FLCL: Insanity Defined

SPOILER ALERT: Contains light plot details for Fooly Cooly!

Have you ever seen the Japanese film House? It’s a 1977 psychedelic horror flick that features dismembered floating body parts, kung-fu martial arts, haunted houses that will suffocate you with mattresses, people that turn into piles of bananas, and cats on the wall that vomit out more blood than those elevator doors in The Shining. It goes without saying that the plot makes no sense. The special effects, however, are entertaining because of the sheer variety of them that were used. House isn’t so much a frightening film, as it is disturbing nightmare fuel. It’s a cult film that many critics, even the Criterion Collection, recognize as enjoyable, not because of its plot, pacing, or characters, but because of the impact of its cinematography, editing, and most importantly, the special effects. House is well liked more for aesthetic purposes than anything else.

This brings me to Fooly Cooly, an anime that makes about as much sense as House, but I’ll grant that it has better characters. What is a “Fooly Cooly?” I don’t know. In fact, there are a lot of things that won’t be explained in the course of this anime. When one watches FLCL, they shouldn’t seek explanations, they should seek to be amazed. A lot happens by the end of the first episode. Naota, a boy bored with his town and his life, is run over by a scooter driven by Haruko, a pink-haired maniac that whacks him out cold with her electric guitar. The place where she hit him has resulted in a big horn, and out of which sprouts a giant robot with a television for a head and a disembodied robotic arm. They engage in battle, and Haruko knocks out both of the robots with her electric guitar.

Naota himself is a bored, pessimistic youth, hungering for an event to shock him out of the doldrums. Haruko’s something else entirely, a manic pixie dream girl in the most extreme sense of the word. Especially with qualities like her passive-aggressive demeanor, impulsive penchant for swinging her chainsaw-like guitar, spontaneous sense of humor both verbal and slapstick, and an aggressive, if not outright predatory, sexuality. In a way, Haruko is the very embodiment of this anime. Her voice actress, Mayuri Shintami, adds a childish, almost innocent, dimension to the character. The scenes of Naota riding with Haruko on her scooter remind me of Harold and Maude.

There are other characters in FLCL, like Naota’s sixth grade friend who obsesses over Puss’n Boots plays, has parents hounded by the tabloids, and wears a USSR shirt. Naota’s perverted father who leeches onto any female in the house and talks like a watch salesman in the wrong part of the street. His brother’s cute girlfriend, Mamimi, who smokes a cigarette that reads: “Tomorrow Never Dies.” A man in black who has massive eyebrows that would make Naruto’s Rock Lee jealous.

The episodes essentially follow a familiar format. A new appendage(s) grows on Naota’s head (or someone else’s) while the characters discuss god knows what until a robot of some sort springs out of the horn. Then, Haruko and the robot, occasionally using Naota, defeat the monster in a fluid fight scene. While this is, for the most part, a basic outline of the series, it seems almost criminal to reduce it as such. Each episode flies past the viewer with such speed, bursting at the seams with the over-the-top dynamic of a Power Rangers episode, the meandering atmosphere of Linklater’s Slacker, and the in-your-face presentation of Ren and Stimpy. FLCL thrives in its own little universe, until the fourth-wall breaks, of course.

As far as aesthetics goes, particularly those of the experimental kind, FLCL is a high class-act.With the style of animation changing between scenes. There are manga panel dinner conversations, South Park look-a-like barbershops, and high octane shoot-outs. Each episode always made good use of color and sketching to express a mood or character behind each scene or setting. These are visual olympics.

Whatever the strengths of the animation, they owe a great deal to the rock soundtrack provided by The Pillows. Their music fits so well with FLCL, that I would say that their contribution turns the anime into a musical. A great example of this type of musical would be Saturday Night Fever. The characters never actually sing, but each musical track is so indispensable to the narrative that ‘musical’ seems most appropriate. Songs such as “Little Busters” or “Carnival” serve as common refrains, while those like “The Last Dinosaur” or “I Think I Can” raise the intensity several notches. The Pillows have thrashing of Nirvana and the pop appeal of Weezer.

FLCL hit me like a train. The completeness of it all, slamming into your brain at high speeds, with all the flashing lights and blaring horns. The anime that FLCL reminds me of most is the Monogatari series. Like FLCL, Monogatari also features insane, sexy chicks, incoherent dialogue, colorful animation, and the most perverted of situations. While Monogatari is more mature, FLCL keeps things more compact. I would say that Monogatari relies far more on its pun-ridden dialogue, whereas FLCL relies more on its animation and music. Thus, FLCL, in my view, succeeds over Monogatari in pacing, excising exactly what isn’t needed. Monogatari had an overabundance of incoherent dialogue, which teetered into boredom, whereas FLCL has an overabundance of showmanship. Indeed, once the train has past I’m still seeing stars.