This month, we’re celebrating animation from Japan–better known as anime–by looking at some of our favorite works or ones we hope will provide new perspective. See all the articles here.

by “Doc” Hunter Bush, Staff Writer

I’ve never been good at sleeping, and the nights alone in front of the TV - usually reading comics with something interesting as background - led me to so many corners of culture that would have taken me much longer to find in my life. Things like the Johnny Carson era of the Tonight Show, the early years of Late Night with David Letterman, Space Ghost: Coast to Coast, USA Up All Night hosted by Gilbert Gottfried (RIP) and MonsterVision hosted by Joe Bob Briggs.

These were formative things for me. The humor and focus was more zeroed in on things I was interested in, as compared to my experience with current similar programming. Talking about old Letterman episodes with friends led someone to recommend I watch Late Night with Conan O’Brien and, once again, I found something that felt different, unique, and special because it felt like something I would make, were I in that position.

Finding FLCL via Cartoon Network’s anime-specific Toonami block felt a little like that. It was grasping at bigger feelings then I was capable of, and doing it with the benefit of more hindsight and distance then I had at the time, but it was using the tools I like to think I would have. Things I loved: sulky loners, big emotions, hormonal chaos, robots-with-TVs-for-heads, grunge music, kaiju combat, and a Vespa (*). All these things were Just Cool. I was also really getting into J-rock (Japanese rock music) in the early 2000s, so being exposed to the music of The Pillows was also a revelation. It was all almost too much. Too good. Too surreal. Too beautifully abstract.

FLCL (pronounced “Fooly Cooly”) was made by Studio Gainax in the wake of their extremely successful and somewhat divisive Neon Genesis Evangelion which (to give the bare minimum of context) is about children conscripted into piloting giant robots and fighting mightily-symbolic alien creatures and, also, the emotional toll which all of that has on the kids. FLCL was a cool down project for them: 6 half-hour(ish) episodes where they could be silly, play with format, and not feel the weight of such a serious-minded project hanging over their heads. Of course being Gainax, it still has more weight to it than you might expect at first blush.

The overarching story of FLCL focuses on Naota, a closed-off 12 year-old boy living in a small town in the shadow of the mysterious Medical Mechanica corporation (their headquarters is shaped like a giant iron, like for ironing clothes). His older brother has recently-ish left for America to play baseball, and Naota has been hanging around with the emotionally needy Mamimi, a 17 year-old shutterbug and possible firebug who is projecting her unrequited feelings for Naota’s brother onto him, saying that she has to hug him and nuzzle against his neck or else she will “overflow.” Naota also has a difficult relationship with his immature father, and they both live with Naota’s grandfather above the bread shop he owns.

After being hit by the Vespa driven by Haruko, a pink haired… let’s say eccentric girl of indiscriminate age (later said to be 19) wielding a Rickenbacker bass guitar as a weapon, and her saying things alluding to Naota being special and the “only one” which will work for whatever her goals are, Naota develops a bump on his forehead. The bump quickly becomes a geometric kind of horn that Naota attempts to hide under a bandage to prevent it from sprouting further (cartoon logic abounds: he can kind of press it back down into his head despite it being at least a half a foot long and bordering on non-euclidian). However, Haruko is so hell bent on achieving her mysterious goals, via Naota, that she manufactures a scenario whereby she ends up invited to be the bread shop/home’s live-in maid so that she can manipulate events. Meshugaas ensues.

At the end of the first episode, frustrated into a fit of childish cruelty by Mamimi’s confusing attention, Naota reveals that his brother has been writing to him and now has a girlfriend in America. The one-two punch of his not writing to her, and his having a romantic partner causes Mamimi to “overflow,” collapsing on the bridge at which time the bump on Naota’s head bursts through the bandage and becomes the finger of large red robot (with a TV for a head), which is locked in combat with the forearm of an even bigger robot. Yes, all this is stretching out of Naota’s forehead.

After the red robot destroys the bigger robot’s arm (which is all that escaped Naota’s head), Haruko rides up and strikes it with her Rikkenbacker which turns the robot blue and seems to calm him down. This robot is Canti, who will end up also working around the bread shop/home, being worshiped by Mamimi as a god of fire, and repeatedly doing battle with the crazy creatures that erupt from Naota’s skull.

So, you’ve got a pubescent boy being maybe-romanced by two older women and, as a result, he has a new biological protrusion that is frightening and embarrassing to him. There’s a lot of double entendre dialogue, cheesecake, and emotional confusion, but in addition to the Degrassi Junior High-style teenage drama, there’s Evangelion-esque giant robot fights triggered by the emotional outbursts of those around Naota. In just six episodes, the series explores Mamimi’s backstory (she probably burned down her school, which is how she met Naota’s brother), Naota’s relationship with his father (they have a literal gun battle over the affection of Haruko, which Naota won’t even admit to wanting), and even one of Naota’s classmates whose father (the mayor) is having an affair (she hopes that by starring in a school play, she can make her parents get back together, and she’s rigged the votes so that Naota is her co-star because she kinda has a thing for him). That’s all aside from exploring the relationship between Naota and Haruko, revealing (at least somewhat) her motives and how they relate to Medical Mechanica.

To paraphrase a popular slogan of FLCL’s approximate era: “That pacing is brisk, baby!” And throughout it all, Gainax is playing with format. The series has a baseline animation and art style, and even that’s already very elastic, with regards to physics and realism, but it still dips into wholly different styles to sell specific moments. The wacky paternal relationship drama in Naota’s home is depicted in one sequence as a manga, illustrated in black and white, with totally different line weights and limited amounts of motion. One conversation is done in the style of a relationship simulation game and some segments of the gun battle between Naota and his dad are even animated to mimic South Park! The layers of pop-cultural and meta awareness really hooked me in the middle of the night all those years ago. It felt like anything was possible, like I could create anything I wanted without chasing a specific tone or level of reality, and that maybe it would find an audience of people like me.

The series is also extremely dreamlike. Each episode opens with some version of the premier’s very pastoral scenes of the town with narration from Naota lamenting that “Nothing amazing ever happens here” (despite the giant surreal Medical Mechanica building looming over everything) but the in media res nature of the story combined with the mere six episode series length always makes it seem like you might have missed an installment. I must have watched it 3 times all the way through before I was certain I’d seen all there was to see. There’s also an overall feeling of anti-climax due to Gainax’s decision to emphasize side stories and emotional through-lines as much as big robot fights. The story, like all the characters, feels like it existed before the series began and will continue existing after it’s over.

People who watch the series just once, or only catch part of it, tend to assume the series is a big, horny deconstruction of male fantasy and fanservice, but the way in which it handles puberty in a larger context is really genuinely wonderful. Yes, there’s juvenile horniness, cheesecake, and childish violence (and all of those things are fine in general), but the core of FLCL isn’t only sexuality, despite the erection imagery. FLCL illustrates the big emotions and feelings that come with being the age Naota is, crashing down on you like waves. And with those feelings, come questions: How much of flirting is sexual and how much is romantic? How manipulative can your emotions be to you or to others? Is it wrong to feel these things? Why don’t I feel like an adult, and why don’t the adults around me seem like adults either now?

These are huge feelings and, no matter how you try to restrain them, they will come bursting out. It will be embarrassing and uncomfortable. It might make things awkward and it will feel like the world is ending, but you have to learn to address them and maybe then you’ll be able to grow up. Honestly, even in my early 20s, taping FLCL off of Toonami, those lessons resonated.

All of this heady conceptual, emotional stuff is underlined by a score from The Pillows. The band has been around since 1989 and have, over time, settled into a sound that is power pop through a grunge lens. Their hooks are catchy and, even if you are largely unaware of the lyrics, the songs express an air of hopefulness; they’re upbeat and dancy. Gainax had licensed some of their previous albums to compile the soundtrack for FLCL, but in addition to that The Pillows wrote and recorded “I Think I Can” and “Ride on Shooting Star” (which would be FLCL’s closing theme). Just as Gainax was reconfiguring what I thought was possible within the confines of animation, The Pillows combination of sounds and feel good vibes was also somewhat revelatory to me at the time, inspiring positivity without feeling like saccharine nonsense.

Long after my VHS dupe broke or was lost (I loaned it to as many people as had working VCRs), I chased the high it gave me all the way to Otakon (like a comic convention, but focused on anime/manga) with my then-girlfriend and purchased a boxed set just so I could have it whenever I wanted to see any of it again. I also ended up with the entire Pillows discography on my iPod. I can’t say that I’ve ever felt quite the way stumbling upon it in the middle of some random night made me feel - like there was a secret club out there that was just perfect for me and that, just by realizing it, I was welcome - but subsequent rewatches have only given me more to appreciate stylistically, conceptually, technically.

Obviously your mileage may vary, of course, but FLCL remains one of my go-to recommendations for those thinking about looking into anime which, as a genre, is about as wide as it gets. FLCL does a good job covering a lot of ground and, even when people told me it wasn’t really their thing, it acted as a good litmus test for what they might like in future viewings. What resonated most with them? The teen angst-y dramatic moments? The surreal humor? The cheesecake? The big robot fights? Whatever they responded to most, there was something out there for them, and Toonami was a big part of helping folks find what they liked.

By making anime more accessible, Toonami helped to normalize and demystify it. At one point Naota says “When you live in a town surrounded by fog, it’s easy to forget there’s a world outside,” which might be the most enduring lesson FLCL has shown me. 

Boundaries only exist if you think they do.

(*) Apparently the “Vespa” is actually a Fuji Rabbit, and not a Vespa at all. Fun fact: the one photographed for the live action stop motion closing credits sequence was owned by Kazuya Tsurumaki, one of the directors.