Anime Retrospect: FLCL

Where the hell were the robots and magic guitars when I was going through adolescence?


In October of 1995, Studio Gainax unleashed upon the world an anime series that changed everything. It was a masterpiece whose influence can be found in almost any anime series made since its release, and even today is considered required viewing for even casual anime aficionados. That series was Neon Genesis Evangelion.

It's almost impossible to overstate the influence Evangelion had on the art of animation in Japan. The difference it made is far from subtle. You can see it just by comparing any given series made before it with any given series made after it. For example, take the work of Rumiko Takahashi, a legend in her own right and creator of several beloved anime series. All of her characters are well-designed and recognizable, but the style of the drawings makes a noticeable shift after Eva:

More angular faces, narrower eyes, deeper color, more intricate shading... these are all the results of being born in the wake of Eva. And the artwork is just the beginning. Story, pacing, characters, music, and even opening title sequences have all been influenced by the example of Eva as well. It set the standard in just about every way possible.

Now, is Evangelion the best anime of all time? I think most people would say no. It definitely had its drawbacks - most notably the final two episodes, notorious for being confusing, visually bland, and lacking in resolution. And the formula has been toyed with and improved over time. But still, at the time of its release, Neon Genesis Evangelion was the most incredible thing that anime viewers had ever seen. Studio Gainax, or so the legend goes, was so burned out after finishing The End of Evangelion  (the full-length movie that brought the series to a close) that they decided to follow it up by working on something fun and not-so-serious... a breather series to help them unwind and enjoy themselves.

So what does it say about Studio Gainax that the result is also considered one of the finest animes ever made?

In April of 2000, Gainax released the first episode of a little six-part mindfuck known as FLCL. The title (pronounced "fooly cooly", or "furi kuri" in the Japanese dialect) is meaningless gibberish, though many insist that it's a slang term for groping a woman. That's actually not the case, but considering the content of the series I can kind of understand the confusion. The series is the story of Naota Nandaba, a 12-year-old boy living in a small town called Mabase where "nothing amazing happens" and "everything is ordinary". But then a mysterious woman on a Vespa hits him with a bass guitar and robots start popping out of his head. And then things get weird.

This is exactly what it looks like.

This is a series that runs on madness... madness and phallic imagery, but mostly madness. Any attempts to fully understand the plot will inevitably end with throwing your hands in the air, defeated yet thoroughly entertained by the challenge. But I'll do my best to summarize the basic idea. The Vespa girl is Haruko Haruhara, AKA Raharu Haruha, an alien in search of a being named Atomsk, the King of Pirates. Atomsk is being held prisoner by the Medical Meccanica company, and Haruko is using Naota's head as a portal to get him out, but she can't control what actually comes through so she has to wait and deal with the Medical Meccanica robots that appear in the meantime. One of the robots is a friendly one, which acquires the name Canti. Atomsk can apparently take control of Canti from time to time, whereupon Canti turns red and acquires awesome power. 

Medical Meccanica is trying to conquer the galaxy by smoothing out everyone's brains with a giant iron (just go with it). To do this they need to send a giant robot hand through Naota's head to activate the device. A man named Commander Amarao and his female assistant Kitsurabami are charged with stopping them, which puts them at odds with Haruko.The ultimate conflict of the story is Naota's choice between joining Amarao to keep Haruko from interfering, or helping Haruko achieve her goals.

FLCL is not strictly a matter of plot, though. The plot is just a framework from which all of the zaniness hangs. Ultimately, the appeal of the show is the fact that Haruko is fighting robots with a bass guitar, while Canti uses Naota as a power source/ammunition by fucking swallowing him whole. You don't watch this series to get a well-crafted conflict, resolution, and denouement; you watch it to sit with your eyes glued to the screen and your jaw hanging open, occasionally muttering things like, "Holy shit, did he just... is that... what the fuck?!" But the craziest part of it all, though, is that the plot is there. It's hard to notice, but behind all the crazy nonsense there is a story backing it up.

See it back there?

That's the fascinating thing about FLCL. It's something that I first thought about when I was doing my Scott Pilgrim review. That series and this one had something in common: each of them have as much or as little depth as the viewer wants them to have. Don't want anything serious or complicated? Great! FLCL has aliens fighting robots with guitars for your enjoyment. Want something with a message and complex character development? Well, FLCL has that covered for you, too.

See, when FLCL hit US television back in 2003, I had some friends tell me I needed to watch it. But when they described it to me, I immediately thought of Excel Saga, an anime made out of 100% goofiness and 0% substance. Excel Saga is absolute shit (The anime is, anyway. The original manga, while unpopular and hard to find, is surprisingly entertaining). If this... "FLCL" was just another Excel Saga, then fuck it. I've got better things to do with my time, like starting a review blog that nobody reads. But then, months later, I caught an episode on TV and was blown away. The characters had... well... character! They were complex and interesting! The premise drew me in! This show was glorious!

At the heart of it, FLCL is a story about growing up. Naota is just reaching adolescence, trying to figure out who he is and how he fits in with the people around him. He wants to be a grown-up and is afraid of seeming childish, but at the same time doesn't yet know how to react things like an adult would. For instance, he has a weird kind of relationship with his older brother's ex-girlfriend, Mamimi Samejima. After he moved away to America, she decided to replace him with Naota, so she tends to get handsy and just generally inappropriate with Naota. Naota believes this to be a sign of his own maturity, not realizing that he's just mistaking physical attention for actual affection. Though, to be fair, Mamimi doesn't seem to understand the difference either. She's got some kind of unspecified mental problem that makes it hard for her to understand what's real and what isn't.

Mamimi is a pretty interesting character herself, due in large part to that unspecified mental problem. It's mind-boggling that FLCL of all things manages to treat mental illness with such a delicate and respectful  touch. It's not just used for comedy, nor is it played up as a huge dramatic issue. For the most part, Mamimi is a regular person, but her thought process is unusual. This causes trouble sometimes, but far from all the time. Often enough, it even makes her pretty cool. If you want a close analogue in Western media, look at Abed in Community. But then again, has Abed ever gotten a piggy-back ride from a robot? No, I think not.

Winner: Samejima

Naota also grows closer to Haruko as the series progresses, and as his feelings are torn between these two women, he fails to notice that their affections for him are entirely artificial. Meanwhile, he is completely oblivious to his school friend Ninamori, who has a very evident crush on him and would probably be an ideal girlfriend for him. It's all a part of growing up... making mistakes, missing opportunities, pretending to understand the world when you really don't. That kind of stuff sucks, but it's all part of the experience. It's the rite of passage that Naota has to undergo in order to become as mature as he wants to be. Because a man can easily fail to mature, as is evidenced by Commander Amarao.Whereas Haruko might be considered to personify the free-spirited chaos that Naota considers immature, Amarao represents what Naota is in danger of becoming: a full-grown adult who still hasn't matured enough to stop obsessing about how cool he looks to other people. So in a sense, Naota's final choice in the series is an attempt to mature by choosing between two different kinds of immaturity. Because growing up just isn't fair sometimes.

That paragraph got kind of heavy, so just to remind you what series we're talking about, here's Haruko riding a flying bass guitar in bunny girl outfit.

It might seem like I'm paying too close attention to the underlying serious stuff and skimming over the fun absurdity that makes up the bulk of the series, and... yeah, I sorta am. There's a couple of reasons for that; for one thing, it's kind of hard to give insightful commentary on fun absurdity without it diluting into a list of gags that I thought were funny (for the record, I like Commander Amarao's fake eyebrows). But mostly, I'm doing this review from the perspective of how the series stands up over time, and I've noticed that the more times I re-watch the series the more the serious stuff stands out. It's a fun series, but if it was just a fun series I would have gotten tired of it after a while. The reason it remains entertaining, the reason it's a classic, is because all of the fun is built on a solid base.

Now, that base is made up of more than just the characters and the underlying themes, of course. One thing that often gets overlooked is the actual animation of the series, which can at times be downright beautiful. FLCL was made back in the days of hand-drawn animation, before computers took over. Thankfully, we've entered an age where animators have figured out how to make computer-drawn images look interesting and distinctive, but for the majority of the past decade almost all anime had the same bland and shiny look that robbed even the best series of any visual excitement. During that time I held old-school hand-drawn anime like FLCL very close to my heart. One of the things I originally fell in love with about the medium was, after all, that it was so amazing to look at, and FLCL is perhaps the perfect example to illustrate that. Just about every single frame is a work. of. art. You could pause the series at any point and have a picture that you can just sit and enjoy for a while.

And I can't possibly review FLCL without mentioning the music. Oh my god, the music. The soundtrack was done almost exclusively by a hit Japanese rock band called The Pillows. Even the minor background music was taken from their songs. It can be a risky move, using existing songs by a single band for your entire soundtrack, but by gum they made it work. It helps that The Pillows are a fantastic band with nigh-universal appeal, and the tone of their songs somehow just seems to mesh with the tone of the series so well. There is always a song playing in FLCL and it always makes the scene twice as good as it would have been on its own (which is already mighty damn good). This is a mere six episode series, and it spawned three soundtrack albums. Think about that for a minute. I own a copy of the FLCL Original Soundtrack, Vol. 3 and it is one of my favorite albums (although it is a glorified best-of for The Pillows, so I shouldn't really make too big a deal out of it). If you haven't heard this band, go to YouTube and type it in, and prepare to be rocked. Also be prepared for lyrics that make absolutely no sense, but I'm not kidding about the being rocked part. By the end of it, you'll swear you can feel that hybrid rainbow.

So, in conclusion, FLCL just fires on all cylinders. Whatever you're looking for, be it visuals, music, characters, themes, or plain old lunacy, FLCL's got it in high quality and large amounts. In fact, now that I think about it, there wasn't even much point in doing a retrospect on this one. The show's great, has always been great, and will always be great. How much more analysis do we need?

Oh, and for anyone who wants to point out that it's spelled "Medical Mechanica" and not "Medical Meccanica", suck on this:

Until next time, I'm Karl, fighting tedium one anime mind-fuck at a time.

FLCL and all related images are the property of Studio Gainax, FUNimation Entertainment, and Kazuya Tsurumaki. Images used from FLCL, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Ranma 1/2, Inuyasha, and Where's Waldo? for reviewing purposes only.