Colorful

I started my search skimming through the trashy animes that usually plague the pages of the MAL ecchi tag. And I ended it quite satisfied but perplexed. You see, it was to my understanding that fast-paced, over-the-top, almost YouTube Poop-esque comedy was something unique to the era of the world wide web. But here in front of me is an anime preceding the 2000s and its outlandish internet culture, that exhibits all of these characteristics. I am not so naïve as to say "Colorful is ahead of its time" but I believe it stands atop its contemporaries as what may have served as the inspiration ... for modern-day "meme-culture." It's a bit jarring seeing a lenny face and hearing memey audio-stutters in an anime from the 90s, to say the least. Despite some of its fast-forward humor, the anime seems to be ground in its era- pertaining to its peeping comedy (not that similarly perverse animes aren't released today). It is understandable as to why a woman may not find panty-gazing humor as funny as I do. Though unlike other ecchi anime, Colorful doesn't seek to justify or ignore its male characters sleazy activity; but to draw attention to it, satirize, and poke fun at the absurd lengths these men are willing to go to satisfy their voyeuristic urges. This is where much of the humor lies. Their panty-gazing exploits often result in them hurting and embarrassing themselves for the enjoyment of the audience. It wouldn't be very funny of the characters were simply to succeed in their sexual harassment. "Colorful's" art, music, and animation are equal parts amazing, its overall aesthetic stunning. The anime opens with a fucking ska song song and ends with an experimental French breakcore track. Spliced between segments of the anime are these MTV, magazine-esque montages. From beginning to end, its stylistic in a way that evokes the spirit of 90s rave and underground culture. It makes sense that an anime this unique and experimental was created by the studio responsible for animes like Boogiepop, Lain, and NieA.

Definitely worth the watch and one of my personal favorites as of now.

There are many reasons why a piece of media is forgotten to the sands of time. Sometimes it's because something isn't very good, sometimes it's because it was released at a time that prevented it from getting a better foothold. In Colorful's case, it's because it just wasn't very memorable.

So what's the plot for this series? It doesn't have one! Based on a manga series, Colorful is a series that focuses on the misadventures of men staring, peeking, glancing, looking, and glaring at women and their efforts to get that extra eyeful of harmlessly exposed panties, bras, and occasional cleavage and the outrageous consequences of ... their actions.

It's more like a sketch show with a few re-occurring characters and exactly one sketch rather than an ongoing series, which should be pretty obvious with it's tagline "Roses are red. Violets are blue. This show's about panties."

Some series have a character that's a pervert for comedic relief, or even have it as the main focus, but Colorful distills the perverted comical relief down into 96 minutes, consisting of 16 short 6 minute episodes. The whole thing pretty much feels like a montage of the slapstick pervert characters from a bunch of other longer running series. By the end of the series it definitely feels a little long in the tooth, and it doesn't have the benefit of being broken up by an actual story or other events going on. It's ecchi comedy distilled into the length of a feature film.

I'd complain that a series with this little substance got made, but there have been series out there with somehow even less substance. And at least Colorful doesn't pretend that it's something that it's not. If anything, I can give this series credit for at least being interesting with it's animation and art style, often being mildly creative with the way it looks.

Coloful has been described as a very love it or hate it show, seemingly being described as "wildly funny" or "tasteless and depraved", and it's easy to see why. It's very unashamed of what it is, a series of vulgar panty jokes one after another with very little breathing room. I'm pretty sure there is an audience out there for something like this, but it would be an incredibly niche one at that.

Rate a 4
English Dubbed

Story
A mixture of different shots. Positively speaking left a surprise of what was to come. Negatively, plot could change at any precise moment. In other words sure one never got bored but how is one supposed to focus if you won't stand still. *crickets chirp( I thought it was amusing).

Could have made for a rather interesting ecchi aspect. But several elements had my mind questioning the demonstration that made me miss the show. For example there was more than one ending. Why was there two? Did the creator originally shoot for one season of 8 episodes than due to popular demand brought ... in another season? Or, was it a marketing trick to rack in more bucks.

For a show that demonstrates collection the least they could do is keep the episodes in order. Rather than have them jumbled.

Art
About 20 percent of the artwork show was recycled in some matter. Also, depending on scene the art acted in a somewhat stock market fashion in terms of grade.

Overall
Men like women. Or at lest they like aspects of them. That fact was clearly demonstrated in this showing. If you don't mind a bumpy ride with interesting angel shots to slightly make up for chaotic plot this may be your kink.