User blog comment:Miskos3/Fairy Tail Episode 253: Tartaros arc: Silver Memories, Review/@comment-186.45.128.222-20151003142718/@comment-7418318-20151004065033

You can see this artistic use of colours that FTGM described very well in Elfenlied.

There you have vibrant and beautiful colours in the happy scenes and rather subdued colours in the not-so-happy scenes. Unless you really pay attention to it, you don't even notice it, but even so your mood is subtly influenced by it.

Elfenlied even got a reward for their use of colours IIRC. Either way it's a great anime and pretty much a must see for anyone who can stomach the extreme violence (and is over 18 years old!).

Of course it would't make sense to shit the colours back to full saturation for a short joke-scene like the ones with the Exceeds, just to avoid that kind of misunderstanding. But then Elfenlied doesn't really have in-battle jokes. Once a battle starts is serious from beginning to end. Jokes just come between the dramatic scenes, not in the middle of them.