 The Cooly ROSSMAN
and the Spooly USS MissouriI believe
that every once in a while everybody is in need of a "spaz-attack" in
one way, shape, or form (A spaz-attack being when an individual
lets loose, goes insane and bounces around the room like Sonny
the Cocoa Puff bird in order to let off steam or just to celebrate
kookiness). In which case, thank God for Studio Gainax.
They gave the world one of the greatest means of "escape
spaztasms" that has ever been created: FLCL (pronounced "fooly cooly").
FLCL is.... Um, it's like.....
well, it's better than.... It's more fun than....
I'll figure
it out someday. I can tell you what it's supposed to
be about. It's about this average ordinary everyday kid (named
Naota). Happy to do nothin', and in fact that's what he did.
His brother is out of the country playing baseball. His father
is a fucked up oddball who likes to dress up like Lupin III
on occasion. His brother's girlfriend (whom he left behind)
is a pyro skank who likes to touch Naota in places that his
bathing suit covers. Then there's Haruhara Haruko. She's an
alien who rides a yellow Vespa and likes to hit Naota on the
head with her Rickenbacker bass guitar (which happens to cause
lots of robots to come pourin' out of the poor kid's noggin
once an episode). Oh yeah, there's also Kanchi. Kanchi is the
coolest robot ever made. He's around 8 feet tall, has a tv for
a head and has a Harpo Marx complex. He can do just about anything
you want him to.
That just
about sums it up. Mamimi (Naota's brother's girlfriend) picks
on Naota in a very sexually suggestive manner, Naota gets frustrated
with her and his dad (and Grandpa), Haruko smashes his head
in with her guitar and a strange robot pops out with whom Naota
must fight and destroy with Kanchi's help. There's also some
sort of weird government agency that's being run by a guy with
fake eyebrows that is trying to capture Haruko and Kanchi. And
there's talk of a space pirate too, but I don't want to confuse
you or myself anymore so I'll just let it go at that.
FLCL is trippy. It's also very
funny but in a sick and weird way. Do you find it funny when
12 year old boys are kinda sexually abused in a comical sort
of way by their brother's girlfriend or by a freak from outer
space? Do you chuckle whenever kids are cracked on the skull
by a musical instrument causing evil machines to climb out of
their forehead? Do you piss your pants when you watch a screaming
match between father and son turn into moving comic book frames?
I do. Which is why I thought that this OAV was genius.
It's only
6 episodes long, but it will confuse the hell out of you. At
least it should. It kinda has an ending, but it doesn't really
explain everything down to the last detail to you. It would
actually really suck if it did. I believe that it's FLCL's
feelings of disorder and ambiguosity that make it a winner.
Watch it to be amazed that somebody actually thought to animate
it. Do not expect Shakespeare. Don't even expect Mac and
Me.
In the
end I find that I must give FLCL 69 out of 78 Stars
of Power and Patriotism. It is fun to watch, but it was
missing something. I guess I'm just used to Gainax shows having
a great ending (i.e. EVA, Nadia, and Gunbuster).
This just left me scratching my head. I wonder if enjoying it
on an acid trip like the director must have had during production
time would help. It could only kill brain cells. | 
