FLCL

Director
Kazuya Tsurumaki
Production
GAINAX, Production IG
Country of origin
Japan
Format
OVA
Running time
6 vol
Year
2000

FLCL

By Jun S. So
28th Apr 04

FLCL was an eccentric anime experience, to say the least. It may be one short series, constituting of six ordinary-length episodes, with the closing credits eating up quite a few minutes, but amazingly, so much happens in those six episodes. Yet, so little is achieved.

For you see, FLCL is craziness all round. I may be able to explain the story, but I would embarrass myself if I tried to reason the story. It's weirdness and hectic mayhem from beginning to end, with a ludicrous amount of loose ends left at the conclusion of the very short series. For one, I didn't know what the f*** was going on with the "ear" affair right at the beginning, and indeed, it was only the beginning of confusion to spill forth from the series. Underlying in the whole weirdness and mayhem just might have been a subtle romance plot and a story of growing up, but I couldn't identify any firm subtext in the series. By the second or third episode, on every occasion something ridiculous or puzzling came up, I didn't bother to try to comprehend. The whole story does have some basic outline of sensibility and continuity, but everything is simply incoherent, insensible and superfluous.

The characters are pretty f***ed up too, Naota being the only character one could possibly relate too. The rest (i.e. Haruka) I'm not going to bother with, because most of the actions they perform and the words they speak are lacking in reason or explanation. In terms of character relationships, well, the individual characters make more sense than these relationships - and that says a lot. Surely, it's not a memorable cast, suitable only for the forgettable story.

I suppose all the weirdness and craziness do result in something positive - or something not entirely negative, anyway. FLCL is fascinating sometimes. You do often feel amused by this work of caricature, and you can chalk that up to all the moments that lack sensibility and reason, yet full of activity and crazy action. The visual aspects of FLCL do work in favour of this crazy nature, with fast-paced action, fantastically weird morphing, fighting, consuming and the like, and conventional yet often equally crazy artwork. It's not always the most visually appealing anime, but the hectic visuals can be appealing and pleasing sometimes. After all, a girl in a swimsuit sporting a bunny tail, flying on an electric guitar using her explosive slingshot against some 100m-towering blob -- that materialized out of a boy's head -- carrying a giant shotgun, while some robot eats up the boy on top of the blob's cowboy hat, deserves some credit. That's the way the whole series is; craziness and mayhem in every moment that just might entertain you. It's too bad that's not the case very often.

The Title Tells All
The whole series is as confusing and lacking in sensibility and subtext as the title. There is just too little sensibility here and too many loose ends. There are countless completely superfluous antics and ideas in the series that may have been justified if they made me at least smile. Some may find the crazy mayhem within mildly fascinating and amusing, but FLCL didn't even show me substantial potential; it didn't even provide me with decadent pleasure. Any who claims the anime is refreshing, entertaining, cool, amazing, and/or one of the best in recent times is, I believe - as Eric put it - under the pretence of being avant-garde. Disagree with me if you will, but this is one of the worst, most ridiculously overrated anime to have graced my television or computer screen.

2/10

-- Jun S. So 28th Apr 04

FLCL Images