FLCL #1

60 minutes
English/Japanese
English Subtitles
Released: 12/11/2002
Reviewed: 06/28/2005

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There's this website out there, I don't know if you're familiar with it, it's called redvsblue. If memory serves me they host an ongoing, fan-made Halo parody there by the same name, but it's probably been a year since last I watched any of the episodes they released. What I do find useful about the site is the lightening fast speed with which its forum moves. Even more interesting is the recent genesis of an Anime section of that forum. Finally I had a place to discuss anime with intelligent, rational internet people! ...or so I naively hoped...

You might also be familiar with a television channel recently escaped from its bedraggled creator. That television channel is named Adult Swim and it's on the air from 11 pm to 5 am. On this channel they host all sorts of cartoons with the intention to entertain. Some make us laugh, some make us cry, the more popular ones often seem to want to cause me pain. Actual physical pain. But that's a story for another day.

The two of these came together at very similar times, not much more than a month ago, to rekindle my love affair with a show that I've too long neglected. The show? Well you know its name already. It's Furi Kuri. Or Fooly Cooly, if you prefer. When push comes to shove I most enjoy the simple, eloquent moniker: FLCL.
FLCL is a show that many people would call "crack anime" or "anime on crack" or some other title that implies moral looseness and illicit drugs. I will not do that, because it's a childish term and it irritates me to no end. FLCL is what I'll call hyperkinetic. The series is fraught with motion. The motion of a seventeen year old girl's tongue in a young boy's ear. The motion of the young boy after he is walloped quite soundly with a bass guitar. Even the wielder of that guitar is suffused with a alarmed, maniacal instinct.

As such, it sounds like a terrible fit for me and my picky animated leanings. I can name about a thousand animes that could fit the description above and were awful. Conversely, I can't name a single thing produced by Studio GAINAX that has inspired more than a lukewarm reception from me. Well FLCL slipped through the cracks a few years ago, right between the time where GAINAX was putting out Hentai computer games and fetish-laden dolls and the time when they were exporting crap like He is My Master, whose title I think speaks for itself.
Like a tiny Latina dancer, writhing on the floor of a sweat soaked afterhours club, FLCL hides a delicious secret deep within the core of its spasmodic being. Underneath all the screaming and the yelling, the massive ball of energy conceals a halfway decent storyline. In actuality, it's a tale of the twelve year old Naota growing up, coming to grips with his adulthood with all the very thinly veiled phallic metaphors that accompany such a tale.

FLCL does all this in a very unusual way that I find delicious as a turkey club (properly slathered with mayo). After Naota is hit with that wicked bass (wielded by a rather emphatic pink haired girl) he finds himself in the uncomfortable position of having to hide a strange protrusion coming out of his head. OMG IS IT ALLUDING TO TEH BONER?! I THINK SO!!
It's a little deeper than my descriptions would lead you to believe, but it's no more sensical. FLCL crams itself into a frantic, senseless tempo, traipsing between standstill and rapture. Unlike other GAINAX productions, long pauses in animation actually work for Furi Kuri, staccato beats before the next whirling escapade revs itself up. When FLCL gets going it gets going. And when it does things like this and this and this and this. I wish I had more room to take screenshots. The girls in this show are so busy looking perturbed and off center that I don't know how they have time to do anything else! And that's just a flimsy pretense why the show's so good. The real reasons are much better!