Colorful Stage! The Movie: A Miku Who Can’t Sing Review
Hatsune Miku is a name and mascot you’ll recognise if you’re immersed in anime culture. Whether it’s through cosplay at conventions or clips of her holographic concerts going viral on social media. She’s an icon, but discovering that Miku is not a traditional singer but a voicebank for Vocaloid, a voice synthesiser program, can be a real cultural shock. Her music only deepens the intrigue: The pulse-pounding J-pop instrumentals build momentum, only to be met with an entirely synthetic voice. The Hatsune Miku IP has spun off into mobile rhythm games, one of which is Hatsune Miku: Colorful Stage!
Released back in 2020, the Hatsune Miku: Colorful Stage! has only continued to grow in popularity, so it’s no surprise that an anime spin-off was eventually produced. Colorful Stage The Movie: A Miku Who Can’t Sing brings the beloved characters from the mobile game to the big screen. As someone with no prior familiarity with Hatsune Miku or the game itself, I was curious to see what was in store. Walking into the cinema, I was greeted by a sea of lightsticks and cosplay. I felt like I’d teleported back to when I saw Yoasobi and Ado live. To say I became both educated and even more confused might be the most accurate way to describe my viewing experience.
Narratively Colorful Stage! The Movie: A Miku Who Can’t Sing is a chaotic blend of compelling ideas and uneven execution. A mysterious version of Miku begins appearing in unexpected places, like billboards, smartphones and TV screens at Tower Records. It is there that teenage musician Ichika encounters this mysterious Miku after hearing her song. Miku is on a mission to connect with people through her music, but she is struggling to reach the hearts of people. To succeed, she must rely on Ichika and a cast of others to help her understand how to forge genuine emotional connections through song.
The only character with any semblance of depth is Miku herself, but even then, her robotic, synthesised voice sounds like dragging nails across a chalkboard. Miku’s delivery is devoid of substantial emotion, and the sound is so piercing it feels like knives stabbing into my ears. While I think the rest of the cast deliver strong performances, I couldn’t remember any of their names, their relationships, or where they’re supposed to be based. The film juggles 20 main characters, yet I can only distinguish them by the type of music they perform: the gloomy quartet, the rock quartet, the idol quartet, the theatrical quartet, and the rap quartet. Beyond these musical archetypes, there’s little substance to their characterisation.
Colorful Stage The Movie: A Miku Who Can’t Sing is about how music empowers and connects with us. For all the characters, Miku serves as a source of inspiration for their creative work. Like art itself, originality is born from inspiration and seeing how the five groups craft distinct songs, all stemming from the same song that the mysterious Miku sings, is genially engaging. Yet this idea is only a sliver of what the film attempts to convey. The film touches on the struggle to find joy in life, whether through the pressure of studying, work or abandoned dreams and showcases that music can lift us up from darkness. While this theme is emotionally charged and impactful due to the lack of interesting characters and drama, the film falters by telling us this message rather than showing it.
P.A. Works delivers impressively on the animation front. The film has impeachable moments where 2D characters interact with 3D elements. Regardless of the production, that kind of integration never fails to blow my mind; it’s consistently visually tantalising. The climactic musical numbers are stunning, energetic, and bursting with colour and joy. Watching the various Mikus and other characters that Colorful Stage has to offer is a visual treat. One could argue that the animation brings life to a film that, for a lot of its runtime that is somewhat lifeless.
It was when the credits rolled that my curiosity about this property began to spread—like a virus duplicating at an uncontrollable rate. I needed to know: how well does this film attempt to translate the game to the screen? So late at night, I downloaded Hatsune Miku: Colorful Stage! And within five minutes of playing, I learned more about the 20 characters and the world they inhabit than I did during the nearly 2 hours I spent watching this film. Unlike other anime spin-off films like My Hero Academia, Spy X Family or Detective Conan, which strive to be accessible to both fans and newcomers. Colorful Stage The Movie: A Miku Who Can’t Sing makes no such effort. Instead, the film feels like a new form of microtransaction, designed to entice existing fans into watching the film and then purchasing or collecting the in-game assets tied to it.
Colorful Stage The Movie: A Miku Who Can’t Sing could have been something truly meaningful, as well as being an earnest love letter to Vocaloid artists and the game itself, if it weren’t designed to cater to literally every fan of this game. Too many characters and a lacklustre plot hold back what might have been a focused and emotionally charged experience. I left the film feeling empty and more enamoured with the new wave of artists inspired by Hatsune Miku, like Yoasobi and Ado, than with the icon herself and rather than feeling compelled to play the game because of the film. I found myself downloading the game purely to expand my knowledge for this review.
★★ 1/2
In UK Cinemas Now / Masaki Aizawa, Akina, Yurina Amami, Yu Asakawa, Ryosuke Asano / Dir: Hiroyuki Hata / Anime Limited / PG
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