![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Anime: FLCL
Jul. 18th, 2010 11:01 pmFLCL
This... I don't even think I can summarize it. It's so...
I'll try! This is me, trying to summarize FLCL:
Naota lives a normal life in a normal town before Haruko Haruhara shows up. (No, that's not true. Naota's eleven or twelve and is perpetually hit on by Mamimi, the high-school-age girlfriend his brother left behind when he—the brother—left for the United States to play baseball, which isn't exactly normal. And his town is dominated by the giant, smoke-spewing, iron-shaped Medical Mechanica factory. But we'll go with 'normal' for now, at least comparatively.) Then Haruko shows up on her motorbike thingy and whacks him in the head with a guitar, either to cause robots to pop out of his head or to prevent robots from popping out of his head, it isn't clear. Haruko may also be an alien; at least, that's what she claims she is. The first robot that pops out of Naota's head may also be a god; at least, that's what Mamimi believes. There's also Naota's father, who is crazy and possibly dead, and Commander Amarao, whose eyebrows are made of seaweed, and... you know, fuck it, this series is impossible to summarize.
If it wasn't clear from the summary, this is a deeply surreal anime. It's sort of reminiscent of the kind of art film where 'making sense' isn't a first priority or even a second or third priority.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jmpava called it "what happens when Gainax lets go of any constraints or attempts at narrative cohesion," and if you're familiar with the TVTrope for the Gainax Ending, you'll know what that means.
This is a whole six-episode miniseries of Gainax Ending. It's Gainax Beginning, Gainax Middle, and Gainax Ending.
That doesn't mean it's bad. I was entertained from start to finish! It's interesting and comprehensible from minute to minute; it's just that if you step back and try to take any chunk of it longer than about ten minutes as a coherent narrative, it's not going to work. It's not so much that it falls apart as that it twists around and bites you.
It's absolutely bizarre.
But it's also entertaining, and it's only six half-hour episodes long. I think it's worth spending an afternoon on. As long as you consider it as sort of a hybrid between indie film, drinking game, and The End of Evangelion, that is.
(It's pronounced "Fooly Cooly." There's a vague stab at describing why it's called "FLCL" early in the anime, but like most such things in this series, the rationale is trodden on by elephants and then forgotten about.)
(Countdown to someone showing up to tell me that the series made perfect sense to them in five, four, three....)
EDIT: As is often the case, the TVTropes page for FLCL says what I wanted to say, but better. Although it is TVTropes, so don't go in without spelunking gear.
This... I don't even think I can summarize it. It's so...
I'll try! This is me, trying to summarize FLCL:
Naota lives a normal life in a normal town before Haruko Haruhara shows up. (No, that's not true. Naota's eleven or twelve and is perpetually hit on by Mamimi, the high-school-age girlfriend his brother left behind when he—the brother—left for the United States to play baseball, which isn't exactly normal. And his town is dominated by the giant, smoke-spewing, iron-shaped Medical Mechanica factory. But we'll go with 'normal' for now, at least comparatively.) Then Haruko shows up on her motorbike thingy and whacks him in the head with a guitar, either to cause robots to pop out of his head or to prevent robots from popping out of his head, it isn't clear. Haruko may also be an alien; at least, that's what she claims she is. The first robot that pops out of Naota's head may also be a god; at least, that's what Mamimi believes. There's also Naota's father, who is crazy and possibly dead, and Commander Amarao, whose eyebrows are made of seaweed, and... you know, fuck it, this series is impossible to summarize.
If it wasn't clear from the summary, this is a deeply surreal anime. It's sort of reminiscent of the kind of art film where 'making sense' isn't a first priority or even a second or third priority.
jmpava called it "what happens when Gainax lets go of any constraints or attempts at narrative cohesion," and if you're familiar with the TVTrope for the Gainax Ending, you'll know what that means.This is a whole six-episode miniseries of Gainax Ending. It's Gainax Beginning, Gainax Middle, and Gainax Ending.
That doesn't mean it's bad. I was entertained from start to finish! It's interesting and comprehensible from minute to minute; it's just that if you step back and try to take any chunk of it longer than about ten minutes as a coherent narrative, it's not going to work. It's not so much that it falls apart as that it twists around and bites you.
It's absolutely bizarre.
But it's also entertaining, and it's only six half-hour episodes long. I think it's worth spending an afternoon on. As long as you consider it as sort of a hybrid between indie film, drinking game, and The End of Evangelion, that is.
(It's pronounced "Fooly Cooly." There's a vague stab at describing why it's called "FLCL" early in the anime, but like most such things in this series, the rationale is trodden on by elephants and then forgotten about.)
(Countdown to someone showing up to tell me that the series made perfect sense to them in five, four, three....)
EDIT: As is often the case, the TVTropes page for FLCL says what I wanted to say, but better. Although it is TVTropes, so don't go in without spelunking gear.
