, 2025

For a movie in which people are colors and music is faith, “The Colors Within” could do with a more expanded palette.

| Jan 24, 2025

A movie that truly understands the fear of loss and the internal strength required to truly yearn.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 24, 2025

The surging, life-altering emotions the characters experience don’t sweep you up the way they’re meant to.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 24, 2025

The Colors Within is a nice slice-of-life character-driven film, but there is very little drama or conflict to keep the viewer invested past the colorful animation.

| Original Score: 5/10 | Jan 24, 2025