Kids movies so often bear little of the actual lived-in experience of growing up, but Yamada Naoko’s luminous anime “The Colors Within” gently reverberates with the doubts and yearnings of young life.

In 1900's San Francisco, a white woman is murdered in Chinatown and the suspect is a Chinese man. The murder causes a social shock and the public calls for Chinatown to be outlawed. Chinese medicine ...