Music and the Little Moments We Share… The Observation Deck: The Colors Within

7 min readFeb 4, 2025

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In an era where organized religion is often seen as old-fashioned, abusive, and generally lacking in progressive figures, it is interesting to see creatives who can envision a world where those things aren’t true. Sure, maybe a lot of religious people can, but taking an outside view of things certainly adds to the honesty of it all. That said, is it even about religion at all? Or maybe just the expectations placed on us from people who are close to us. Is transcending that pressure a true religious experience?

The Colors Within delves into these questions with the full force a couple of private school kids and one dude who really likes making music in a run down church. Said private school kids, Kimi and Totsuko, meet only after Totsuko’s not-at-all-a-girl-crush leads her to searching all over downtown Tokyo until she is guided by a white cat to a random used book store. The two awkwardly reconnect while the lovestruck teen pretends to be a piano player, that is until random young man Rui jumps in and asks, “are you two in a band?” That one simple question sealed their fate.

A Rock and a Hard Place

The reason Totsuko has to search for Kimi in the first place is due to her dropping out their private Christian school in order to pursue music. She doesn’t know this at the time, but she is definitely drawn to Kimi before the two have ever formally met. The girl crush thing is more of a read, but the much more heavily implied reason is due to Totsuko’s synesthesia, a condition by which people experiencing one sense can result in experiencing another sense entirely. For her, this most often results in seeing people as individual colors.

Totsuko isn’t exactly an outcast, but outside of her dormmates, she doesn’t have a ton of friends, at least not ones who understand her deeply. Her condition leads to focusing on individuals quite heavily, and thus the reason the main trio ends up in the used book store together. It also leads her to focusing on god, as she often can be found in the school’s church.

Kimi sits on the other end of the spectrum. No condition, no strong religious belief, just a desire to play music. However, her dropping out of school is not accompanied by any formal notice to her grandmother, who she lives with and helps pay for her school. This leads to a lot of guilt and regret on her part. Despite the differences in their situations, the two get along quite well.

Rui is quite literally the odd man out, but is similar to the other two in many ways. His more approachable personality oftentimes leaves him feeling like a male Totsuko. On the other hand, his mother’s expectation that he will take over the family clinic and go to medical school leaves him in a situation much like Kimi. The three bond heavily over their outcast statuses and the emotional weight that is placed over top them.

What is Music Without Music?

Director Naoko Yamada is no stranger to music-focused anime projects, as she previously helmed Kyoto Animation’s other music inspired works, including K-ON and Liz and the Bluebird. K-ON, though fun in its own right, was much more light-hearted in its musical approach. Its story followed four girls who initially just needed to sign up for a club, but came to love music for its own sake along the way.

The Colors Within takes a much more somber, spiritual approach to its musical pieces and in doing so makes the soundtrack the highlight of the film. Composer Kensuke Ushio has been doing anime soundtracks for over a decade at this point and it shows. The man perfectly crafts every individual piece of music for the scene it accompanies, down to length and choice of instrument.

It would be a mistake to talk about the soundtrack of the film without mentioning the band that is it’s focus. The in-universe band Shironekodo made up of Rui, Totsuko, and Kimi do a performance at the end of the film, and it is a truly beautiful experience.

The band performs three songs during their performance. “Apology Letter — The Good, the True, the Beautiful” feels like a collab with Hatsune Miku in the best way possible, and “Amen, I’m Going Somewhere” could easily be your favorite j-pop idol’s next smash hit without any changes. My favorite of the three songs, however, has got to be “Walk.” Though memories of the lyrics are a little bit hazy, musically it the most quiet and contemplative of the bunch, utilizing Rui’s theremin almost as a second set of vocals. The way it clashes with the ringing of the electric guitar near the end of the song is by far and away one of the most religious sounding pieces of music ever written.

Praying for a Better Tomorrow

The vision of an empty church with Totsuko as its lone inhabitant is a stark one. Each prayer looks increasingly unanswered, talks with the nun she befriends over the course of the film being her only source of human connection while looking up towards a higher power. Still, despite the doubt that occasionally seeps in, there is a strong belief in her heart.

Religion does become a strong focal point in the film’s narrative. Rather than being about the wrongs and evils of the faith, it instead takes time to celebrate the sense of community that can often be helpful to those who are struggling. In the most literal sense, Shironekodo wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for Totsuko and Kimi being at the same school. and also because of Totsuko’s girl crush but ya know, details details.

What’s interesting as well is that the three main characters all have very different relationships with god. Totsuko is still very much a believer in god, Kimi’s faith has waned and is otherwise indifferent to religion, and Rui is implied to be mostly non-Christian, the only remnant of possible belief being the church where the band practices music.

Faith and the wider Christian infrastructure of the film also represents an escape from expectations placed on each of the characters. Kimi’s decision to drop out of school becomes a pressure point when she realizes that she will eventually have to tell her grandmother, who we learned housed her and her brother after their parents divorce. Rui comes from a lineage of doctors, one whose importance is inflated due to the small population of his home. Even Totsuko is shown at the beginning of the film to not accel in her mother’s ballet class.

Though religion can often be a bit more fractured, music is a universal language. It doesn’t take belief to enjoy the rollicking of guitars, the ringing of a theremin, or the dancing keys of a piano. Still, even the church as an institution understands the importance of music as a tool of lifting people up in the face of great personal struggle. The two can and do coexist.

Conclusion

The Colors Within is a celebration, not just of music, but of human joy and friendship. It is the story of three relatively different people who come together to engage in shared interest, and in doing so create something beautiful. Organized religion is not always considered the most welcoming, and for many groups it still isn’t. Still, it is wonderful that there are those who have found reprieve and even acceptance in those spaces. Rock on!

Have you all seen The Colors Within? Let me know in the comments.

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