Maxance Vincent
Hatsune Miku fans will undoubtedly come out in droves for the film adaptation of the mobile game Hatsune Miku: Colorful Stage! with Colorful Stage! The Movie: A Miku Who Can’t Sing. The chances of them loving Hiroyuki Hata’s movie are high, as it contains everything fans adore about the character: a Vocaloid software voicebank who, since its creation, has become a worldwide icon and a staple of Japanese culture. Whether it will resonate with a broader audience remains to be seen, but it does contain a universal message that everyone can latch onto and appreciate, especially in these dreary times.
The movie immediately strikes attention in its first minute, where a succession of doors open up to the audience, as the 2.39:1 aspect ratio shifts to 1.78:1 thrillingly and visualizes a textured world through vibrant, colorful, and detailed animation. What P.A. Works achieves in this picture, visually, is nothing short of jaw-dropping, especially when Colorful Stage! begins to blend otherworldly elements into the reality in which the protagonists live. It constantly catches us off guard, especially at its “twist point,” where the supernatural forces that were briefly foreshadowed through quick fragments take hold and add tangible emotional stakes to the mix. The animation always adapts itself to the limitless imagination Hatsune Miku (Saki Fujita) has through the SEKAI she inhabits and is trying to save.
This is where those unfamiliar with Colorful Stage! may be alienated, as the movie does not provide a proper introduction to the characters who populate the story, nor what a SEKAI is. It plunges us, in media res, into endless situations where the protagonists slowly realize that a glitching Miku is attempting to reach out to them, but to no avail, until they transport themselves to her SEKAI and learn of her challenges. For the purposes of this review, and the uninitiated, a SEKAI is a quasi-alternate world created by a person’s internal feelings. If their feelings are positive and full of light, chances are the SEKAI is precisely that. If it’s the opposite, well, you probably know what can happen.
Of course, this being a movie, Miku’s SEKAI is filled with darkness, though not her darkness, but of the people she’s trying to contact. We don’t get much connection with them but quickly realize that everyone whom Miku tries to sing to don’t want to hear her voice, not because she can’t sing, but because they have far too many internal (and external) problems to deal with, and don’t know how to hone in on their emotions. One of them feels the pressure of an important exam, and studying 24/7 has become their daily life, to the point where they lash out at their siblings who bother them, while another character is contemplating ending their life.
It’s particularly somber and is represented with such stark realism that we immediately feel for the minor characters, who convey so much emotional baggage through their eyes or facial features, which express devastating sorrow. Holding that darkness in will only make things worse, and it’s precisely what happens when it becomes far too much for Miku to hold, exploding violently to destroy her SEKAI, thus making her a prisoner of her own darkness.
It will now be up to the characters in the real world to not only save Miku but also remind struggling people that, no matter how challenging and complicated life may get, light and love will always triumph over our most somber feelings. This universal message, especially in how it reminds people of this inextricable fact, will resonate with both fans and non-fans of the character. The film’s resolution, a nearly fifteen-minute-long concert sequence, reaches an admirable emotional height, giving us all hope that the world we live in can improve, provided we accept that it will be filled with challenges. Plus, all the songs in the movie are fantastic, making the emotional attachment to the message even more potent.
And yet, for a movie with a relatively simple story, the presentation of its characters and mechanics seems far too dense for us to emotionally connect with the protagonists who are helping Miku, especially given the punishingly slow pacing of the anime. It’s only when A Miku Who Can’t Sing reaches the twist of its structure that it picks itself back up for a crowd-pleasing denouement, but one has to go through many drawn-out sequences where the characters only act as devices to continuously spell out the story and deliver endless bouts of exposition. That’s why we mostly feel at arm’s length with the figures who populate the story, even when Hata delivers potent visual (and thematic) metaphors to keep us invested.
The metaphorical nature of darkness is obviously the focal point of the film, but I was particularly drawn by its representation of “doors” within Miku’s SEKAI, which not only acted as portals to the technological devices she could enter, but also as the audience’s “doorway” to the real world. Sadly, both metaphorical underpinnings are terribly underdeveloped, especially when the movie reaches its song-heavy climax that, while rousing and certainly toe-tapping, doesn’t land a stronger emotional apex than it should.
That said, while it’s challenging to maintain investment when the character relationships aren’t well-defined within the film’s diegesis, there’s enough material for hardcore fans to love and for non-fans to at least appreciate what it’s saying. Any movie that boasts such a positive message and transmits it so well, without any ounce of button-pushing, is enough for me to give it my commendations, even if I would’ve appreciated a stronger dramatic core than truncated visual metaphors. However, for the Vocaloid community, this will be well worth the hype and likely everything they’ve ever asked for.
SCORE: ★★1/2
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