Cocolors

Short review though TLDR below :p The outside world is a strange place. We know it's there, but what do we know it has? You can't tell for sure unless you go and take a look for yourself. In doing so, do you think you have taken up the correct choice? Sometimes the knowledge of the unknown will bring about happiness and excitement, whilst other times sadness, god forbid trauma, or maybe, it is straight-up anti-climatic. You just don't know. And whilst ignorance is bliss, to protect us from risk. As the Latin language beholds, "scientia est potentia". I don't need to give a synopsis of thestory, so I will go straight into it and say what I liked about the story. I think the story is a good one. The concept of the "outside world" has been frequently touched upon in this medium, originality isn't a thing here but that doesn't make it bad. I thought Cocolors had its own quirks to spew out to the audience despite major similarities, namely, how it goes around telling the story, or the execution if you like. Cocolors has this incredibly consistent atmosphere to it in which gives nothing but really depressing undertones that constantly flake around the story, there are themes of hope here, there are themes of preserving, but most of the time, the world here is very bleak and full of despair. I have to say for a short movie like itself, it does an amazing job of presenting such a theme without feeling too shallow. This brings me nicely to my next point, world-building. Now the story inevitably faced the issue of world-building with being short and quite literally about the world as a whole. I can't say that Cocolors really nailed it with world-building, there were too many things left empty or just not considered at all, but I don't want to make this a major complaint as this didn't matter relative to the story goals. It is a minor complaint as I just wanted to know more about this very interesting world, unfortunately, the story doesn't expand too much on that matter. Pacing is something I want to touch upon as well, this is fast, which is not surprising, but it doesn't hold up too well when looking into the world and plot that has been given. It is hard to get a lot out of this in my opinion, it would have made more sense for it to be a 1.5-hour movie instead. No clue why it isn't, so I will leave that there for now. The characters are good, I have to point out that sometimes they feel very melodramatic. To be fair, it should be understood that this world of theirs isn't the most optimistic of places, however, with an ever depressing theme, the drama stacked onto it sometimes doesn't converge well, especially when done so a lot, in which Cocolors does. A lot. Drama does lose value quickly here, which is a shame but it isn't something I would consider too damaging. There is no real development to speak of as everything is condensed in a short amount of time, hell MC Aki is literally told he doesn't change. I don't want to make it sound bad that characters are undeveloped, they are just fine I suppose. The audiovisual side of things is amazing, the full 3D CGI is probably the best I have ever seen, nothing tops this period in my opinion, it mixed well with some 2D (sometimes 3D background drawing too), visual landscapes are always pleasing to look at here whenever the camera gives that a moment to shine, character design is pretty detailed too, the lighting on the suits gave it that touch of realism to add on to its glory. And it was made in 2017 too. Wow. Audio is in the same boat, admittedly, I don't have too much memory on the OST however, I do remember that I have positive comments on them. It isn't like average OST, it is the kind to play with your heartstrings too, but they were really good overall. Even though I have talked about melodrama, I would like to point out that there is still good voice acting that comes along with it, the seiyuus did a good job at conveying the characters they played, not feeling static at any point. I liked it a lot. I think Cocolors enjoyment lies in a different kind of aspect, most of the time with movies of its kind, there tends to be a conventional storyline to be followed, sharing good and bad moments, though Cocolors takes this incombustible formula, lights a fire to it, and hands it back to you still burning. What I mean is everything is still there, but there isn't quite a movie like Cocolors that is so hard on itself with bringing forward a rather depressing world. This is a sad story, not one like the other sad stories either. With pacing issues though, I didn't enjoy this as much as I thought I would, but it was still something I found in good light at the end of the day. It's time-efficient too. TLDR: Decent execution of interesting base via fast pacing, slightly melodramatic characters, undeveloped but by no means bad. Audiovisuals lit. Enjoyable but won't understand much. Overall - 7.6 (8) You wouldn't have guessed Kamikaze Douga to make a serious movie now would ya. Strange world we live in.