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A shapeshifting trope without an actual change in shape, this is when a character's transformation to a new form is indicated by a change in hair and clothing color, which is meant to symbolize the power. Sometimes, character is just shining with one-colored aura and sometimes, all his color temporary changes into that one. It's clear indicator for the audience that, that character is now getting stronger. And it looks damn cool.

It very often overlaps with Power Glows, especially in Super Robot shows, but there are cases of one that does not require the another.

May be a visual indication of Heroic RRoD, Super Mode, or Turns Red. Compare with Volcanic Veins, Tron Lines, Battle Aura, Power Tattoo, Mark of the Beast, Marked Change, Power Dyes Your Hair and Golden Super Mode. See also Colour-Coded for Your Convenience and Convenient Color Change. Contrast Gray Is Useless and No Power, No Color.


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • GaoGaiGar turns green whenever it uses Hell And Heaven and gold when using Goldion Hammer. Mechas affected by THE POWER shine orange. Gai himself has Hyper Mode, which turns all his body armor, as well as his hair, gold.
  • Heroman turns red whenever he enters Rage Mode. So does Joey.
  • Digimon plays with this. Almost all digimon have a far more drastic transformation when they get stronger. However, it is not uncommon for digimon to have slide evolutions, which tend to be similar in power but with different colors and moralities, usually caused by either a virus or purifying an evil digimon. That being said, there are some digimon who do evolve like this. For instance, Gotsumon will often evolve into Icemon, which in turn, evolves into Meteormon, all of them recolors made of different materials. Meramon may evolve into BlueMeramon, a slightly more powerful blue variant.
  • When Canti combines with Naota, it turns red. Naota also turns red after temporarily absorbing Atomsk's powers.
  • In Mobile Fighter G Gundam, powerful warriors turn themselves and their mecha gold when they use their most powerful attacks.
    • Mobile Suit Gundam 00 has the Trans-Am system, which triples the machine's abilities while also turning it bright red.
  • Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann uses it too, a few times.
  • Lyrical Nanoha:
  • One Piece:
    • When Luffy uses Gear 2nd, his skin color becomes pink, due to all the blood being pumped rapidly through his body.
    • Gear 5 turns Luffy's clothes and hair pure white.
  • Naruto's eponymous character has three (so far, anyway). His eyes are blue in the normal mode, turn red in Super Mode No. 1, and Orange in Super Mode No. 2. His whole body turns gold and black in Super Mode No. 3.
    • Justified when Lee and Guy open their Gates. The third gate turns their skin red due to the increased blood flow; the seventh gate causes them to generate a green aura as their sweat immediately evaporates from their skin; and the eighth gate turns the aura red from their blood literally boiling in their veins, with their body eventually turning black as it cooks itself.
  • In Rebuild of Evangelion, Evas that undergo pseudo-evolution due to consuming an Angel turn into a glowing, white Energy Being. Additionally, Unit 01's eyes and neon lights (both green) turn red, its mouth emits a red glow and its skin a yellowish glow when it's on the verge of reaching pseudo-evolved state; Unit 13 just straight skipped to the Energy Being phase. In any case, an Eva undergoing these changes is a major Mass "Oh, Crap!" - even to those who haven't seen the original series. And as it turns out, for good reason.
    • In the third movie, Eva Mark.09 turns dark gray-brown with a hint of red when it reverts to its Adams' Vessel state and grows a new head with ten glowing red eyes instead of the mechanical-looking Unit 00 lookalike it had.
  • Dragon Ball:
  • On Yu-Gi-Oh!, the blue Obelisk the Tormentor glows red when his controller sacrifices two other monsters to power him up.
  • In Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds, Yusei turns gold when he uses Over Top Clear Mind.
  • Kaito Tenjo from Yu-Gi-Oh! ZEXAL engages in Photon Mode whenever he duels, turning all his clothes completely white.
  • In YuYu Hakusho, Toguro turns dark purple when he uses 100% of his power.
  • In Saint Seiya, after the Asgard arc, the Bronze Saints experience this with their Cloths turning an awesome shade of Gold (most of the time with a Theme Music Power-Up) when they properly use their full powers. A Taking Up the Mantle for The Atoner Gold Saints.
  • Various Pretty Cure girls get to change colors from time to time with their Super Modes. The second Futari wa Pretty Cure MaX Heart movie had the girls turn gold, the Yes! Pretty Cure 5 GO!GO! movie had Shining Dream's form be a subdued pink and the Super Silhouette forms in HeartCatch Pretty Cure! are extremely subdued in color to the point where it's almost completely white.
  • Takao Saito's manga The Shadowman stars a young man who was exposed to a flawed genetic experiment which gave him superhuman physical abilities after a period of time away from direct sunlight. As a side-effect, while powered-up, he has solid ink-black skin and stark white hair. He dons a slightly outlandish costume, as well, which may be gilding the lily a bit.
  • Transformers: Robots in Disguise:
    • The Autobot Brothers undergo this whenever they "supercharge". Prowl goes from white to blue, X-Brawn goes from green to white and Side Burn goes from blue to red.
    • Megatron's body is purple. When he is reborn as the more powerful Galvatron, it turns white.
  • In Yohane the Parhelion -SUNSHINE in the MIRROR-, Ruby can become an Equippable Ally by fusing with her sister Dia's Cool Bike. Upon doing so, Dia's suit and her bike transform from a dark red to a brilliant glowing crimson red, and the black highlights light up with glowing green Tron Lines.

    Comic Books 
  • The Incredible Hulk: When Bruce Banner turns into the Hulk, his body changes color to green, or sometimes gray. Jen Walters' She-Hulk turns green as well (and has occasionally gone gray), while Rick Jones as A-Bomb turns blue, Hulk's son Skaar turns into a gray shade of green (so he is often gray or green, depending on the colorist), and Red Hulk and Red She-Hulk turn red.
  • New Mutants: When Sunspot uses his mutant power to absorb sunlight, his entire body turns pitch black and is surrounded with a yellow glow. This is explained as him draining the 'ambient light' from his skin.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics):
    • Like in the games, Sonic's fur turns gold when he transforms into Super Sonic.
    • Knuckles' fur turns green after he evolves into Chaos Knuckles.
    • Before becoming Scourge, Evil-Sonic had blue fur just like Sonic. After exposure to the Master Emerald, his fur turned green and he gained a boost in strength and stamina. He also had a super state of his own, which turns his fur purple.

    Films — Live-Action 

    Live-Action TV 
  • The Ultra Series has this trope in spades.
    • Whenever Ultraman Taro uses his Storium Beam, he raises his arms into the air and briefly goes through all the colours of the rainbow while drawing in energy.
      "STORIUM KOHSEN!" VOOOOOORP [cue the beam]
    • Ultraman Tiga changes colour when he changes type. It should be noted that Tiga's Multi Type bears a variety of colours. If he changes to his Power Type, he turns red, while in Sky Type his colours are predominantly purple. If he assumes his Glitter Type, which is his strongest form, he becomes gold.
    • Ultraman Dyna continues this theme. His Miracle Type state involves him assuming a white and sky blue colour, while his Strong Type features a more red-based colour scheme.
    • Ultraman Cosmos takes this a step further by assigning different emotions to Cosmos's Forms. When Cosmos is in his default blue Luna Form, he tries to end fights peacefully and spare his opponents. When he has no choice or is fighting a blatantly-evil foe, he literally Turns Red and assumes his Corona Form. In this form, he's far more willing to dish out some damage.
  • Very common with modern Kamen Riders, which tend to be Swiss-Army Heroes with different forms that are Color-Coded for Your Convenience. A Super Mode can further set itself apart by being in a color that none of the lesser forms use, sometimes recoloring the entire suit including the parts that usually stay the same. (And just to keep the list relatively short, we're only listing upgrades, not all alternate forms.)
    • Kamen Rider Stronger was the first Kamen Rider to get a Super Mode, and this involved part of his chestplate and the horns on his helmet turning silver.
    • Kamen Rider Kuuga started the tradition of being a Swiss-Army Hero with different-colored forms.note  His strongest forms, Amazing Mighty Kuuga and Ultimate Kuuga, lose the colors of the prior forms and are instead black.
    • Kamen Rider Agito usually sports silver-and-gold armor, but Burning Agito is red and Shining Agito is primarily white.
    • In Kamen Rider 555, the red-and-black Kamen Rider Faiz goes all-black with white accents for Accel Form and all-red with black accents for Blaster Form.
    • Kamen Rider Blade's armor is blue and silver, but his Jack Form starts turning the silver parts gold and his King Form completely overhauls the color scheme to black and gold, with only some blue accents. In the same series, Chalice goes from primarily black to primarily red in his Wild form. When Garren and Leangle finally get their own King Forms around 20 years later (Garren in Kamen Rider Outsiders, Leangle in an anniversary stage show), they follow Blade's lead and also switch their [color]-and-silver schemes (red for Garren and green for Leangle) for black-and-gold with colored accents.
    • Kamen Rider Hibiki's Hibiki Kurenai ("Crimson Hibiki") form is just his normal form, but going from purple to red.
    • Kamen Rider Kiva is primarily a mix of red, black, and silver; but his Emperor Form switches it up to be mainly red and gold.
    • Kamen Rider Decade's normal armor is pink, black, and white, but his Complete Form changes the color balance to be mainly black and silver with just a little pink trim.
    • In Kamen Rider Double:
      • Downplayed by Double himself. He has a half-and-half suit, with each half able to be swapped for different colors and powers. His FangJoker form uses a new white Fang half to go with the existing black Joker half — only half the suit may have a new color, but the striking black-and-white color scheme achieves the same effect.
      • Kamen Rider Accel starts out as red, then gets a Super Mode that turns him blue (after briefly turning yellow as part of a traffic-light motif). In the post-series movie, he gets another upgrade that's gold / yellow.
    • While Kamen Rider OOO's suit is mainly black with colored designs on it regardless of form, the undersuit for his PuToTyra Super Mode is white instead, and an alternate Super Mode introduced in a movie (Super TaToBa) reverses the colors so that it has black trim on a colored suit.
    • Kamen Rider Fourze normally has a white suit in his Base States form, with his more powerful forms in silver for Magnet States and blue in Cosmic States.
    • Kamen Rider Wizard's base "Style" forms are black with colored gems. Dragon Styles reverse this, featuring the colors more prominently than the black. Infinity Style and later Infinity Dragon Style turn him silver, and Infinity Dragon Gold Mode turns him gold.
    • Kamen Rider Gaim's Super Mode, Kiwami Arms, changes his suit from blue-and-orange to white.
    • Kamen Rider Ghost is mainly black with orange accents by default. An upgrade to that form, Toucon Boost, turns him mostly red. His next major upgrade, Grateful, returns to the black-with-colored-accents scheme, but his late-series Mugen Super Mode is white.
    • Kamen Rider Ex-Aid goes from pink (Action Gamer) to mint green and orange (Double Action Gamer) to gold (Muteki Gamer).
    • Kamen Rider Build generally switches colors depending on the powerset he's using the same way Double does, but usually defaults to one that's red and blue. Using a "Hazard" Superpowered Evil Side upgrade drains all color from the suit and turns it pure black. His Super Mode is white, with blue-and-red trim (in the same pattern as the original form).
    • Kamen Rider Zi-O has more than one Super Mode that decks him out in Bling of War and covers him in gold.
    • Kamen Rider Zero-One's MetalCluster Hopper diverges from the black-and-yellow color scheme that most of his forms have by being pure silver with only a few yellow accents.
    • Kamen Rider Saber, rather than getting a completely redesigned suit for his Xross Saber Super Mode, just has his base form suit repainted with a Celestial Body pattern (though this does extend to any and all alternate forms that build off of that base). Word of God is that it's a reference to Stronger, who similarly had some color changes instead of a total redesign.
    • The Riders in Kamen Rider Geats generally put variously-colored armor elements over a black undersuit in their different forms, but Geats' Super Mode Geats IX is instead pure white with red accents and only a black patch around the midsection.
  • Power Rangers Megaforce: Jake is the only Ranger who changes colors in Super Mega Mode going from black to green. This is due to the fact that his Green Ranger suit is actually from a different Sentai series than the one the first season of Megaforce was adapting. Jake himself actually lampshades this and asks why he's got the wrong color, Gosei tries to explain it and states it's a "simple" reason... Before getting interrupted.
  • Super Sentai usually averts this trope, as a Red Ranger's Super Mode normally adds decoration to the suit but keeps him red. But there are a few exceptions:

    Video Games 
  • In Vindictus, the transformations. No matter what your character looked like before, dark knights have a black with red motif, and paladins have a white with blue one. The exception is certain armor sets, which are modeled after the appearance of the transformations and don't visually change much.
  • Super Sonic and the other Super Mode characters from Sonic the Hedgehog, with all hedgehog characters (except for Amy Rose) like Sonic, Shadow, and Silver transforming their fur a golden yellow.
    • With the two notable exceptions of Tails and Knuckles, who either just glow or gain auras around themselves. In Sonic 3 & Knuckles they would glow between their normal colors and a lighter shade when they went super but this was dropped when they canonically achieved a super state in Sonic Heroes. Mighty the Armadillo and Ray the Flying Squirrel, would obtain the same states as Knuckles and Tails in Sonic Mania. Knuckles, Tails, and Amy Rose can also retroactively enter similar states in Sonic Origins and Sonic Superstars.
    • When Blaze the Cat uses the power of the seven Sol Emeralds in Sonic Rush and Sonic Rush Adventure, it not only changes her fur color (going from lavender to pink as Burning Blaze) but even her coat changes colors, going from purple to red.
    • Sonic Superstars introduces a new super form for Trip the Sungazer, where she transforms from a smaller orange and red scaled sungazer lizard into a giant golden scaled dragon.
  • Biotics in the Mass Effect saga tend to glow blue when using powers or using amazing Asari biotic acrobatics.
  • In Super Robot Wars Judgment, Akito and Gai's mechas turn gold when they use their team-up attack.
  • Grabbing an invincibility star, causes Mario to flash a rainbow of colours until the effect wears off.
    • Several other powerups change the color of Mario's shirt and overalls including Fire (red on white), Ice (red on light blue), and Flying (black on red). Luigi swaps out the red in these transformations for green but otherwise the same applies for him.
  • A variation of this: in Caster, the protagonist appears in a certain colour depending on the currently selected spell.
  • In The Legend of Zelda, there is a magic ring that reduces damage. It also changes Link's clothes from green to light blue. An even better ring makes them red. Due to a programming quirk (shared palettes), the merchant's and some other character's clothes also change color to match, as will some of the trim on Link's equipment.
    • In Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, the shield spell turns you red. As above, anything that's the same shade of green as your tunic will change with you, even undergoing the very same flicker!
    • In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, you get the Zora Tunic that lets you breathe underwater and the Goron Tunic that lets you withstand heat (though super-hot things like standing in lava will just hurt you less.) And again, other things of the same color are subject to the glitch (Aveil's clothes and lipstick will change with your tunic. Her Majora's Mask appearance and remakes of OOT for more modern systems have her tunic and lipstick as always red.)
    • In Majora's Mask, when Link becomes the Fierce Deity, he doesn't just get a new color scheme, but an elaborate new outfit, with armor, a BFS, and Facial Markings. This has been Link's strongest transformation so far.
  • The Trance ability in Final Fantasy IX. Zidane's skin (or fur, since he looks like a monkey) changes to pink. Vivi's clothes change to white. Steiner's armor gets green details. Freya's clothes change to purple. Quina's skin color changes to black. Eiko gets white clothing and yellow hair. Scarlet Head Amarant becomes Purple Head Amarant. Garnet gets pink skin and yellow hair and clothes. Kuja's purple robes and silver hair both turn red. Unlike the other examples, this is not a good thing. Unlike other examples, the characters also undergo costume alterations in addition to color alterations, some minor (Vivi's hat straightens out, Steiner gets a faceplate for his helmet, the wings on Eiko's costume grow), some major (Amarant and Zidane lose their clothes entirely, while Freya's outfit upgrades into a full set of plate armor, including, gauntlets, greaves, and a face-concealing helmet).
  • The bosses in The Simpsons, after enough hits.
  • In Kid Icarus (1986), Pit changes colors as he levels up.
  • Princess Shroob from Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time literally Turns Red halfway through the battle, increasing the speed and frequency of her attacks.
  • Dante and Firebrand do this as Hypers in Marvel vs. Capcom 3.
  • In Mighty Bomb Jack, Jack turns blue, orange and green with increasing levels of Mighty Power.
  • As of an update to Skullgirls Encore, Marie changes to a backer-submitted alternate palette when encountered on Nightmare difficulty of Arcade mode or as Marie 300% in Squigly's joke story mode.
  • In the video game for Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, (both the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis versions), Cyclopsis will turn gold when he powers up to his second form.
  • In Breath of Fire III, Ryuu's ultimate dragon form, the Kaiser, simply turns him gold while pumping up his stats and giving him new powers in addition to the Skills he already knew.
  • Jack Frost, the cute blue-and-white Mascot Mook of the Shin Megami Tensei series, can permanently transform into the menacing Black Frost through The Power of Hate. You can actually see this happen in Devil Survivor, and then recruit him into your party. And if you then take the Demon Overlord ending, you see this made him powerful enough to become your Dragon.
  • The block gun you get in Antichamber changes color as you upgrade it with new abilities. As the gun gets more powerful, the color goes hotter, culminating in red.
  • DmC: Devil May Cry: Dante's Devil Trigger form turns his hair white and his black coat red.
  • Kirby's Adventure: Kirby's pink skin becomes a beige-peach color when he obtains a copy ability; obtaining Ice and Freeze, meanwhile, turn his skin light blue. The only other change to his appearance is that his sprite becomes slightly wider, but it's difficult to notice.

    Web Comics 

    Web Videos 
  • When The Irate Gamer powers up using his sword, his shirt changes from blue to red.
  • In No Evil, taking up the Red Tezcatlipoca, which gives fiery powers, burns the spirit's fur or feathers: Xipetotec's feathers go from glossy to a matte black, and Kajartoq's fur goes from a vibrant red to a sooty grey.

    Western Animation 

    Real Life 
  • Humboldt squid turn red when angry.

Alternative Title(s): Powerup Full Colour Change

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