The Colors
A Slice of Life comedy manga from Katsuwo.In a small corner of Tokyo, three elementary girls protect their town. Doing good and enforcing rule against the various dangers that befall it. These three girls are the Colors, fearless guardians of Ueno Park!
...Or so they say. In reality, meek Yui Akamatsu, ever exuberant Sat-Chan and enigmatic Kotoha are three friends who spend their days having fun around town. Whether going to the lake, visiting a zoo, chatting with their Cool Old Guy friend or making life Hell for the surly local cop.
Was made into an anime for the Winter 2018 season. It is currently licensed by Sentai Filmworks and can be currently legally viewed on Crunchyroll. An English dub was announced in April 2019.
Tropes Present in this work:
- Adaptation Expansion: The zoo and strawberry-selling chapters.
- Age-Inappropriate Dress: In the Colors' first training session (which is simply a game of Hide and Seek) Yui is declared "it" and made search for her friends while wearing a rather skimpy midriff-baring outfit for an underage girl, basically a kid-sized version of Lum Invader’s outfit.
- Amplified Animal Aptitude: Colonel Monochrome is a cat that can take pictures with a camera and knows the right time to press the shutter button. Nobody cares.
- Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: On their way to a help request from the croquette shop lady, they end up playing around a jungle gym and forgetting the call.
- Back for the Finale: Many secondary characters from previous skits can be found attending the "flower-viewing" festival in the final episode.
- Bland-Name Product: Starbachos Coffee.
- Boke and Tsukkomi Routine: Sat-chan is a natural boke, but Yui is supposedly tasked with being the straight-man of the trio. She fails spectacularly.
- Bratty Half-Pint: The three girls might be this at different levels, but Sat-chan is the absolute queen of troublemaking in her class.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: The preview "meetings" after each episode.
- Brutal Honesty:
- Sat-Chan has exactly zero filter with her words, saying whatever she thinks, no matter how rude.
- Kotoha tends to have a very hard time dealing with Yui telling her that she's terrible at playing video games.
- Sat-chan on the contrary, doesn't care as much when Yui calls her "normal" every time she asks her if she looks cute.
- Butt-Monkey: According to Reddit, the most fitting description of officer Saito is "Police Squidward".
- Nonoka also gets a fair share of abuse from the titular trio. As well as from her older sister.
- Each of the main character gets a few moments too. Yui when she's made to seek her friends while wearing a rather skimpy outfit. Sat-chan gets her head stepped on by Kotoha in the very first episode. Kotoha is told by Yui that she sucks at video games.
- Calling Your Attacks: Yui Kick! Pocket Tissue Attack! Extra Virgin Oil!
- Catchphrase: Kotoha's "Game clear!" when she "solves" a "mystery".
- Children Are Innocent: Many of their "missions" start from the girls (even the somewhat Wise Beyond Her Years Kotoha) naively misinterpreting something.
- Colour-Coded Characters: Yui wears red, Sat-chan usually wears yellow, and Kotoha wears blue.
- Colorful Theme Naming: Yui's family name is Akamatsu (red), Sat-chan's is Kise (yellow), and Kotoha's is Aoyama (blue). Their mascot, a panda-colored cat, is called "Colonel Monochrome".
- Cool Big Sis: Not Nonoka but her older sister Momoka. She quickly gets on the Colors good side because her onigiri tastes so much better than Nonoka's bread.
- Cool Old Guy: Pops, the owner of a local general store.
- Cool Shades: Like Kotoha's hats, Pops has an endless collection of novelty sunglasses he's never seen without.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: The scene where the trio takes a picture with the shop vendor who gave them leftover candy looks eerily akin to how mafia collects ransom from various business. Except it's funnier.
- Don't Try This at Home: In one episode, Kotoha climbs the sign of the Ameyoko shopping district (a real-life location) then plays with the trope by stating in the preview that the children watching aren't brave enough to imitate her.
- In the home video segment of the finale, Kotoha steals Saito's bike, meanwhile the police box phone rings and Sat-chan trolls the caller who tries to report a missing object. The warning is added as a title by Pops, who edited the video.
- Expy: The Chu-chu Cabrilla mascot is an obvious take on the Chupacabra.
- Feigning Intelligence: Kotoha tries acting Wise Beyond Their Years and rather sadistic to seem more intelligent. But she's just as dopey as the other two.
- Festival Episode: The summer festival in episode 4 and the cherry blossom festival in the finale.
- Free-Range Children: The girls enjoy an unusual freedom for their age, to the point of reaching up to Akihabara playing hide-and-seek. They have a 5pm curfew, though.
- Gamer Chick: Kotoha is frequently seen playing a Nintendo 3DS expy. Ironically enough, she's terrible at video games.
- Girls with Moustaches: Behold Yui wearing the Dignity Moustache and laying truth on Kotoha (with Dramatic Thunder and all) in the "weakness discovery" episode.
- Go-to-Sleep Ending: Happens at the Grand Finale of the anime. During the final skit in the episode (after the credits roll), the gang brings a futon and set it in the middle of the park in order to relax and do surveillance. In the end though, they end up falling asleep.
- Groin Attack: After catching a rocket launched from a toy rocket launcher by Saito, Sat-chan throws it back at him, hitting him right in the family jewels.
- Innocently Insensitive: The Colors often do and say stuff that comes off as downright insulting at times because they're still too young to read the atmosphere properly. Sat-chan is escpecially good at this.
- Invisible Parents: Only Sacchan's mom makes an appearance. So far, there's nothing to know about the families of Yui and Kotoha.
- Joshikousei: Nonoka appears most of the time wearing her sailor fuku (even at the bakery).
- Lame Pun Reaction: Averted with Kotoha, who can't resist giggling to Sacchan's wordplay repertory. Played straight with Yui when she tries to repeat Sacchan's puns.
- The Leader: Yui is this in title, anyway. Doesn't stop her from being a crybaby and the group Butt-Monkey.
- Never Bareheaded: Kotoha is never seen without her rather numerous collection of hats on her dome.
- Only Sane Man: Yui is often this to Kotoha and Sat-chan, but she's too spineless to exert it in full.
- Parental Abandonment: This seems to be the case with Satchan's dad (or maybe he died, although it sounds less fitting for this manga.)
- Product Placement: The blurry imported Philippine products in Episode 3.
- Puni Plush: As expected for a slice-of-life series about pre-teen girls.
- Real-Place Background: Everything happens in and around the Ueno Park area in Tokyo, and the anime is often praised for its lush backgrounds.
- Shout-Out: The reason Colors go to the museum to search for a new member of their group is because Sat-chan watched a film where the exhibits come to life at night.
- Slice of Life
- Spell My Name With An S: Sat-chan or Sacchan? Saito or Saitou?
- Sugar Bowl: The setting is an optimistic version of Tokyo where everyone, including strangers, plays along and cooperates with the girls (except Saito).
- "Super Sentai" Stance: The Colors have one.
- Toilet Humor: Sat-Chan has a fascination with poop, mentioning it in every episode and even getting philosophical about it.
- Tomato in the Mirror: The Colors sneak in alleys with "no trespassing" signs in order to investigate what's being hidden there. After not finding anything and being chased a couple of times, the girls discover that the floor of the closed areas was covered in wet paint, and they've been leaving footprints everywhere.
- Unlimited Wardrobe: The girls wear different outfits every episode.
- Villainy-Free Villain: The girls see Saito as their ultimate enemy, while he's just a policeman who wants a little peace (no excuse for his Jerkass moments, though).
- Wins by Doing Absolutely Nothing:
- By misunderstanding their pal Nonoka, a plan for cleaning the infamously dirty Shinobazuno pond escalates to a decision of exterminating humanity to protect nature. Yui then realises that it's OK to them that the pond is polluted, so the girls give up the mission... and thus, mankind (and the peace of the town) is saved again.
- In a later episode, they manage to convince Nonoka of giving them raffle tickets for not helping her in her bread shop.
- Zombie Apocalypse: Played with. Kotoha makes a Halloween game out of it and gets quite a few townsfolk involved.
