There is no tagline random enough to be appropriate here
First off, thanks to Adult Swim, who shows this thing often enough I’ve rewatched plenty of times without actually buying it. It’s on right now, in fact.
A couple years after the end of the magnum opus Evangelion and its subsequent movie sequels, Gainax teamed up with Production IG to put together another “tour de force,” as some people are wont to call such things. It’s no Eva, that’s for sure. But it’s hard to compare the two, or to compare to anything else. But if you’re ready to stop fucking around and have your mind blown, you should try out FLCL, aka Furikuri, aka Fooly Cooly.
Story
Any two people might disagree on what the story is actually about, but you can definitely say this: It concerns Naota, a 12-year-old boy who lives in a town where “nothing interesting ever happens” but for some reason has a giant iron in the middle of it. His older brother is a baseball player living in the USA, and his brother’s possibly-pyromaniac homeless girlfriend Mamimi has projected her misplaced feelings onto him. He seems to lack any real connection to his friends at school his own age, or to his father, a baker and sometime-publisher of subversive political pamphlets. One day, he’s run over by a girl on a Vespa carrying a Rickenbacker bass guitar with what appears to be a chainsaw motor in it, and then robots start coming out of his head.
What?
Exactly.
It’s not incredibly important what the superficial elements of the highly elastic “plot” are. The story works on three levels: One, the surface sci-fi story of space pirates, giant robots, and conspiracies. Two, a brilliant parody of not only Evangelion’s thick and twisted plot, but epic anime as a whole. And three, the primary story that’s not so much a coming-of-age tale as an honest take on the uncomfortable process of puberty.
FLCL switches its tone as often as it switches scenes. After laughing out loud or just reeling in confusion or excitement, you can just as easily find yourself touched by a sad moment or weirded out by incredibly dark surrealism.
Peppered throughout are tons of references to pop culture, other animes (from Eva to Lupin III), John Woo movies, DVD commentary tracks, and who knows what else. You’ll miss a lot of it the first time as you try desperately to get a hold of the plot.
Characters
The one thing that stands out to me about the characters is the complete lack of anime archetypes. Eva bent those to their breaking point, FLCL just tossed them out the window to begin with. While early on you might expect the surly Naota to resemble his corresponding Eva character Shinji, or other young giant-robot protagonists like Eureka 7’s Renton, he’ll consistently surprise you with his realistic mix of maturity and childishness. Gainax cleverly uses the show’s near-constant warping of reality to make him that much more believable as the point of sanity in the middle.
Mamimi is a weird girl who seems to wander through life in a Mister-Magoo haze, sometimes requiring Naota’s protection but never slipping into that traditional role. Haruko Haruhara is appropriately crazy but deeper than she seems at first. Her motivations are unclear, and maybe she has her own problems, but it’s all part of the series’ delicious mindfuck. Even characters that seem incidental at first (and by that I mean the first viewing of the series), like the mayor’s daughter Ninamori or the eyebrow-obsessed space captain, are complex creations — all revealed to be in various stages of immaturity.
Animation
Did Gainax and Production I.G. set out to make the most stylish and technically advanced anime ever produced? Some interviews I’ve seen suggest so, but I think the likely motivation for that has something to do with Gainax’s unending dedication to fanservice. Remember — it’s not necessarily all panty shots (although there’s no shortage…). Think overblown action, extended transformation scenes, etc. In other words, eye candy, and this show is full of it. You can easily watch any given episode 3 or 4 times before catching everything that happens, and I’m not even talking details. It’s a fast paced, all-out visual assault that leaves you confused, hopped up, and giddy.
The visual style, much like the narrative, varies widely even from second to nerve-shattering second. There’s standard high-quality action-anime style, “super-deformed” comedic caricatures, and even whole scenes made to look like moving manga pages. One scene even borrows the South Park cut-paper style uncannily. At least half of every episode is a “camera” angle you’ve probably never seen before. The complete abandonment of expectations is part of what makes this show such a jaw-dropper.
Dub
I’ve never really thought of a dub as a “make or break” point for a show. Especially in this day and age. If you don’t like it, switch your DVD audio to Japanese and read away. But in such a visually rich show, I’d hate to be reading subtitles. Not to mention the dialog rushes by at the same frantic pace as the animation, and depends greatly on wordplay and even the sound of the words. So a dub is not only a challenge (un-dub-able, you could almost say), it’s an art in itself. Fortunately, FLCL’s dub is far and away one of the best ever made. It’s dead-on, it retains the bizarro-world sense of humor, and it flies by at rapid pace. Just check out the “explanation” of the series’ name in episode one’s manga dinner scene for evidence.
Music & Credits
FLCL has no opening credits, and thankfully so. It works for some shows, and this is one of them. I just can’t imagine it with some overblown animation with the characters zooming by and posing. What it does have is both end credit and in-show (you can hardly call it “incidental”) music by veteran Japanese indie-pop group The Pillows. Their music is so tightly integrated with the show it’s inextricable, creating a crazed rock and roll aesthetic. It doesn’t hurt that their songs are fantastic, somewhere in the neighborhood of Cheap Trick, Guided By Voices, Big Star, and early REM. You’ll never hear a presentation quite like this one, and you’ll never see closing credits quite like the stop-motion scooter either.
Episode Highlights
I think “Marquis de Carabas” (Episode 4 if I’m not mistaken), from the beginning to the final line, is one of the real triumphs of the show. Other than Episode 5’s constant references to “swinging the bat,” which is a lot more obvious, Fooly Cooly’s wild doublespeak is at its apex here. It’s also the only time that Haruko “happens” to someone other than Naota — in this case, the mayor’s daughter. Naota’s dad is a priceless pile of doubletakes.
“She ran her over? The mayor’s daughter?”
“That’s when she started feeling sick.”
“Oh nooooooooo!”
Ninamori and Naota’s aching climactic argument in school makes me think that the writers really have a handle on (or at least a solid memory of) what it’s like to grow up.
Bottom Line
Almost 8 years after the fact, not only is FLCL still a unique animal, it hasn’t been touched technically either. There’s nothing else remotely like it in terms of animation, storytelling methods, or sheer force of personality. It’s one of my all-time favorites, and I seem incapable of getting tired of re-watching it. So once again, hats off to Adult Swim for letting me do just that again.
