When designing the color palette for her new animated film, director Naoko Yamada had one key note: nothing scary.

That piece of direction embodies the tone of “The Colors Within,” which debuted in June at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival and goes into wide release in Japan today.

“I wanted to eliminate colors that would make viewers feel uneasy or frightened,” says Yamada — whose credits include the films “A Silent Voice” (2016) and “Liz and the Blue Bird” (2018) and the series “The Heike Story” (2022) — to The Japan Times in an interview before the film’s release.