Two cats, a subway and a hentai scene: Tainy's three-world Colmillo video (interview)

Director Pau Carreté was asked to interpret 'Colmillo' (Spanish for fang), a track built from three distinct blocks — Balvin and Miko, Miko's solo, and Jowell y Randy's ending — each demanding its own space within one narrative.

Split the video into the song's three blocks: black-and-white reality, colour fantasy, and a hentai-anime inner world, bound by a chance meeting of two cats.

Two cats lock glances in the street; their unrequited love is personified by a boy and girl in a black-and-white subway. Explosions — the girl lights a firecracker-shaped cigarette — break the scene into a colour fantasy world and then the inner worlds, rendered by anime studio Jumonji over two months, with a 3D figure by Glassworks shot via motion control. Cat masks were built by a Los Angeles workshop.

A three-block video matching the song's structure, delivered on a short post-production schedule; no viewership, chart or award figures appear in the material.

In a Curation Hour interview published in March 2024, director Pau Carreté walks through 'Colmillo', his video for Tainy's track featuring J Balvin, Young Miko and Jowell y Randy. He says the concept started from the song's name — colmillo, fang: two cats meet by chance in a street and lock glances, an unrequited love at first sight that the video personifies as a boy and a girl sitting in a subway car, two opposite spaces shot in black and white.

Carreté says he split the piece according to the song's three blocks, because each part changes notably: Balvin and Miko, Miko's solo, and Jowell y Randy's ending. Black and white carries reality — a boy holds up a grocery store with an ice cream and is chased by police — while the crossing of the cats' gazes opens an imaginary world in colour. The 90s-style raw look, he recalls, came organically from the sum of his references rather than any single source.

The turn to anime was non-negotiable: 'It was very clear from the beginning that we wanted a hentai scene; anime is a key element in the universe of Tainy,' he says in the interview. The hentai sequence took over two months with Jumonji Studio, a 3D figure was built with Glassworks from motion-control footage, and post-production ran in 'express mode' on a short schedule. Production companies CANADA and WeOwnTheCity carried the shoot.

The song's name gave the story its engine: fang, cats, a crossed glance — the metaphor does the narrative work.

Matching sections to the track's three blocks keeps each featured artist in a world of their own without breaking the film apart.

Black-and-white reality against colour fantasy gives the video a legible grammar for switching between worlds.

The anime sequence was treated as essential, not garnish — two months with Jumonji Studio to get it right.

Let the music's own structure draw the storyboard: when a track has distinct blocks, giving each block its own world turns a video into chapters without losing the thread.

The interview records the video as completed and released around the track's run with Tainy, J Balvin, Young Miko and Jowell y Randy. Carreté describes an ambitious idea brought down to budget — masks simplified mid-course, footage selected ruthlessly, post-production compressed — and says he was happy with the development thanks to the team. The material records no chart, viewership or award figures for the video.