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FLCL Anime Review: Furi Kuri Kill Me.

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Title: FLCL

Episodes: 6

Genres: Comedy, Avant Garde, Sci-Fi

Studio: Gainax, Production I.G

Year: 2000

Source: Original

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I was promised greatness. Something that would capture you. Lightning in a bottle. They don't make them like this anymore. It's original, amazing, awe-inspiring, cool, fresh, still relevant, and the compliments never end. I wish even a fraction of the hype translated to the actual work because I almost HATED FLCL. Six episodes too many.

The Good

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This is gonna be short. Two things: music and art. The characters look great, distinct, and embody their personality in their general appearance and the movement the animation gives them. I like a little fourth wall breaking so the few addresses to the audience and the cheeky style changes were fun and pretty in-tune with a comedic show (that is if FLCL was funny at any point). The robot looks great, the emotive faces of the characters are awesome but I actually found the action a little lackluster. 

 P.S. Anyone who likes this show, stop reading now.

The music is probably the best thing about this show. I'm a sucker for 90s and 2000s rock, okay? There's some mediocre stuff sure, but this is a very great era for all sorts of directions of rock. Be it grunge, indie, post-hardcore, emo, and so on and so forth. 

The Pillows do not disappoint and when the guitars would start up and the vocals kicked in a small hopeful happiness inside me bloomed as there was finally something to dilute the total garbage that was the story and the inane perverted gags which made up most of FLCL.

I guess we can say there was some attempts to cover "themes". That word is applied to FLCL very generously. Maturity. Growing up. Bad people that take advantage of you. I'm not saying the show doesn't talk about these things but you have to be a die-hard fan to justify that it does them justice. FLCL grazes. FLCL does a double-take and chooses to show you a butt, or underwear, or an adult woman sexually assaulting a twelve year old boy. 

P.S. Great art is meaningless when it has no substance.

Mamimi and Naota are probably the only characters who display any depth and evoke any emotion that isn't annoyance. I guess if the show wanted to do anything meaningful maybe it would cut down on the creep stuff and maybe put a little more time into thinking about why Mamimi is the way she is (Naota's brother abandons her, she latches unto Naota instead, and that's that). 

The Bad

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I can't stand Haruko. I can't even tell which exact male fantasy she is. I don't care. I hate the relationship she has with Naoto and it takes me out of the show completely. If it was removed the show would still be a disaster but at least I wouldn't have to roll my eyes both in irritation at seeing the same old gross trope thrown at me and in rage that its considered normal. Sorry, just because the underage person is a boy doesn't suddenly make it okay. I'm sure many will say its just anime, they aren't real, or that it's symbolic but those are piss-poor excuses that don't take much to come unraveled. If it's gratuitous and made more for comedic effect or pleasure than for character development, it's just shit.

P.S. It's a reference. How smart...

Maybe I'm just getting old but I just can't sit through ecchi, fan service, or unfunny perverted gags anymore. It feels like a waste of my time provided to me by hacks. I watched Free! recently too and the fan service is done much more tastefully as athleticism and what it does to the human body can be admired through other lenses that aren't sexual. But even then I felt it was kind of pushing it. 

I know it seems like I'm nearly going on some puritanical monologue or something but it's not that. I don't care if characters are sexy or have revealing clothing. I don't even care if those characters are women. But when it's always women, or ALL the women in a show, or even worse, when they are underage, it just gets gross and weird fast. 

The story sucks. It's borderline non-existent. Gag after gag after gag. Honestly, that can actually work. Cromartie is fucking hilarious and its basically gag galore. But FLCL is so disjointed it makes YouTube sketches look like smartly written TV shows that account for set-up, nuance, and delivery. Shit, Samurai Champloo did a better baseball bit and that show is set when baseball didn't even exist!

I'm this mad because I really wanted to like this. The nostalgia people have for it, the creativity that was apparent in the visuals, and the amazing soundtrack. But nothing added up and FLCL absolutely did not live up to it's promise. I don't want to be a hater but maybe it's time to lower the rose-tinted glasses.

The Score

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Story: F. Big fat F. Outside the characters, the story has to be the worst aspect of FLCL.

Characters: F. Worst cast ever. Not one redeemable character (maybe only the robots and the cats).

Style: A. The show looks great. I'm a big fan of the way the eyes are drawn, the general proportions of the face and the bulky look of the bike, the phones, and the robots.

Pacing: F. Garbage. Incomprehensible. There's no pacing but fast. There is no tone but absurd for the sense of seeming kooky.

Animation: A-. It's pretty impressive and experimental, always good by me. However, I didn't find the fight scenes as unique even for the time it was released.

Music: A+. Phenomenal. Better if they muted the show and just had the tracks playing over the inane dialogue and unfunny screaming.

Final Score: C. Watch it if you don't mind losing about 2 hours, I'm not giving it the lowest recommendation just because you need to see it to believe it. Anyway, just listen to the album if you actually respect your time.

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Labels: anime2000, anime2000s, animeavantgarde, animecomedy, animereview, animescifi, FLCL, Gainanx, original, Production I.G