Updates Received/Not Received 4/5/18:: Time Warner Cable :: Albany, NY :: Zip Code 12203
“And Noah brought all the episodes two-by-two into Cutting Edge and On Demand, even as the Schedule had said.”
Yes, this week’s episodes have all arrived.
This Week’s Irrelevant Aside…
…is even more irrelevant than usual, since it’s not about AN but That Other Place Where I Watch Anime, aka Toonami. Which showed a sneak preview of the third Fooly Cooly series–in Japanese with subtitles–for April Fool’s Day. I wanted to try to untangle my thoughts about it before Toonami starts showing the original next week (according to their online schedule). Since I really don’t post anywhere else, and since you’ve all been so kind about letting me think out loud…er, onscreen…here I go again (hidden away for spoilers, but also so as not to make you waste your time scrolling past it):
FoolyCoolyFoofaraw
I was disappointed. Maybe it was inevitable, given how much I love and adore the original, but I don’t think that’s all it is. Let’s see if I can put it into words…The original FLCL was edgy, crackling with energy and over-the-top, surreal, symbolic, exaggerated events–just check out the first episode and the way Naota goes flying from the collision with the Vespa, or the deliriously demented manga-style dinner, or any of a dozen-plus other things. It was full of smart dialogue and elliptical crosstalk that still managed to be completely comprehensible. It was self-aware and didn’t take itself too seriously, constantly banging on the fourth wall.
In contrast, the first episode of the new series was slow, soft, mostly realistic, nostalgic, and sweet. I think part of this comes from setting the new series in high school. The first series was set in middle school, and so much of the metaphor and subtext–and the phor and just plain text, for that matter–was Naota having to grapple with puberty and sexual awakening, and trying to puzzle out his relationships to Haru, Mamimi and Ninamori, the three women in his life. He also feels alienated from his everyday existence in supposedly humdrum Mabase. However, in the new series, our heroine Kana is in high school, seems pretty happy and well-adjusted, doesn’t seem to be alienated or going through any kind of personal or existential crisis, and has very close friendships with her three friends. Of course, the creators could make things darker in subsequent episodes. Much, much darker. They could tear the circle of friends apart with with jealousy, seething resentments, obsessions, lust, madness, drugs, whatever. But I don’t think that would be very enjoyable to watch. (At least not for me.) Anyway, right now, in the first episode, there’s not a lot going on inside there.
Or outside there, either. The friends meet up at school, attend class, hang out in their clubhouse, decide to build a big bottle rocket, go shopping for the components, and build it, having not-very-memorable dialogue along the way, all depicted in mundane, pretty much realistic style. Oh, sure, in the next-to-last scene a giant pin comes crashing through roof of the clubhouse, and animates some of their junk into a techno-organic monster, and look, Haru shows up and gives Kana the requisite bonk-on-the-conk and pulls–surprise!–a guitar out of Kana’s head, and whales away on the monster. But it’s all stuff we saw before in the original FLCL, and it feels pro forma and safe and familiar, adding to the general sense of nostalgia. It almost seems like a standard, straightforward, all-on-the-surface, take-it-at-face-value shoujo series, where maybe we will get to explore some of the issues facing young women. (They’ve already got obvious setups for boys, body-image and appearance, expectations placed on girls as to proper female behavior, etc.) Or maybe not.
Another thing that–so far–is sharply different between series, is the level of awareness and self-awareness. Naota was very aware of what was going on around him. He might not understand the meaning of it, but he damn well knew it was there, and kept seeking and demanding an explanation. Part of his exasperation was that most people either never thought to question all this strange stuff, or just did their best to ignore it, or simply sleepwalked right by it, oblivious. In contrast to Naota, Kana and her friends seem to be among the sleepwalkers. This alien monster thing appears, attacks them and trashes their clubhouse, a mysterious woman shows up, makes a flower grow out of Kana’s head, pulls it out (deflowering her???), and it turns into a guitar that she uses to beat the monster to death. How do they respond to this extraordinary turn of events? They’re upset that their pretty bottle rocket was smashed. And so they build another pretty bottle rocket. And launch it at the beach. And get drenched, and play in the water. End of episode. Not what I would call a normal response to what they’d just experienced. Not even fictional-normal or anime-normal.
And then, as if to underline all of this, the closing song by The Pillows comes on, and it even sounds like a softer, less-edgy version of Ride on shooting star, their song for the original FLCL, only over much-less-interesting closing animation.
I will certainly watch the second FLCL series when Toonami shows it this summer. (I still have some hopes for it–the promo they showed looks good.) And I will watch this third FLCL series when Toonami shows it in the fall, watch it with considerable interest, and probably enjoy it well enough for whatever it is. But I had been looking forward to the FLCL sequels with intense interest, eagerness and anticipation. And now…I’m not.
Thank you for letting me do this.