Manga Adaptation by Silver Link
Streaming on HiDIVE

Premise

Three young girls form a group called ‘Colors’ to solve mysteries around town, make poop jokes, and battle their arch-nemesis Saitou the traffic cop.

Jel’s verdict: Passing Grade

The only thing this show needed to do to get a passing grade from me was to NOT be pedophile bait and thankfully Mitsuboshi Colors seems to be safe in that regard. Left to be taken at its innocent face value, it’s actually pretty adorable with some genuinely funny moments. The most memorable is probably the visual absurdity of three little girls attempting to fire an RPG at a police officer, but my favorite joke was more subtle: having the loud, obnoxious girl run into a bakery, disappear off camera for a few seconds, and then come out to declare in total deadpan “they yelled at me a lot” was comedy gold.

The adult characters play an important role in setting up this fun, safe atmosphere for the girls. The straight laced Saitou may seem annoyed on the surface, but you can tell he doesn’t mind indulging their games. It’s Pops that steals the show though, pulling the strings behind everything to make sure the girls are happy. Having caring grown-ups looking after the girls is probably the most satisfying part of the show. That is shockingly rare in anime if you think about it.

So that all sounds great, but is Mitsuboshi Colors worth watching? This season is jam packed with cute, chill shows that are sweet but lack much substance. I like them, but my attention span can only handle one or two at a time. So while I don’t have anything particularly negative to say about this episode, I also don’t think its compelling enough to make me want more. Depending on how the remaining shows pan out, I may give it one more episode if I have time.

Euri’s verdict: Not creepy!

Mitsuboshi Colors doesn’t, thankfully, appear to be an exploitative and gross show about young girls. In fact, it was kinda fun? The main trio are fairly standard, but the antics they get up to remind me a little of Ichigo Mashimaro, if you remember that old show. Also there’s a cat called Colonel Monochrome that looks like a panda, so it has that going for it.