The most common thing I hear about FLCL is "dude, that's a wacky, messed-up show." This statement is entirely true! FLCL, which is "furi-kuri" broken down into elementary consonants (could be rendered as FRCR, since the Japanese language tends to not distinguish R and L sounds), starts off seeming like just a regular anime, but as you watch further on, the series becomes much stranger than that.
FLCL is somewhat new and very experimental in terms of animation style, quality and techniques, as well as content. The Matrix-camera-rotatey scene in the first episode is hilarious, as well as the scene where all the characters are rendered in Southpark fashion for a few seconds. Narrowing it down, detailwise, the animation is extremely well done, diverse and original. The general colour scheme is flat and pastel with clear, simple lines (sometimes sketchy), though this has a tendency to change when the animation starts getting a bit eccentric in some parts.
The show is artistic to say the least, which means there's a lot of imagery, symbolism and visual metaphors that can make the story a little hard to understand at first. The reason for all the weirdness is because Enokito Youji is the scriptwriter for FLCL, and he's best known for writing . Anyone who's seen Utena will know just how screwed up that show is. Anyway, in addition to the team we have director Tsurumaki Kazuya and character designer Sadamoto Yoshiyuki, both of whom had worked previously on . And everyone knows what a peice of genius that was, no sarcasm. and have definitely thought out and worked hard to poop out an excellent OAV series.
The music for this show is done by the , a Japanese rock group in Japan who play a lot happy, mellow stuff. There's a lot of punky guitars in it. Guitars feature hugely in the anime as well as in the music; coincidence?! :)
The cast of characters is small, but for a 6-episode OAV series (Original Animated Video), I suppose that's expected. Each character is strange and eccentric in their own way, and interestingly so without being terribly and annoyingly angsty. The main character Nandaba Naota is a 9 year old boy who doesn't like sour-tasting drinks and immature people. Despite his desire for normalcy, it's only logical that all the strangest and most insane stuff happens to him, with the help of his father's crazy housemaid, Haruhara Haruko. Haruko is a pink-haired chick who rides around on a yellow Vespa scooter hitting people with the motor-driven electric guitar, and she claims that she's a space alien. Whether or not there's truth to that, I won't spoil it for you. ;) Samejima Mamimi is Naota's older brother's girlfriend, who is now somewhat attached to Naota ever since his brother left to go play baseball in America. Mamimi's pretty weird too; but then again,!
nearly every main character in this series has problems. In the head, mostly.
There are other main characters, including the class representative Ninamori Eri, Naota's dad Nandaba Kamon, not to mention the uberly cool Canti, also known as TV-Boy; he's a robot. He flies around and transforms and beats up other robots. The makers of describe him best: "This robot is far too technically advanced to speak."
I'm starting to run out of synonyms for the word "weird" here.
Anyway, each episode has a surprise of some sort and there's no end to the oddity. FLCL is strange, funny, and perhaps a little too puzzling to be considered "heart-warming", but you certainly leave with a good feeling. Furi Kuri!
Here are some links to explore for more information on this series:
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