Colorful!

Publisher
ADV
Director
Ryutaro Nakamura
Production
Shueisha
Country of origin
Japan
Format
OVA
Running time
110 mins
Year
2003

Colorful!

By John Huxley
27th Apr 04

There's a extract on the back of the Colorful box that says the following:

Roses are red
Violets are blue
This show's about panties.

And that's exactly what this show is all about - panties. Sure, we've all seen our fair share of anime that lay the fanservice on a little too thick (Burn Up Excess springs to mind), but never before has there been a show where its primary concern is fanservice and nothing but. Every character, every scene and every second of Colorful is dedicated to the perverted pastime of peeking at women's undergarments.

The average Colorful scene runs something like this: two girls with short skirts sit on a stairwell as a boy walks past, pretending to stumble so he can peek at the girl's underwear...cue lengthy still of said underwear with accompanying heavenly music, followed by the obligatory nose bleed. Imagine this scene played over and over and over and over again, only with slight variations on the theme - that's Colorful.

However, to dismiss Colorful as one long panty-fest would be doing it a great disservice. Firstly, it isn't one long panty-fest, it's sixteen small panty-fests. Secondly, and more importantly, Colorful's excellent presentation is its saving grace. Between each scene is an increasingly bizarre montage of images ranging from the obvious panty shots to several variations of the show's distinctive logo. The best of these - in which an artist carefully places the eyes, nose, mouth and eyebrows of a beautiful girl's face only for a cat's paw to mess them all up - is the best Colorful has to offer.

For an anime that concentrates so intensely on the female form, much relies on the quality of the artwork. Thankfully the artwork is pleasingly stylish and the animation is sound if nothing revolutionary. The girls of Colorful were intended to be cute and that's exactly what they are.

I first came across Colorful on the digital heavy metal channel Scuzz, where different scenes were aired in-between the music videos. You may (quite rightly) think that anime has no place on a music channel, but Colorful is no ordinary anime. Its bite-size format, broad humour and attractive presentation make it perfect music channel material. In may ways Colorful itself is much like a music video - short, story-less and visually appealing. The music's quite good, too.

When you begin to accept that Colorful cannot be assessed by regular anime standards you begin to see it in a different light. Everything suddenly makes sense - this is not supposed to be viewed as a coherent series, or even a film. It's a collection of short comedy sketches that should be watched in short bursts; ideal party fodder for those who won't be paying the television too much attention.

The characters may be two-dimensional, the humour repetitive and the story nonexistent; but that's exactly the point. If Colorful were to have an multi-layered story with complex characters and subtle humour it would lose much of what makes it unique. Don't buy this expecting the latest and the greatest anime to show off to all your friends. Do show it to them when they're drunk.

R2 DVD Notes

Features: English and Japanese audio, English subtitles, clean opening and closing animations, Colorful trailer, ADV previews, Colofrul: exposed!

Release information: UK release date: 20th October 2003, ADV

Notes: Easily the most notable extra on this DVD is the lengthy Colorful: Exposed! live-action documentary. Actually, it's more of a mockumentary, with the US cast and crew acting out false, campy personas that would suit the Gary Shandler show. Camp it may be, but I'm not about to complain about all that extra entertainment. Besides the documentary there's the clean opening/close, a Colorful trailer and the regular ADV previews. Both the audio and video quality were top notch, so no worries there. There's also a double-sided cover, with the inside featuring some images of (surprise!) panties. What else did you expect?

-- John Huxley 27th Apr 04

Colorful! Images