FLCL

DESCRIPTION

CAST

ANIME ActionFLCL Progressive
MANGA ComedyFLCL
NOVEL ComedyFLCL

REVIEWS

• 

  bdubs

  76/100
  If you're the type that loves spontaneity, dumb jokes, and ridiculous plot, then this is definitely for you.

  

  FLCL or Fooly Cooly is a 6 episode OVA with a weird plot that's pretty hard to grasp at first, but I'll try to explain it to the best of my ability spoiler free. I remember watching Fooly Cooly as a kid on Toonami. This is a kind of coming of age story that symbolises the change from childhood to adulthood. In order to enjoy this anime, you have to not take it seriously. Don't try to examine every motive or every action because a lot of times it just won't have any reason. This is the type of anime to just sit back, relax, and buckle up because you're in for one hell of a ride.

  Plot

  FLCL is about a boy, Naota, who's boring life gets turned upside down upon meeting Haruhara Haruko via getting run over by her yellow vespa. Things go south from there. I really don't know how else to explain it, but let's just say a bunch of events happen that involves fighting robots and aliens. 6/10

  Characters

  The characters are...well...not your ordinary set of characters. We have the main character, Naota, who is an often cynical 12 year-old kid who feels everything in his life is boring. He is just a kid in this crazy world of Fooly Cooly. Samejima Mamimi is Naota's older brother's ex-girlfriend. She's constantly showing her affection to Naota and she symbolizes childhood. Haruhara Haruko is the catalyst of the entire anime. She's an energetic, random, and spontaneous girl who has an ulterior plan behind all this fuckery. She symbolizes adulthood. 7/10

  Music/Sound

  One of the strongest points of this anime is the sound. The soundtrack was provided by The Pillows. They did a fantastic job blending the music with the scenes and setting the mood. I still listen to the soundtrack to this day. The VA's were very good as well. I watched the English dub since it's what I've heard when I first watched it. 10/10

  Animation

  Someone people absolutely love Gainax animation. It was actually pretty good. There were a few scenes where the animation was just incredible in terms of fluidity and detail, but it was generally average for the most part. Some scenes were animated in such a ridiculous way that you know you shouldn't be taking it seriously. At one point in the first episode, there was an entire scene animated as a manga page. 7/10

  Personal Enjoyment

  Overall, this anime was a fun ride. It's not a masterpiece of an anime, but I would say it's definitely something everyone should watch, even just to have it in their list. The soundtrack is probably the best thing to come from this anime honestly. This anime isn't for everyone. If you're the type to take things seriously or analyze character motives or whatever, I suggest you not watch this. If you're the type that loves spontaneity, dumb jokes, and ridiculous plot, then this is definitely for you.

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• 

  planetJane

  100/100
  With "FLCL Progressive" on the horizon, there is no better time to look back on the original 2000 OVA.

  "You can't win the game until you swing the bat."
  -maxim

  There's not much a point to summarizing FLCL--pronounced, "Fooly Cooly". Either you have seen it, are going to see it, or have decided it's not of interest to you. Besides that, what literally happens in FLCL is only half the story; and the series is famously obtuse. FLCL has been, since its release, read as everything from a parody of Ganaix' own Neon Genesis Evangelion to a critique of Japan's low age of consent (yes really, look it up). FLCL is probably best understood as an anime that looks how puberty feels, and indeed on the longtail, the show hasn't persisted in cultural memory entire episodes or chunks at a time the way many more narratively straightforward anime have. What burns into the brain about FLCL is fragmented images--a yellow vespa, "Lunchtime!", "never knows best" scribbled in pencil on a cigarette, a Rickenbacker bass, the giant iron resting on the hillside, Naota's horn protrusions, eyebrows, just to name a few examples--plus knotty fan theories, and the soundtrack--courtesy of Japanese pop punk group The Pillows, and one of the best of its kind.

  That second point is especially funny, given that the character of Kamon seems like something of a jab at the very sort of person who'd dream up complex "explanations" for FLCL, and to tell the truth the idea of trying to solve the show does seem a bit like a lost cause, not because FLCL is devoid of meaning but for the exact opposite reason. In a way, it's a Rorschach Blot, FLCL has so much meaning--symbolism, allusion, and so on--that it's possible to read it in just about any way you want. Far from detracting from the series' quality, this is arguably what's let FLCL have such persistence. Turn it one way; it's the story that happens on the other side of a space opera, the natives of a planet being disrupted by the presence of Haruko, that hypothetical series' hero, bringing her fantastical weirdness to Earth. Turn it another; it's a psychosexual examination of Naota's coming of age, all the colorful gonzo nonsense merely being the medium through which that confusion is conveyed. Turn it a third; it's a surprisingly tragic story about a young boy who's manipulated into doing a pink-haired femme fatale's bidding in her quest to capture Atomsk for her own nefarious purposes. FLCL is all of these things simultaneously. Fiction is interpretive in general, but FLCL opens itself so willingly to so many possible interpretations, it has ended up meaning a lot to many people. Even in the official realm, the manga adaptation takes one tack (stripping away much of the comedy, and altering some key events, leaving a much bleaker story) and the novel another.

  Even if you strip all that away, though, you're left with a truly bizarre action-comedy romp that really has no peers. To say that the animation in FLCL is excellent is underselling it. FLCL's visual style draws from a plethora of influences both Japanese and western (check the Looney Tunes-esque slapstick, and the South Park homage in the penultimate episode) and plays with them for all they're worth. The soundtrack too, as mentioned, is just great stuff. Single-artist soundtracks are hard to pull off at the best of times, but The Pillows' straight-ahead rock n' roll works well with the series' more experimental visuals. The voice acting--both the original and the English dub--are great, and the latter in particular is often held up as one of the best of its kind. Reworking gags that relied on obscure Japanese pop cultural knowledge and replacing them with American ones (a reference to Cherio Pop becoming a gag about Crystal Pepsi is probably the most well-known of these) and choosing pitch-perfect VAs, with Kari Wahlgren as Haruko in particular being outstanding, though in a rarity for dubs there really aren't any weak links at all.

  Like a lot of people, I was fairly young when I first saw FLCL and it's tempting to--by turns--either try to strip all of its possible meanings away and present it as "purely" an aesthetic work of art, or to force it into a single interpretation, a single box. Again, to risk repeating the obvious, this is a show that has meant a lot to a lot of people. But even more than its sheer fun (and make no mistake, it is a real treat to watch even now), it is FLCL's openness to interpretation that's let it have such a legacy. For a show that never hit the same level of popularity as that other strange Gainax show people like to argue about, FLCL's fingerprints are all over modern anime. Detectable on everything from Gainax' own later Diebuster, Gurren Lagann, and Panty & Stocking. To Studio TRIGGER's grand debut Kill la Kill, to PUNCHLINE!'s whacked-out conspiracy rambling to Flip Flappers more polished (but no less weird) serial dimension-jumping take on the world story genre. And of course, because history repeats, we come to the thing I've been tiptoeing around this entire review.

  At the time of this writing we are just months away from FLCL Alternative and FLCL Progressive. Two sequel series-of-sorts that sees Haruko--but no other characters--return, and to judge by the trailers and by the episode of Progressive aired early as an April Fools' prank, these series lean again heavily on the same trick the manga pulled. Less definitive continuation, more alternate interpretation (and I have a feeling that this is why the initial branding of FLCL2 and FLCL3 has been downplayed since the subtitles have been adopted), an effort to recontextualize FLCL, to turn it inside-out, or to bring it into the present day. There is a frustrating, and, yet, entirely understandable, fog of anxiety cast over these continuations of the franchise name. FLCL is a lot like Haruko herself, it will enter your life for a brief time, fuck everything up, and then leave, leaving you to wonder just what happened and what to make of it. People, from the standard anime fan on up, have been sifting through FLCL's rubble for years. That sifting has led to plenty of great art in its own right, and it's for that reason that speaking solely for myself, I look forward to Alternative and Progressive. But, one thing's for sure, no matter how they turn out, the series' renaissance ensures a single very simple thing: the future is fooly cooly.

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• 

  Azureal

  91/100
  Somehow a wacky non-sense comedy and a substantial coming of age story with great characters at the exact same time.

  - I N T R O -
  FLCL is a series that's full to the brim with chaotic comedy, amazing action scenes, hidden metaphors and underlying themes.
  It's a coming of age story focusing on our protagonist Naota, just a normal ordinary sixth-grader living in an ordinary city where nothing exciting ever happens. Naota took it upon himself to look after everything his older brother Tasuku left when he went to America to play baseball, from from his top bunk bed to his ex-girlfriend Mamimi Samejima, who hasn't stopped clinging to Naota since Tasuku left.

  Little does Naota know, however, that his mundane existence is on the verge of being changed forever: enter Haruko Haruhara, a Vespa-riding, bass guitar-wielding, pink-haired psychopath whose first encounter with Naota leaves him with tire tracks on his back and a giant horn on his head. Though all he wants is some peace and quiet, when Haruko takes up residence at his parents' home, Naota finds himself dragged into the heart of the greatest battle for supremacy that Earth—and quite possibly the entire universe—has ever seen.

  - S T O R Y -
  FLCL tells a story that is a lot more clever and thought provoking than one would expect.
  Often requiring knowledge of the left and right brain and color perception, how the red represents aggression and anger, and how blue stands for calmness and wisdom.

  The main focus is the character development of Naota, his road to maturity.
  Growing up isn't the easiest thing, and this goes double for Naota. As he is surrounded by people who are older than him but lack the maturity that he has. He doesn't understand women and often confuses their signals.
  He tries his hardest to be taken seriously, but he feels alienated from both the adults in his life and his classmates, as he still isn't ready for the adult world, despite trying so hard to seem like one, but he also isn't a part of the other young people, because he's running away from his childhood despite secretly wishing to have one.

  Everyone has that someone that they look up to, and to Naota that's his older brother Tasuku, with his brother now gone to America. With his rolemodel gone, he now forces himself to grow up which puts a lot of pressure on and tires him.
  He pretends to be ignorant about other's problems, despite caring, and he even though he doesn't like sour drinks, he drinks them to appear more mature.
  He's trying to cast away a childhood he wants to have.
  The thing Naota has the most trouble with is his own feelings, he doesn't know how to deal with his own feelings.
  Throughout the series, the dialogue is filled with sexual innuendos which represent Naota's mind being assaulted with thoughts of sex (mainly because of Haruko). With no trusted adults to go to for help, his feelings of isolation only grow and grow.

  FLCL does have a plot besides character development, which is really Haruko's part.
  She is the one that actually progresses through the plot, but the main character we see is Naota.

  Medical Mechanica, a monolithic industrial corporation that makes a lot of robots has captured Atomsk, the Pirate King who is actually the most powerful space pirate in the universe.
  It is unclear what relations, if any, Haruko had with Atomsk, but one thing is for sure: She wants his powers and her current goal is to free him from Medical Mechanica's confinement by directly warping robots randomly out of N.O. channels. To do this she needs brains that matches the proper signals, so she comes to Earth in hopes of finding someone.

  - C H A R A C T E R S -
  Each and every FLCL character is not what they seem. All of them face their demons and struggle with something, or have hidden objectives.

  Mamimi, Tasuku's ex-girlfriend is using Naota to vent her sexual frusturations and is a severely depressed chain-smoker. Mamimi can be seen to lack control over her life or willpower, hence the near-constant smoking and child-like reliance on others, whether it'd be Naota or his older brother Tasuku. This could also explain why she loves taking care of things that are weak-willed, which she leaves (or which escape, like Ta-kun, the black kitten) when they start to show independence.

  Eri Ninamori is much like Naota, with the exception that she's a bit more selfish.
  She projects a proper, even slightly stuck-up personality, and conceals personal information to an almost obsessive degree; she does not even let her classmates know that she needs corrective lenses, instead wearing contacts while at school. Even with her class president status, however, Eri isn't above breaking the rules to get what she wants. She rigs the voting during the casting for the school play in order to get the lead role and have Naota cast opposite her, which (along with letting him see her wearing glasses) hints at her crush on Naota. Other hints are her expressed dislike of Mamimi and a final scene with Naota by a vending machine that mirrors Mamimi and Naota's early-series interactions. Ninamori is highly intelligent, if a little jaded. Much like Naota, Ninamori attempts to act mature

  Mentioning anything about Haruko except that she's completely nuts would be a big spoiler.

  - A N I M A T I O N & OST -
  The animation was extremely fluid and gorgeous, it really sets the right atmosphere for the show. It's full of color and energy.
  The OST is probably one of the best I've heard in anime, the western inspired indie rock in FLCL fits perfectly and the only one we have to thank for that is The Pillows, an amazing band that to lend it's talent to FLCL's production.

  - O V E R A L L -
  FLCL is a great series, a coming of age story with a lot of energy and chaotic comedy that also has underlying themes about growing up and sexual frusturation.
  It's a lot of content packed into just 6 episodes but it manages to convey everything perfectly without feeling rushed.

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