FLCL – A Coming of Age Anime Not For The Casual Viewer

By Max Gladstone

I can’t show my favorite anime to most people.  They don’t speak the language, you see.

I don’t mean Japanese—that’s what the subtitles are for. 

Let me explain.

The show in question, FLCL, is a deeply weird six-episode Japanese cartoon about a kid with robots literally coming out of his head, and his weird tangled relationship with an alien cop who’s also a bassist; his single dad; and the ex-girlfriend of his baseball-playing brother.

Also, did I mention the literal robots literally coming out of his literal head?  The animation’s as inspired as it is surreal.

The soundtrack, by the Pillows, deserves medals.  I don’t know what kind.  Find some, chloroform whoever’s wearing them at the moment, and throw said medals at the Pillows.

I am not a lawyer, and the above is not legal advice.

Anyway, FLCL is eye-meltingly fantastic.  Like Mola-Ram in Temple of Doom, this show reaches into the chest of giant robot anime and pulls out its burning heart, a psychosexual mess of kids trying to find themselves and communicate and inhabit their feelings in a world of screwed-up adults, social control, and confusing texts and models of development.  The fight scenes are the best you will ever see.

If your reaction to The Matrix was “Yeah, but isn’t it weird that the response to we must resist the Agents is so let’s all wear black suits and sunglasses just like them only with a little more leather” and you wanted a bit more Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots in that mix, this show is your jam.  But the quiet moments matter too, here, as much as (if not more than) the robot fights: performing a school play.  Sitting by the river talking baseball.  Riding a scooter by the seashore for the first time.  Leaving home.  Taking your first really, really good photograph.  Sprouting enormous burning wings.

Wait, no, I guess that last one’s not very quiet at all.  Anyway, hopefully you see what I mean.

And—I can’t show it to people.

In part this is because FLCL is so goddamn dense.  Each scene does six things at once, probably seven if you include all the wordplay I can barely grasp the edges of since I don’t actually know Japanese.  In six half-hour episodes it somehow covers all the emotional and worldbuilding ground most mecha shows would cover in twenty-six, at blink-and-you’ll-miss-it speed.

But the speed and density aren’t the greatest obstacle.

Plenty of people are smart enough to get even tangled plots.  The real reason I can’t just strap my friends to theater seats A Clockwork Orange-style and beam this show into their eyeballs is that, for FLCL to have its full effect, you need to know the genre it’s breaking into tiny pieces.

FLCL takes two broad brushstrokes to establish the Mysterious Conspiracy to Fight the Giant Robots—and expects that you recognize instantly who that conspiracy is, and what they want, because you’ve seen them before.  Characters remind us of friends from other shows, beats of other beats, music cues of other music cues.  I’ve seldom seen a show so conscious of precisely how it fit into a canon.

And it’s even better if you know more than the giant robot genre—there’s a great moment in the second episode where our main character’s father goes on a social theory rant: “Consider the family unit, A, which contains a wage-earner, B, who participates in…”  and then you tone out to follow another conversation, only to notice that in the background the irate father’s still talking: “and everybody’s reading Initial D and Robot Detective K…”

I’m totally failing to explain why this show is my drug.

Maybe it’s the sheer intertextuality—that it’s not interested in retelling other anime so much as capturing them in its textual web and taking them one step further.  Maybe I’m high on comprehension and recognition.  Maybe it’s that damn medal-worthy soundtrack.

But, don’t worry.  I have a plan.

All we need to do is watch this stack of other anime first, so you’re ready.  We’ll start with Neon Genesis Evangelion—or maybe an early Gundam series, followed by Eva, so you know what Eva‘s doing.  (Though it does a good job of constructing the giant robot genre itself, only to deconstruct later.)

Then probably Escaflowne, for a different sort of giant robot fun.  (Also Esca‘s last five episodes will get you used to FLCL‘s pace.)  We might want to watch a solid shounen fighting series, too, since FLCL’s riffing off those as much as anything; Kenshin maybe?  It’s old, but it’s classic.  Naruto or One Piece might offer a more modern equivalent.

It’s fine.  Don’t worry.  Relax.  Look, I have this awesome theater seat for you.

Just don’t mind the straps.