Parappa is a 2D character, paper-thin like a puppet dog; created in a bright and colorful cartoony art style, he looks quite playful and endearing. He most often wears a red beanie with a frog logo, blue T-shirt, baggy pants, and blue sneakers.

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His personal motto is "I gotta believe!" expressed in an energetic attitude. He often embarks on quirky adventures to impress his crush, Sunny Funny, a daisy-like character, while learning rather didactic life lessons along the way.

 

Parappa the Rapper gave rhythm gaming its notoriety with its quirky mechanic of "call and response," in which players had to hit the right notes according to the rhythm of the song, to follow some wacky rapping given by various mentors. The levels themselves are based around specific scenarios, such as Parappa accidentally crashing his father's car which causes him to decide to work at a flea market to get money to pay it off.

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There was even a Parappa the Rapper anime! It was created by J.C.  Staff, one of the most important Japanese animation studios, being directed by Hiroaki Sakurai. It was broadcast on Fuji TV, a network whose target demographic includes young children; much like the games themselves. While the series did maintain much of the humor found in the video games, it also expanded heavily on the universe and characters, going much deeper into just who they were.

It kept the colorful, paper-cutout aesthetic that the games were famous for but adapted it for traditional 2D animation. Where the games demanded somewhat constant input in the form of rhythm-based challenges, the show doesn’t demand much more than simply feeling Parappa’s life.

It is a very charming anime from the early 2000s and evidence of how video games were starting to influence on other media. Also, an example of the cultural wake left by the Parappa the Rapper franchise because it defined the rhythm game genre and today remains many previous gamers' favorite for reasons of nostalgia.