What am I supposed to be reading here?

Seriously now, is there any plot even remotely to this book? I realize that FLCL is more or less about "random nothingness", but the manga seems to take it to an extreme case.

I do not know which came first, but I do know that if I had not watched the show before reading the manga, I would have absolutely no concept of what is happening. The book feels like someone wrote a full manga, then ripped out ever other block of ten or so pages. There is an extreme lack of coherence one hundred percent of the time in this thing. It also doesn’t help that some of those “removed blocks” tend to be occasionally randomly inserted (in no particular order).

With that out of the way, I suppose I may as well cover a few other aspects of this book. The first volume here more or less covers the same ground as the first two episodes of the anime series (Furi Kuri, Firestarter). Naota is creamed by Haruko, the story cuts around between Naota on the ground and Haruko moving in with his family and a few random bits with the school kids. Eventually Canti emerges and joins the crew. Later the town is plagued by the arsonist while Naota and Haruko bum around on the Vespa. It ends when Canti dukes it out with a second robot (or at least the rest of the first).

That’s the general gist of things. There is a LOT of random space filler that comes out of nowhere and is only half explained in origin, existence, and departure. As I said before, the plot is very disjointed and anyone who has not seen the more coherent (relatively speaking) anime will likely be easily confused.

On a positive note, I really enjoy the art used in this book. It’s very rough (matching the storyline I suppose), and has a real keen sense of style going for it. It’s complex without being overwhelming. The design of the characters means you can always tell who is who, even at a distance. The presentation here is really slick.

Don’t get me wrong here, I actually really like FLCL the anime, and I don’t care much for most anime. This Manga is just too jumbled to due itself justice. Perhaps later volumes will help smooth things out a bit, but I doubt it. Mildly recommended for fans of the FLCL anime.