Chris Colorado

Lore & Background

Chris Colorado takes place on an apocalyptic future Earth after a data-processing software bug prevents detection of a meteorite, causing The Great Crash that destroys nearly all life. Survivors form The World Federation, but a dictator named Thanatos, wearing a helmet and using an army of cyborgs called Thanors, starts The Mega War and takes control of Europe. The Centurions of Freedom, led by Commander Richard Julian, fight back, but Thanatos retreats to the ruins of Glorious City, where a black liquid called Dark Torrent from the meteorite allows him to recruit new Thanors.

Reader's Guide

The series follows Captain Chris Colorado, a former soldier recruited by Commander Julian, who reveals Chris is the son of William-Erwin Krantz, a Centurion who infiltrated Thanatos's army but went missing and is presumed a traitor. Chris accepts the role of primary secret agent to uncover the truth about his father and the secret behind The Great Crash. The show explores themes of identity, loyalty, and redemption, with Chris aided by his childhood friend Chippowok and others. Despite a low DVD release rate (only one DVD with the first four episodes in France), the series gained international broadcast on channels such as Toonami in the UK and various networks in Europe and Australia.

Did You Know?

• Each episode is approximately 26 minutes long.
• DVD copies of the show are almost impossible to find due to a very low release rate.
• The series aired on Toonami in the United Kingdom from 2002 to 2004.
• The main character Chris Colorado is a former lawyer and scientist, and has a fear of rats.

Production & Broadcast History

Chris Colorado is a French animated television series that premiered on Canal+ in France on December 18, 2000, before finding a wider audience on France 3 and becoming a regular fixture on the Mangas channel. The show comprises 26 episodes, each running roughly 26 minutes, and was developed by a creative team of Thibaut Chatel, Franck Bertrand, and Jacqueline Monsigny. Its production involved a notable coalition of studios and broadcasters—AB Productions, Studio Animage, Canal+, France 3, and Mediaset—with additional support from the Centre National de la Cinematographie. The original score was composed by Fabrice Aboulker. Despite its multi-platform broadcast history, the series has become remarkably difficult for collectors to obtain on home video. Physical DVD releases saw an extremely limited print run, and to this day only a single disc containing the first four episodes was ever issued in France, making the remainder of the series nearly impossible to find outside of digital or broadcast sources.

Apocalyptic World-Building

Set on a future Earth scarred by catastrophe, the series opens with a harrowing origin story: a flaw in a data-processing system blinds humanity to an incoming meteorite, and the resulting impact obliterates nearly all life in an event the survivors call The Great Crash. In the aftermath, scattered groups of survivors coalesce into a unified political body known as The World Federation, and for several decades a fragile peace holds. That equilibrium shatters when a faceless dictator named Thanatos—always hidden behind a helmet—raises an army of brainwashed, surgically altered cyborgs called Thanors and ignites The Mega War, seizing control of Europe. A resistance force called the Centurions of Freedom, under Commander Richard Julian, ultimately defeats him, but Thanatos retreats into the ruins of Glorious City, Earth's former world capital. There, a strange black substance left by the meteorite, dubbed Dark Torrent, allows him to recruit a fresh army from the city's remaining inhabitants, setting the stage for an endless skirmish against the Federation.

Chris & the Supporting Cast

The protagonist is a capable but world-weary former soldier who holds a doctorate in law and science, is an expert pilot and martial artist, and carries an oddly specific fear of rats. His military career was ended not by defeat but by a conspiracy: a cabal of senior officers, terrified he might betray the Federation the way his father allegedly did, fabricated evidence of stolen top-secret plans and forced his discharge. He has since lived in seclusion at his grandfather Samuel's home at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, where his closest companion is Chippowok, a Hopi Apache who saved Chris as a boy and refuses to let anyone use his birth name, Heart of Thunder. On the other side of the conflict, Commander Richard Julian—now the elected leader of the World Federation, headquartered in Chichen Itza—serves as Chris's handler. Julian's secretary, Rebecca Wong, is a former political extremist from the disbanded Steel Axe faction whose arms were replaced with robotic implants after an injury; she initially clashes with Chris but gradually warms to him.

The Central Mystery & Narrative Arc

The narrative engine of the series is a layered conspiracy that pulls Chris from reluctant bystander into the front lines of a secret war. Commander Julian approaches him with a revelation that upends everything Chris thought he knew: he is the son of William-Erwin Krantz, a celebrated Centurion of Freedom who was sent to infiltrate Thanatos's ranks and gather intelligence but vanished, and was widely—wrongly, as it turns out—condemned as a traitor. Chris, who has spent his life carrying that stigma, agrees to serve as Julian's primary covert operative, driven less by patriotism than by an urgent need to uncover what really happened to his father. As he moves through increasingly perilous missions, encounters with enigmatic figures peel back layers of deception, exposing not only the truth about his family but a far more disturbing secret buried at the very heart of The Great Crash itself. In a twist that reframes the entire cast, Julian's daughter Jenifer is revealed to be Victoria Krantz, Chris's own sister, now living under a new identity.

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