Colorful

cassiesheepgirl Jan 2, 2010

1.2

Story Pants. This single word not only explains this series’ plot but also sums up my entire opinion of it. Except that last sentence is partially a lie, because Colorful has no plot. None. Nada. Zip. Essentially, this anime is nothing more than a chain of sketches depicting the most pitiful men ever animated as they drool, bleed and cry their way through a bevy of panty shots. Initially the humorous look at such pathetic guys and the lengths they’ll go to in order to satiate their depraved lusts is funny. However, after two or three episodes of exactly the same thing –except in a slightly different setting – the novelty quickly wears off, leaving behind nothing but a repetitive, hollow shell. Occasionally a slight smirk may creep across the face when some poor fellow finally gains sight of those elusive delicates, only to find a bulge that doesn’t belong there; but sadly, most of the series meets with a sigh and a quick glance at the time bar to see how much longer this crotch-filled crud is going to eat away at your life. Interspersed with the cast’s perverted antics is a series of abstract pieces where the visuals and sound are not only completely disconnected from the plot, but also from each other. Now, I’ve spent several years of my life at an art college, so I’m used to watching weird, experimental films while trying to analyse the supposed hidden meaning behind them, but even I can’t see what the hell the point of these sections is! It’s like the animation staff are being weird for the sake of it – and it’s not even as if this footage consistently serves as a buffer between different scenes. They are utterly meaningless and, frankly, quite annoying after a while. Animation Admittedly, Colorful’s visual style does fit well with its plotline: it is rough and crude. Character designs are simplistic, no neon hair and eyes the size of footballs here, but they do tend to fade into the background. Unless there’s some kind of facial contortion – in which case they appear quite ugly or even constipated – the cast looks so dull that they’re virtually unmemorable. Tragically it seems that, in the Colorful universe at least, women suffer from a debilitating disease, which causes their noses to disappear entirely on occasion. Unless I’m missing some craze where nose-less females are the height of attractiveness, this is incredibly off-putting. Amazingly, no one in the series seems to notice this phenomenon, though I suppose that’s because they’re all too busy staring up the girls’ skirts to pay attention to their faces. Sound Colorful’s soundtrack does its job, but that’s about as far as it goes. The opening theme is very fast and a bit bizarre, which is reminiscent of what’s to come – so in that sense it fares well. The series’ voice acting is neither outstanding nor ear-bleedingly awful. As such, the series’ overall sound design is fundamentally forgettable. Characters Since there are only a handful of recurring perverts – I mean cast members, it’s quite difficult to judge Colorful’s characterisation. Since no one ever develops from their Neanderthal grunts and incapacitating nosebleeds, it’s simply down to evaluating each pathetic male by his rampant fetishism. Who could forget the gym teacher whose inappropriate obsession with his young student makes him cry with sheer joy at the wet ass-mark that she leaves on the ground? What about Steve, the exchange student who dedicates himself whole-heartedly to capturing the perfect “upside-down Fuji” on camera… Or the tragic guy whose long hair so frequently masks his view of the perfect panty shot; doesn’t your heart just go out to him? No, since Colorful’s repertoire of feeble one-dimensional men-folk is flatter than a loli’s chest and ultimately far less entertaining. Overall I’ll probably have a hundred raging feminists on my doorstep tomorrow for saying this, but I don’t care that this show unashamedly objectifies women; pick up any ecchi series and that’ll happen – besides, it’s the men who come off looking worse anyway! No, my gripe is with Colorful’s repetition. It uses the same gag time and time again, until the humour itself becomes stale – even Ping Pong Club has more variation in its comedy content. I’m just thankful that each episode is only six and a half minutes long, so that I didn’t waste even more of my time on this craptastically shallow series.

thetickdickler Feb 26, 2019

5

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.

ComplainingQoheleth Aug 2, 2013

1

Go ahead, call me a reactionary after seeing all of the below (even though I'm pro gun control, pro-environment, pro-Palestine and anti-censorship) but given the illusion of knowledge I've learnt that people don't make judgements based on reason, just self interest so you shouldn't care much what they think. I hate this anime on a number of levels; it's boring, it gives the misandrists more ammunition (as if we men weren't adept at screwing up our own already awful reputation as it is) and one of the worst anime I've ever seen is directed by the director of one of the best anime I've ever seen; the director of Serial Experiments Lain Ryutaro Nakamura. I seriously can't figure out how the same person was able to direct 2 anime so different in length, quality and focus. Right from the theme song things start going wrong; for some reason the girl is singing about being excited but in an angry voice and then along with the slightly crap animation we get to endure the actually not arousing exploits of the pitiful perverts who inhabit this waste of time, money and effort made all the worse by the fact that it's so short that the only facets of the characters' personalities are either they're perverted or they're the targets of the perversion, nothing more. The only males in this show just spend all of their time getting aroused looking at the women and in spite of cassieshhepgirl's review saying that Colorful is misogynistic but anime as a whole is I for one think it's not doing us males any favour either. There's already this stereotype in the west that all men are perverted barbarians because a test was done on rats that showed that when given testosterone that they were hornier and more aggressive and even though a rat and a human aren't the same thing it was convinient for the misogynists to assume that this automatically meant that men were all perverted jerks and unfortunately we're not doing much to combat this idea but I've seen porn (I'm not proud of it though) and the women make far more noise than the men so if anybody is in to sex it's women. What I've found is that men beat you up but women break you down emotionally and if you're going to get left in a bad state by someone it shouldn't matter in which way they do it. Physical wounds can hurt one's pride but psychological wounds can cause a person to harm themselves. Before there was pressure on women to be chaste and obedient back when women were seen as inferior the results being women didn't have much freedom now that if anyone is seen as inferior it's men it's strong and sexy the result being ballooning STD rates and women trying to be strong but trying too hard and ending up being jerks. One set of pressures was replaced with another so things are still bad but in different ways, much like life as a whole really. We've got such a sexualised society that the women's movement has become almost entirely focused on "women's health" (people not being able to realise that the whole purpose of gender is reproduction so they'll bang anything in sight at any time in any manner) and saying that sex is about control, yes they genuinely think that lots of men would be sick enough to rape someone for control when they could just tie them up and it wouldn't be over in minutes and that any man can be a rapist even though it;s usually someone you know and in today's cock worshipping of women it's somehow considered funny if a man gets raped by a woman because apparently women can't use weapons as well. Because of hedonism people insist that abstinence doesn't work because that's when teenagers are at their horniest even though since that's when you're most likely to catch an STD (the vaginal walls haven't fully thickened at that point) and are least able to support a kid so it's by far the best time of all to practice abstinence but since when has a basic knowledge of science trimuphed over fun for the sake of fun regardless of how short it lasts? Get pregnant, they judge you, never have sex, they call you a "loser", you can't win. Condoms may indeed be 97 or whatever % effective but people are having more and more sex younger and younger plus if you're drunk or high as people increasingly are you mightn't use one anyway so STD rates just keep multiplying. Condoms should remain legal, sure, but I fail to see how 97% safe is a better option than 99% (you might get an STD even if you've never had sex by coming into contact with pubic lice) and in any case sex involves where somebody goes to the toilet one way or another, even getting past the aesthetics of course there are going to be nasty diseases around and AIDS is incurable and fatal. Rare certainly but 100% awful and 100 is of course higher than 97 and given that people have lied about not having AIDS given all of the above I'll pass even on starting a family.