I have spoken about fan service a lot and that I sometimes feel that it goes overboard way too soon and it wrecks the flow and feel of the show. “Colorful” embraces our inner ecchi pervert to delightful ends and makes no bones about it.

Now, be careful, as there is a movie out there called “Colorful” as well. So how can you tell the difference? If you see panties on the cover, THIS is the one you want. If you see a boy in a school uniform, surrounded by flowers, that is NOT the one.

There are some disjointed story lines in this all-too-brief series, done more as blackout sketch comedy. Although the series has 16 episodes, nothing runs over 10 minutes, as we have numerous vignettes of guys getting their perv on to varying degrees of success. There are lots of shots of looking up skirts and peering down cleavage and way-too-tight blouses with bosoms bursting outwards and very pretty girls, all sexy in an innocent way.

It’s just that the situations are so ridiculously stupid, you cannot help but laugh. One sequence is in an English class, where the teacher is trying to help the students speak properly. There are a lot of close-ups of her mouth as she sounds out the words, so we see her tongue, lolling about those oh-so-plump lips again and again and again, driving the boys to near apoplectic explosions.

We have another pervert, who uses his video camera to try and take shots of ladies’ panties without them knowing it, but, being Super Dweeb, fails miserably every time. You also get a feel for Japanese culture and how they view and deal with this. In the US, we would call it sexual harassment; in Japan, it’s par for the course. And, apparently, the ladies, for the most part, are not aware of this. But when they do find out, hilarity ensues. So do the beatings.

It’s just that you come to realize that guys are really pathetic creatures, as the sight of a bit of frilly underwear causes their eyes to almost explode from their head. Or do women really understand this and dress in this intentional manner so guys will fall down flights of stairs or miss their commuter car or land in the lake to chase after it? But there is no genuine nudity in the show. It is all lurid implication and lots of panty shots. You do see a naked woman in the credits, but it is from the back, so there is nothing truly exposed. Remember, we are going for huge ecchi laugh and actual nudity would ruin the humorous nature of the show.
On a scale of 1 to 10:

Artwork 9 (Those girls are sure pretty)
Plot 4 (Thin, but for what we want to do, it works well)
Pacing 8 (Slides into slapstick)
Effectiveness 7 (The tales do work, both singularly and as a unit)
Conclusion 3 (It reaches a ‘coupler’, but doesn’t really end)
Fan Service 5 (A similar show would be “Maburaho”)

Overall 8 (Really goofy)

And remember, it’s first run until you’ve seen it. My hair got in the way again!