“Myriad Colors Phantom World” (2016, Kyoto Animation) is a fantasy anime focused on comedy, slightly discussing philosophy, and what the world could look like if seeing the supernatural was a daily occurance.

Within this world an event happened to cause the way humans perceive reality to become altered, allowing them to not only view paranormal entities known as phantoms along with some newborn humans gaining powers. The show follows Haruhiko Ichijo (voiced by Hiro Shimono) and his fairy-like companion named Ruru (Azusa Tadokoro) as they take down malicious phantoms, while getting into bizarre situations in order to do so.

Something that the show does to entice the viewer is at the beginning of each episode it gives the audience a different theory or philosophy on the nature of humans before jumping into the episode. These small lessons relate to the episode, like how one episode talks about a PC crashing due to a loss of memory and the episode focuses on memory.

Along with the miniature lessons, the show also uses history to draw parallels between the phantom’s and the human’s supernatural abilities. One episode shows a trio of utility poles dancing in a limbo to emphasize that they’re stuck in the world. Ichijo tells his group that people used to dance on the mountain in order to honor the trees that were cut down and used for infrastructure.

Looking at the environment of the show it utilizes backgrounds well, having it be colorful and complementing the humans and the phantoms very well. The shading is very subtly colored differently, making the backdrops pop more than other animes.

As for character designs they are all unique in their own way. For example, one girl always wears a ponytail on the right side of her head with a blue ribbon. The color palette is also unique, being that there isn’t many dark tones in them, even with the line art being more of a deep purple and eyelashes being royal blue.

As for the designs of phantoms, there isn’t much to complain about, with phantoms tending to take a variety of forms. There are human-like variants that tend to be proportioned fairly well but scaled differently, like Ruru being only a few inches. 

While background characters are CG characters, they still blend in really well. Only if an audience focuses on one of them do they notice that they are CG. They are all fully colored instead of one basic shade that detracts away from the action.

As for some of the flaws this show has, one of them has to be that when characters interact with each other they tend to stay still, barely blinking or moving. Sometimes it looks like they’re not breathing. Only after an uncomfortable amount of time do they finally move. 

For the background music, they reuse a lot of the same songs and they tend to loop very noticeably, like when Ichijou is explaining something the music tends to be the same. 

Something that might be a turn off for some is that it’s very ecchi (lewd). There are many scenes that focus on body parts and the show uses sexual inuindios often. Another example of this lewd behavior is Ruru having a very loose mouth when it comes to the subject of vulgar matters, teasing Ichijou quite a bit about search histories and other stuff of the sort.

There are also a lot of situations in which the male protagonist gets unjustly punished for accidents that he wouldn’t be in if he were to be more careful. There was one scene in particular where they were trying to catch a peeping-tom UFO and the girls had to undress in order to do that. When Ichijou heard a commotion in the room he ran in and was thrown out, even though his intentions were pure.

Though this show is quite lewd, the ideas behind some of the plot points are fascinating and discuss many intriguing ideas. If someone wants to watch a show that’s equally philosophical and comedic, then this show is for them. However, if they’re not a fan of lewd humor they should look elsewhere.