FLCL-Vol. 2
(aka; Fooly Cooly)
(2005)
review by Samara's Madness

You’ve made it! The final episodes of FLCL! You probably have a lot of questions by now and who knows if they’ll ever be answered. At this point your better off leaving your brain at the door and letting the pretty pictures wash over you like so much cheap wine. A lot of progress has been made by our three main characters and the change is noticeable. Before I get ahead of myself; let me first dive into the episodes.

Episode 5 - Brittle Bullet: Jealous of his hot-to-trot young son, Kamon coerces Naota into a little pellet gun battle. Unfortunately, before we can even say statutory rape, Kitsurubaumi throws in her two cents – in the form of a loaded bazooka. Amarao seems to be slacking off a bit – primping for some woman from his past. Who is she exactly? Naota attempts to rekindle his shattered relationship with Mamimmi, to no effect. On top of that, a giant gun wielding hand threatens to activate the Medical Mechanica plant. We’re doomed, doomed, DOOMED!

Episode 6 – FLCLimax: Naota’s world has been torn asunder. He’s depressed, Haruko is missing, and Mamimmi has descended into the shadowy pits of madness, all the while feeding the terminal core; the essential piece missing from the Medical Mechanica plant. Alien manipulation, the Pirate King, and fiery Holocaust are all waiting in this final installment of the hallucinogenic anime you barley understand anyways. Good luck!

Now that we’ve run down the entire series I want to talk about two key points that are very important in any movie/anime; the score and voices. FLCL borrows it’s score from a single Japanese band: the Pillows. While lending their music to the mini series hasn’t propelled them any further into stardom in their home country, I know for a fact they’ve gained more than a few American fans. Many of the people I’ve force fed this anime to (yeah, I make my close friends and relations watch my geeky animes, and yes they think I suck for that very reason) really dig the Pillows, even if they profess to having no concept of what they’ve just watched. The songs range from upbeat and peppy, to moody and angst ridden; they even toss in a good power ballad. Equating them to a widely known band would be difficult, but I would definitely place them in a pop/rock category. I realize that conjures up horrible images of Hanson and the Cardigans but trust me; it’s not as bad as it sounds. In fact, you could probably purchase a CD blindly and have few regrets.

As far as voices are concerned, I was blown away by how similar the voice actors are between the English and Japanese versions (In the central characters anyway, the voices become drastically different the further removed the character is from the main protagonist). The main three voices (Naota, Mamimmi, and Haruko) are astonishingly alike. At first I thought the Japanese cast spoke English, but as I listened to the nuances of the voices, I eliminated everyone but Haruko as being Japanese. To my surprise, no -Haruko in the English cast is a completely different woman all together. They sounded so akin to each other that I had a hard time believing they were different people, even upon reading the credits.

This comes as no surprise. When Tsurumaki san first got word that the script was to be translated into English, he insisted on sitting in with the American casting coordinators. The “essence” (as he put it) of the voice was very important to him and he has a great ear for it. He was most pleased with Harukos voice saying, “she (Kari Wahlgren) really sounds just like her (referring to Mayumi Shintani’s Haruko)”, and it’s a truly amazing comparison. Even the further removed voices (Ninamori, Gaku, and others) are changed for the better. I preferred Melissa Charles’ sprightly Ninamori to Mika Ito’s dishwater performance. Melissa Charles is a better screamer too, which is alarmingly rare in a voice actor.

I DO have some bad news for you (DAMN IT! There’s always a catch, isn’t there?), like a cheap whore the morning after, the ending here might leave some of you empty and feeling cheated. It’s the epitomic example of an anti – climax. I’m referring, of course, to the fact that everything feels so ordinary in the end, which initially made me angry, but then I realized the beauty of the message. Director Tsurumaki refers to FLCL as a “millennium anime”, most obviously because it was released at the turn of the century, but underneath that is a message about apocalypse hysteria. Remember 1999? Ah, yes, the dreaded Y2K bug. Remember how everyone from computer programmer jerkwad to Revered jackass was telling us to prepare for the worst, indeed the end, with a capital E? Now remember how that same Y2K cataclysm of hellfire failed to live up to its hype and how ordinary life seemed on January 1st? THAT’S the true message of FLCL, no matter how obscenely disastrous something seems, the world will keep on spinning, the sun will still rise in the morning, and you’ll still wake up at seven thirty A.M. cursing your dead end job. It also makes a subtle commentary on nihilistic attitudes. When people have a horribly bleak outlook and get lost in the bitter negative aspects of their life, they look at the eradication of the human race as a blessing, something to hope and pray for; a Godhead to a godless religion. When the very thing they desire so badly turns out to be defective firecracker they’re disappointed to have to go on with life as they’ve been living it. In no other place is this more apparent than Mamimmi’s reaction to Naota’s heroic rescue of Mabase in “Full Swing”. Her apocalypse was nothing more than a strong breeze and she had nothing left to hope for.

Another, less noticeable point I would be remiss to neglect is the human need to take risks and the fear of taking said risks. I’m, of course referring to Naota’s butterfly-like metamorphosis. Through the course of this series Naota has transformed from weak willed and quiet, to a strong, self – realized young man, someone who “swings the bat” as it were, which is the exact point when Mamimmi loses interest. He was no longer moldable, no longer a doll she could play with, and because of that wanted nothing to do with.

After all is said and done; after the smoke has cleared, FLCL really has a profound message. Underneath the flashy, confounding direction, infuriatingly convoluted plot and twisted, sex – crazed eye candy lays a sleeping giant, a real message for those who dare to dig, and as juvenile as it comes off at times it has a very adult message (see the thematic interplay?). Watch the extras, I can’t stress that enough. Explore every part of the DVD; listen to the director commentary, read the insert, even the bloopers are worth taking a look at. I could be overanalyzing it (this ol’ timer do rattle on sometimes) but I think there’s a really important argument here: No matter how bad things get they could always be worse, and even if they do get worse it will eventually be over and your existence will slowly slip back into monotony.

Oh, and don’t be afraid to swing the bat.