FLCL

Not written by me, but it made me laugh and actually had ME surprised at how well some people can rant. It's also a review for a DAMN good show.

FLCL: (Fooly Cooly/Furi-Kuri/Whatever The Hell You Call It!)

So, like, there's this cultural phenom, okay, and it's like about all these cartoons, and the cartoons have giant robots and kids with funny-colored hair like they stepped out of Amadeus's dressing room when he was on a Manic Panic binge, and there's the occasional innuendo (only they call it "Fan Service") and their faces get really distorted and they do a lot of weird things like saying things like, "What?! The plot development that just took place offscreen between the last two edits has MOVED FORWARD?!" and they blow a lot of stuff up really good and find out that when you blow up something really big, like a planet or a space station or the Olympic Stadium or wherever it is something's getting blown up a whole bunch of cracks appear in it and all this light shines out from it for this second that actually lasts about fourteen-and-a-half seconds and they call that CREATIVE LICENSE, how DARE THEY!, and they call the whole thing anime and they charge us $35 a disc for it with two lousy goddamned episodes on it and they can get away with it because the shit they put into these anime things is enough to make your corpus callosum rot'n'drop clean out of your diddly-widdly, canyoudigit, and God knows with the rest of KULCHUR getting so g-d'ed dull lately there are plenty of us who will line up and pay through the nosehairs to see something DIFFERENT. Like FLCL.

Teenage Near-Requited Affection In The Shadow Of The Giant Steam Iron, Baby.

And if anime is to conventional-animated-or-non-type-stuff-out-there the way getting smashed in the forehead with a bass guitar is to a feathered kiss on the earlobe, well, then FLCL is the bass guitar to anime's forehead, AND the Wile E. Coyote Acme Rocket up the ass for good measure. This is not about doing anything halfway, and if I catch anyone reading this review doing anything halfway I will find them and punish them mercilessly by locking them in a closet and making them Do It All The Way, and I'll even go so far as to play that old Eighties tune by Sly Fox or Fly Box or whateverthefucktheywerecalled about Going All The Way only I can't remember the name of it now because this is an FLCL review gottverdammt, so pay attention because you're going to be tested on this. Now. Pencils down and listen.

Now you've seen your Giant Robos and your Cultural Cat Girl Nuku Nukus and your Event Horzon Escape Climber Kenshin Bullshit Goddess In the Shells, but I'll swear (like I haven't been swearing a lot in this review already! HA HA! I kill me!) on a stack of AKIRA PRODUCTION REPORTs all the way to the attic that you have never set eyeballs on anything remotely FLCL-ish in your whole period of Doing Time on Planet Earth. This affirmation comes with a money-back guarantee, y'see: if you HAVE seen anything like FLCL that isn't actually FLCL itself, I'll go to the local Brickbuster and demand my money back! Even though I didn't buy the thing there! And I can't! Because those hopeless hosers don't even carry the fucking thing! Imagine that! The brainstretcher anime ne plus ultra for the 2K3 and THEY DON'T FROGGING CARRY IT! That and they're a bunch of corporate toad-felchers anyway, and they don't know the differences between widescreen and fullscreen and refuse to carry Salo, so fook'm.

And if they did, you know what they'd say about it?

See Vespa! See Vespa! Get The Bass Guitar Smash Yeah! Go Join
Your Girlfriend Go All Over Ape Crazy, Woo Woo!

"It doesn't make sense."

HA. I say. The show does Not Make Sense. HA and HA again. Who are these people, Johnnie Cochran's Clones? Well, sir, may I tell your face that THAT does Not Make Sense, either. This is FLCL, not Barney The Dinosaur Lead-You-By-The-Hand-And-Explain-All-The-Symbolism-And-Imagery-To-You Hour. This show you have to actually use your gears and noodle to FIGURE THINGS OUT FOR YOURSELF. You have to put together the pieces. Like the girl who's swinging the bat in the first scene. What do you want, subtitles to tell you she's homeless and is pining for her former boyfriend who left her to go to America and play baseball and has only written back to his younger brother who's the 11-year-old who doesn't want a hell of a lot to do with her and who is also in that first scene and yet somehow is the object of her affection because love is like the toothpaste in a tube that's getting stepped on or something and when someone STEPS on your HEART all the LOVE comes OUT and goes spewing off in unexpected directions and goes sticking to other people who least expect it.

Like the same way we have the OTHER girl (are you CONFUSED YET?!) who comes a-ridin' out of the morning mist on that crazysexycoolyellow Vespa with the "P!" on it and with the bass guitar that has a rip cord so she can fire it up like a chainsaw, and here she comes abrooombraroomba roaring out of nowhere so she can take a swing right at the Kid's forehead and create this big chunky lump that he has to Shamefully Cover Up And Hide From His Friends Who All Somehow Know About This Girl Anyway, and it's all like metaphorical and stuff, because that big horn-shaped thing coming out of his head is a HARD-ON!! Get it?! It's all about the Crazy Awkwardness of Growing Up!! BLACK MEANS DEATH, SEE!??!? Can't you see how all this stuff ties together perfectly?

Horn ... Cigarette ... Erection ... SYMBOLISM!! GENIUS!!!

Well, it DID, only then this giant robot came out of the horn and my beautiful post-neo-modernistic-symbolic theory was all shot to fuckin' shit.

Oh, and there's this big factory that looks like a giant steam iron, where they make medical something-or-others.

This all ties together, really it does.

So, like, this girl with the bass guitar somehow manages to in-sin-you-ate herself in with this kid's dad and becomes their housekeeper, and then there's a robot battle that is straight out of the lat 147 episodes of Neo Genesis Crapshit Evangelist Bumfuck you saw except that it's like, actually funny and stuff, and then the robot that got clobbered goes and gets all humble and starts working for them around the house too and helping out in the bread factory they run except he's Not All That Good. And this crazysexywhacky girl who steals nurse's uniforms and gives him a shotgun vestpocket (Vespa-cket? HA HA! Funny!) diagnosis tells him she's an alien, and that of course only pisses him off more, because he has no idea which end is up or down or what side of the t.p. to wipe with anythemoreover. And the best part of all of this, as if you haven't guessed by now, is that the whole thing is done in this pastely-splashy digi-designed hinky-dinky ColorFormy anime-y style that REFLECTS THE CONFUSION HE MUST BE FEELING AT THIS INCREDIBLY AWKWARD AND DIFFICULT STAGE IN HIS PRE-PUBESCENT DEVELOPMENT! Metaphor! Meaning! Moniker! Monkees!

Doing That Thing You Do With That Robot That You Did
That Thing With That You Were Doing Things Because Of
That Thing You Were Doing With It - Style.

And that's just about all the summary you're going to get out of this, because the summation of FLCL is that it defies summary. It puts up Great Walls of China against summary, goes and sends out little evil agents that slit the throats of summary IN THEIR SLEEP, and bollixes summation right in the stinkin' tender CORNHOLE. This is an Experience with the cap E that you have to Experience for Yourself to Get It. And if you just don't get it, then you ain't gettin' it, and you just ain't with it, you dig it? So get your shovel and start diggin'. There's two more discs like this and they're about as weird. Blues.

Disc notes: Those cheap bastards at Synch Point -- uh, just kidding, HA HA! Although, really, you thought I got this disc as a free promo begging-to-be-reviewed press kit summation thingy? Bullcrap; I paid good American Green WELL IN ADVANCE for it and had to wait the humiliatingly slow torturous months while they delayed the release to get all their ducks and drakes in a row with it. It has colors and sounds and pictures and if you get your fingerprints on it your mom will spank you, but it has this really really terrific looking coloriffic transfer that's sharp enough to make you bleed your Gatorade and it has this booklet with a reproduction of this moment in the story when they're all doing this Let's Imitate A Manga (Japanese Comic Book To You Illiterate Unaccultured Dullards, Ha Ha) thingamabobbo only it's ANIMATED, you see, and essays and lectures and chapter stops and reversible art so you can hide the thing from your Dutch Uncle when he comes over. Yeah!

(C) 2007 SEASE Productions. (Apologies to whoever wrote this thing first) All Rights Reserved, All Wrongs Justfied. FLCL is (C) 1999/2003 to GAINAX/Production I.G.