Pixar animation film “Inside Out 2”, which is the sequel to Oscar-winning animation film “Inside Out” (2015), shows us that Pixar still has it. While it is another fantasy adventure into the state of mind just like its predecessor, the film presents it well with enough charm, spirit, and imagination to be savored, and the result is alternatively funny and touching to the end.

The story begins with how things have been going fairly well since that little adventure of the five basic emotions inside the mind of a young girl in “Inside Out”, who is now 13 years old and naturally about to enter her adolescent period. As Riley (voiced by Kensington Tallman) and her two best female friends are excited about entering their high school period, Joy (voiced by Amy Poehler) and her fellow basic emotions, Sadness (voiced by Phyllis Smith), Anger (voiced by Lewis Black), Fear (voiced by Tony Hale), and Disgust (voiced by Liza Lparia), are certainly ready for more things to do inside Riley’s mind, but, alas, there come two unexpected problems. First, Riley belatedly comes to learn that her two best friends will go to some other high school, and she is quite disappointed about that. Second, not long after Riley goes through her first day of her adolescent physical/mental changes, the control center of Joy and her fellow basic emotions is drastically changed while a number of new emotions suddenly appear in front of them.

One of these new emotions is Anxiety (voiced by Maya Hawke), who instantly takes over the control room as Riley becomes more and more anxious about herself. She and her two close friends, who are all incidentally hockey players, are going to attend a three-day hockey training camp, and Riley is more conscious about herself when she comes across a popular senior hockey player to whom she has been looking up. She really wants to play hockey along with that senior player, and her following actions naturally make her distant to her close friends, who are certainly not so pleased about the change in their relationship with her.

As Riley lets herself driven more by Anxiety and other new feelings such as Envy (voiced by Ayo Edebiri) and Embarrassment (voiced by Paul Walter Hauser), Joy and her fellow basic emotions are sent away from the control center to somewhere quite far from it. Again, Joy sees that she and her fellow basic emotions must take care of this emergency as soon as possible, but things are changed a lot in the fantasy landscapes inside Riley’s mind, and even Joy finds herself feeling like being against the wall more than once.

While Joy and her fellow basic emotions go up and down along the story, the screenplay by Meg LeFauve and Dave Holstein provides a series of humorously imaginative moments which will remind you again that human mind is still a wondrous and interesting realm to explore and observe. You will be delighted again to see that vast labyrinth of various stored memories, and I particularly like a big stream which will be appreciated by anyone who has ever read the works of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce.

And these and other fantasy moments often resonate with what is going on outside Riley’s mind. Feeling quite more anxious than ever, Riley eventually tumbles down into the gloomy status of low self-esteem, which only exacerbates the troubled circumstance inside her mind. As a matter of fact, even Anxiety gets driven more and more by herself, and we eventually get an apt visual depiction of panic attack later in the story. Believe me, anyone who ever had a panic attack in adolescent years will instantly recognize that frenzied mental condition, and you will feel sorrier for Anxiety, who is as well-intentioned as Joy and other emotions but makes wrong judgments just like Joy did more than once.

What eventually follows next may not surprise you much, but you will admire how the people of Pixar Studios are still good at pulling our heartstrings. The lesson for Joy and the other emotions at the end of their adventure is not so different from what “Inside Out” movingly conveys to us, but that familiar lesson is delivered well with enough sincerity and sensitivity, and that was enough for me to become less cranky than usual and reflect more on how to be more honest with my emotions.

Again, Amy Poehler and Phyllis Smith hold the center well as surrounded by a number of notable performers who bring some colorful personality to their supporting characters. While Lewis Black, Kensington Tallman, Tony Hale, and Liza Lapria are effective in their respective roles, Maya Hawke is certainly a standout as her character often steals the show as expected, and my only complaint is that the film does not provide enough space for its other notable cast members including Ayo Edebiri, Paul Walter Hauser (He did a more impressive voice performance in recent Netflix animation film “Orion and the Dark” (2023), by the way), June Squibb, and Adèle Exarchopoulos, who is unfortunately stuck with her rather thankless role (But who could have imagined that she would perform in a Pixar animation film?).

In conclusion, “Inside Out 2”, directed by Kelsey Mann, does not go beyond what was awesomely achieved by its predecessor, which is still one of the best Pixar animations films during last two decades (and it also gives us a certain catchy commercial jingle which will be always around somewhere in our mind). Although its future is quite uncertain at present thanks to some unpleasant changes in Disney, Pixar has not lose its touch at least, and that is a comforting news for now.