FLCL Progressive

Matrix 3 was a masterpiece so why won't we give FLCL also a sequel it deserves. - The team behind nu-FLCL, probably. Our "sequel" is such an amazing piece that even its main character's personality is in contradiction with the point of the series. Naota wanted to be something somewhere else. He had several hard subject to deal with from love interests to his brother. His story was not only about coming-of-age, but a trip where he learnt to cope with himself and the world. In this nu-FLCL, Girl-whose-name-I-forgot is the epitome of emptiness. Person whose greatest merit is how little she cares about anything thatis going on and how she never reacts to anything that happens. That's also pretty accurate way of describing myself when watching this anime. The writing is utter nonsense. Random rent-a-whore girl comes out of nowhere to connect two plotlines because it wouldn't have happened otherwise. Past story used as a mystery element. The character development (or rather, sudden personality changes cast upon the main character) don't seem to have any purpose at all, other than working as plot elements in the narrative. The pacing and screen transitions are awful. Our main girl loses consciousness just so the series won't develop anywhere quite yet. Same thing is used as an excuse to teleport the series from place a to place b. All of this is so very noticeable and amateurish. I am not sure what the opposite of "solid" is in English, but I don't even have to thanks to this anime being the perfect representation of it. The voice acting is good enough. The OST has the same songs by The Pillows and they are all great. The series sucks for its other merits, the problems don't lie here the least. The art and animation could be praised if they were the production values for any other anime than this one. As a conclusion: I would call this series a masterpiece if I had hated the original and wanted to give it the best and most disrespectful insult imaginable. This is nothing but an artistic remaster by some self-proclaimed nu-auteur who clearly thought the fans of FLCL would let it slide because the content is supposedly 2deep5anyone to understand. It isn't and it wasn't in the original either. There was nothing -outside few obscure references- in the original FLCL for the viewer to get past what was directly told and shown. Whoever made this, obviously thought the original just "fooled" people into thinking the series is amazing. Regardless whether it did or didn't, this sequel surely didn't fool anyone. Take a trip to /a/ and witness not a single shitpost about nu-FLCL because the series is not even worth of that.

Have you ever had that moment when you are in utter awe with how animation flows past your eyes with an interesting story? That's what I got in this wacky adventure. There has been a lot of complaints, but I will only address one of them right away. Its animation is creative and imaginative and it has the pacing like Gainax shows in the past. Where it falls, however, is that this animation is not consistent. What I mean by consistency is that at the start of every episode there is a dream sequence done by a new animator. SO I DO NOT SEE ANIMATIONBEING A COMPLAINT IF IT'S DIFFERENT BECAUSE THERE IS A DISTINCTION BETWEEN A REALITY AND A DREAM. Ok now that's out of the way I need to explain why FLCL Progressive is worth checking out. Story: FLCL Progressive piggybacks the story from its prequel. If you haven't watched the prequel, then I will say that it is about teenagers growing up. Some grow up too fast, while others grow too slow. Our main protagonist, Hibajiri, is a girl who seems to have grown up too quickly. What I find interesting is how the story is a journey for her to become both younger and older. She becomes more emotional like a kid and she also becomes more mature like an adult. The story is also filled with a plot behind the scenes that make up for the climax in episodes 5-6. WIthout giving too many spoilers to a short 6 episodes, I think everyone would come out with a joy ride. As for its originality, it is not really anything new for people who have watched the prequel, but otherwise from that it is noteworthy considering how the rest of the 2018 Spring and Summer are made of sequels and isekai shows. If you want a breath of fresh air then this is your best bet. (8) Art: As a show with a Gainax feel, things seem to flow in an imaginative way. The creative powerhouse of Gainax may have left their work with Production I.G., but I think FLCL Progressive shows that the Gainax spirit has recovered by at least a considerable amount since then. I especially liked the dream sequences in which the animation and art style was drastically different from how the show usually presents itself. In each of these moments they are not only visually appealing but also thought provoking. This combination did not fail me at all, and from beginning to end I was pleased by the presentation. (9) Character: I cannot say the characters are that strong because they seem mostly flat. It was hard to cheer for Hibajiri because she is a very aloof character and our other main character, Iide, doesn't seem very consistent. I will say that Haruko, the eccentric adult, carries the show until she eats someone she shouldn't have. Haruko and Hibajiri act as total opposites of one another and help make the show more coherent, yet the downside is that I'm never too sure what side these two are on all the time. Are they against each other, going toward a common goal, or does it even matter? Sometimes they are enemies, teacher-student, love rival, I will let someone figure that part for me. It's not average by any means though. Have you seen an anime with characters experiencing a multitude of relationships? So it is just fine. (6) I do not put enjoyment as a part of the score, but I can promise you that FLCL Progressive is not a waste of time. It is a breath of much needed fresh air from generic shows.

Ah, the tragedy as old as time. A popular piece of media comes out and proves to be a hit, both critically, and financially. Some odd years later, a sequel is made that exists solely because the first one was popular, rather than because there was something to add. It gets panned, financial success or no. FLCL Progressive is yet another example of this tale. It’s what would happen if they tried to make FLCL in the current day -as of writing, of course- without any of the charm or passion that went into the original. Love it or hate it, FLCL is a distinctpiece of work, one filled with little references and neat, temporary art-style shake-ups to add flavor to an already eccentric and visually stunning take on the coming of age story. Progressive is milquetoast at the best of times and downright broken at the worst of times. There’s no flavor outside of moments that already take cues from its predecessor, and perhaps a few bits in the latter half. It doesn’t have anything worth covering, let alone worth bringing to the table. It would be one thing if, in spite of this, this sequel worked as a functioning tale with the audiovisual mastery that exemplifies the best of the current age. It would simply be an unnecessary addition, but a harmless one at best. However, we instead get a mess that decides to pander. Think about it. Why else does the main character wear headphones that have cat ears? Why else do we have a loli and a beach episode? Why else do they just randomly include smartphones without having anything be done with them? Why else does this show’s equivalent to Haruko wear a sexy maid outfit? Simply because it’s hip with the current otaku crowd. The real origins of Haruko and her Progressive counterpart, Jinyu, are not only stupid, but also somewhat contradictory to FLCL 1 and raise some questions the original was never equipped to answer. The things they try to add about the universe of the franchise are absurd and even inconsistent, even by the conventions of the franchise as well. It’s already aggravating that it’s all in service to a show that has nothing new or interesting to comment on in any meaningful way, and that the finale is this dumb mess that abruptly wraps itself up. The characters make it even worse. Hidomi is a nothing character. There is nothing consistent to her other than having a secret want to reset the world for particularly incongruous and asinine reasons. The show even claims she is going for a tsundere angle, as god awful as that observation is, and it’s as inaccurate as a blind man shooting in the dark. Even Haruko largely just an adult brat rather than the quirky, ambitious, and amoral vixen from the original. Her counterpart, Jinyu, is bland like Hidomi, but at least she is the least obnoxious character of the entire cast. The male students in the show are also nothing characters with no chemistry, even though the main guy of that trio, Lide, acts infinitely more like an active protagonist than Hidomi ever does. The loli character also isn’t any better; she’s as unremarkable and annoying as the rest. No one has any chemistry to speak of, adding insult to injury. Outside of the ending credits and the 5th episode, the show’s visuals are rather dull and even a tad unappealing to look at. Production I.G honestly did a poor job outside of the hit and miss new character designs, as the animation was incredibly stilted and choppy --even in the more kinetic action scenes-- and the color pallet was not to my taste at all Some scenes look downright terrible, even if that's counterbalanced by a few scenes looking pretty evocative. Even in the art style shift in the 5th episode that actually made Haruko look more similar to how she was in FLCL than in the episodes preceding it, it’s arguable if the more purposely rough visuals worked. The music is as much to my uninterest as ever, with several songs by The Pillows, both new and old, and largely forgettable background music outside of that, which is barely any more memorable than the original. The only song of any note here is "Thank You, my Twilight", which is one of my favorites in the franchise, believe it or not. That's not enough to save anything though. At least the dub was nice given the awful material, I suppose. In essence, FLCL 2 is your typical underwhelming sequel. I’ve seen worse in this regard, even in terms of sequels to Gainax shows, but damning with faint praise doesn’t excuse how pointless, shallow, and lifeless this installment really is. Sadly, its existence also slightly nullifies some of the uniqueness of the original, so doing nothing substantial to help make up for that is arguably one of the biggest crimes this sequel could have committed under these circumstances. At least it doesn’t use that show as a crutch, but again, it does that anime and several of its fans no favors, either. FLCL 3, please be a proper alternative to this mess?

Ah yes, the sequel that no one thought was necessary but we felt blessed to get... I wish I had something more to say about it but the process of eventually watching I can only describe as being akin to fanfic. They loved the original. They wanted to build on it. They didn't get how it worked. I'm going to try to lay out some positives first before jumping in with the more frustrating aspects. * The Pillows are back and provide the soundtrack. The main theme for Progressive, "Thank you, my twilight", with all it's silly Engrish, is great and Iwon't hear otherwise. Hearing it start up in the scattered episodes that it did was always a highlight. * Hidomi's VA, Xanthe Huynh, I had literally never heard of before but she was legitimately talented in voicing a character that was emotionally muted in spots and utterly manic in others as the plot dictated. I think she even outshone Kari Wahlgren, who was playing the Haruko character for all it was worth. * Hidomi Hibajiri and Ko Ide are both interesting concepts for characters. I don't want to spoil them completely, but neither is totally what they seems, Hidomi presenting as a nihilist tsundere-like with morbid dreams and Ide as... well, basically a "bro" or the junior high equivalent of it despite not exactly looking the part. Both have more to their motives than you initially suspect and, while the reveals are in some cases too reliant on exposition for my tastes, it works to confirm junior high and that phase in one's life as a failed form of posturing. * Episode 5. The animation quality was not at all consistent but they blew the budget on episode five and it shows. We also get the return of "manga" style, difficult as it supposedly is. So, there's some decent stuff in there. I think that had it been a standalone and not trying to riff of a seminal work released some fifteen years prior, we would have been okay with it as its quirky self, but it suffers too much from comparisons and from here I have no choice but to address the negatives with spoilers and comps to the original. * Subpar Narration. One of the odd triumphs of FLCL was the recognition that, without being hit over the head with it, Naota was fundamentally an unreliable narrator. It's not that he was trying to lie to you as other famous literary unreliable narrators were, he was merely convinced that in order to present a narrative of his own life, he needed to protect Samajima Mamimi or whomever or do X. The experience of watching FLCL was the experience of watching a teenager, immature but thinking that he knows how the world works better than everyone else around him, try to craft a story in which his life makes sense both in the moment and going forward as far as justifying action he's yet to take. After so many of these episodes in which Naota appears to make a decisive declaration that doesn't add up to much, you realize that it's not a bug, but a feature in trying to capture the teenaged conviction about what's to come. Hibajiri narrates... a little... but it's predominantly not as things are happening to her but rather as she's dreaming. Without getting into the persistent argument of "it was all a dream!" presenting relevant stakes within art, the whole thing is structured about as well as, say, when a long running series that builds its narrative arcs around fixed points in the schedule goes through a series of flashbacks or flashforwards preceding each episode in order to give you the illusion of development towards a specific endgame. Even without that unflattering comparison, you have a double removal within the dream sequences in that you are not only conscious of the dreaming, but have Hidomi's more Id-like subconscious emerging, no less nihilistic, but at least willing to have fun, and said subconscious is anomalous with the exception of episode four when it comes out to play in full. This could be analogous to the lazy writing that comes with "here's an episode where the characters are drunk" or "here's an episode where a magic spell causes them to be more candid than they would ordinarily." Naota's narration and all the attendant flaws were highly organic, arising out of his character and shortcomings. Hidomi's narration is artificial, rarely utilized, and mostly in the service of reminding the audience of what the shows fears they may not have picked up on. * No Conceits. Each episode of the original was wrapped around a conceit that was developmentally reflective of where Naota was at as he was trying to become an adult. You had a video games episode, an airsoft / paintball episode, a class play episode, a baseball episode (I also discovered DBZ had a baseball episode which I watched the same evening as the finale). There's nothing in particular to organize any of the episodes of Progressive. You could conceivably say that ep 2 was a part-time job and ep 3 was riffing off the beach episode trope, but they weren't really doing anything with them. The potential was definitely there to explore something, as the original tried to deal with male-gendered tropes (maybe class play excluded) and there could have been ways of exploring Hidomi's more feminine presentation through consideration of other rites of passage. They just didn't. * Amorphous Time. FLCL was very much of a time and place in its references, which was risky but I think worked, it's just hard to tell what the staying power will be once those references fall out of circulation. Progressive shied away from making any references to topical pop culture at all. The closest it came was talking about gendered clothing, ultimately a non-starter, and having Hidomi scrolling through her phone. References aren't going to make or break a show, but the original used them in a smart way where you could see the gestures they were making and how they were supposed to sync up with your understanding of the characters making them, especially in how Haruko referenced bands that presented as counter culture. There's nothing really "2018" or any single year about the issues the kids were dealing with or the world they were living in, and thus the whole exercise lacked that feeling of both density ("I can follow this thread and see how far it takes me") or being grounded in a specific setting or timeframe. * Haruko. It's both too easy and too difficult to level one's aim at the show's "star," but the Haruko of the original was genuinely ambiguous as to her motives and aims. You can't really forget some of the revelations of the FLCL finale, but Haruko's personality in the sequel could be summarized as manic, controlling, and covetous, and not even Jinyu (as a largely unnecessary foil) can really overcome the fact that you're watching a character who mind-controls most of a classroom for... reasons? If it brings out anything, it really batters you with the "adults are wrong, kids are also wrong" motif from the original but not to any productive effect. Moreover the brainwashing bit is scarcely relevant to anything that's happening, outside of "let's get everyone to the amusement park!" late in the series, ultimately another failed conceit. * Mori / Aiko. I suppose this is going to be a possibly polarizing opinion, but I liked Aiko's initial episode because I was convinced that we were finally getting a social commentary that was topical, in that Mori is pretentious and attempts to be fashionable but has almost no understanding of human nature, culminating in him paying Aiko to be the shy "I'm so embarrassed" anime girl stereotype because it's what he thinks he likes and it's what his notion of a relationship is. Aiko cutting him down to size and just taking his money in episode three was excellent, because it took to task all the dudes with similar notions, of such there are enough among the weebs. And then he continued to follow her around anyway and did a few selfless things in the finale episode and got the girl. Without really developing as a character or getting what was wrong about his prior behavior. I don't have an inherent opposition to the dumpy guy getting the girl, but for god's sake, at least have him come to some sort of realization about how awful his earlier behavior was. * N.O. Overload. The trouble with just about every series, but particularly shonen, is that once certain abilities become prolific among the characters, they stop working as what singles out the original characters and makes them unique. Hidomi and Ide probably would have been enough, Marco, maybe, since they did it with Naota / Ninamori in the original, but when the whole junior high population appeared to have some version of N.O. that was being sucked out by Interstellar Immigration during the finale, to power whatever was fighting the giant iron, it felt that was taking away from the characters we were most familiar with. * Lazy tie-ins. I don't really know what to do with Canti or Amarao or the mystery of the bass because even though the promo material asked "what ever happened to" this or that, the payoff was never there. Canti was little more than a Macguffin. Amarao was a visual name drop and then an actual one. The bass was there, but the potential tension between the Jinyu aesthetic and the Haruko aesthetic was never exploited nor spelled out particularly. The impression was given that Medical Mechanica was now just about everywhere and yet they simultaneously had very little "presence" in the show outside of the visual of the iron, which was rarely used to any particular effect, certainly not the siren and steam burst that accompanied Naota's more emotional moments. In short, they utilized a lot of the imagery without actually doing anything with most of it. Or rather, while the original highlights such characters and traits, the sequel referred to them, and then refused to expand on them. Thus, it positioned itself with the more lazy of the sequels, asking us "remember when?" without improving our understanding of what was happening. Objectively, I'm not sure Progressive is bad, although a lot of people will probably say it's bad (MAL has a lot of 3/10 reviews right now), whereas I merely found it to be mediocre and poorly thought through. I'll still be watching Alternative when it arrives on the scene in the fall, but I feel like a lot of the wind's been taken out of me in terms of enthusiasm.

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