FLCL

[solidbatman]

-Details-
Genre: Comedy, Mecha, Action, Insanity
Company: Gainax/Production I.G.
Format: 6 Episode OVA
Dates: 26 April 2000- 16 March 2001

-Visuals- 8/10
Therearesomecrazyvisualsandtheywilloverwhelmyousincesomuchishappening.

How did reading that feel? It felt like a mess, if you could understand it at all. Now imagine that type of mess in animated form. It would be nearly impossible to keep up with. That is what FLCL (or Fooly Cooly) visuals are like. The visuals are bright, colorful, and utterly insane. Things are constantly moving with extremely fast scene changes that cause many things to blur together and become a visual nightmare in terms of trying to comprehend what you seeing. Imagine you are reading a book except the pages turn on their own before you can read the page. Sure you might catch a page here and there, but overall, you are missing a lot. That is how it felt visually.
That being said, when FLCL's visuals are not trying to burn your retinas with insanity juice, they look great. Fans of Gurren Lagann will instantly recognize the same over the top, comic book esque art style. The fight scenes (what few there are) work wonders with the visuals, as like Gurren Lagann, the fight scenes are way, way, way over the top. So, if you can focus on the show and have extremely fast processing with your eyesight, this could easily be a 9/10 as the animation is fluid and looks great. It's just a case of way too much going on at once.

-Characters- 6/10
The characters of this show can easily be summed up as "Wut?" Everyone is wacky and insane and just proves that this show is grounded in nothing but caffeine and sugar. Our main protagonist, Naota claims that nothing interesting ever happens around him, which immediately I found odd seeing how in the middle of the town that he lives in, there is a giant iron that blows out steam every single day. So he's just a normal kid (so the show tells us) who hangs out with his older brother's girl friend who is about as strange as they come. Then Haruko comes along, and the shred of normalcy this show clung to with it's characters is stomped on into oblivion.

My face while watching this mess

My overall feeling on the characters is "why"? Most of them really serve no purpose except to be insane. There is very little development in the characters until the final 2 episodes and even then its minuscule. While it was entertaining to watch the characters interact, it all felt pointless.


-Story- 5/10
Naota is a typical 12 year old boy who is bored of his little town. He hangs out with his brothers girlfriend, Mamimi, who clings to Naoto in the absence of his brother who is in America to play baseball. It's just another typical day when Naoto is walking home with Mamimi and he his hit by a strange girl riding a Vespa. She gives him CPR after exclaiming that he is dead. Upon his revival, she hits him in the head with a guitar, knocking him out again. Naoto finally makes it home, only to discover that the Vespa girl is now a house maid at his home and her name is Haruko. He also finds that he has a horn now growing out of his head. When asked who she is by Naota, Haruko exclaims, "An alien!"

So that's the introduction, and the story only gets crazier from there as robots begin popping out of Naota's head to fight each other. To me, the story's craziness is it's undoing. It certainly is entertaining, but the simple fact remains, it lacks any sort of direction and just runs along at break neck speed seeking to just blow away your senses with silly, fast paced dialogue, and random plot points that you are expected to remember.

-Overall 6/10
Adult Swim claimed that FLCL was the best anime they ever aired. I can't imagine what the worst would be for them. When it comes down to it, FLCL isn't a bad show, but its overrated to a sick degree. While it is entertaining, it is not a show that I think deserves the praise it receives. I've heard people claim the entire show is an allegory for puberty, and yes, I can see that. At the same time though, its commentary on the issue is overshadow by this sort of thing.

I don't even...

I didn't like this show, but I didn't dislike it. FLCL is just one big pile of "meh" to me.