FLCL, pronounced as Fooly Cooly, is an anime comprised of six OVAs that is not based on any existing work. One thing to note is that FLCL is really weird, even by anime standards. The story doesn’t make sense at first, and probably still doesn’t make much sense by the end. It is filled with random moments that make it completely unpredictable. It has a very fluid animation and a classic aesthetics but it isn’t afraid to change it up. The occasional change in animation style makes it consistently visually interesting, such as one scene replicating a manga strip while another will have the camera revolving Matrix-style to great effect.
The story starts off with young Nandaba Naota hanging out with his older brother’s girlfriend. His older brother is a talented baseball player who is currently in America. It was a normal day and it even has Naota voicing that nothing ever happens in this town. Since he tempted fate like this, he immediately gets run over by a girl on a scooter. Being run over the by scooter is just the start of things. This is where the anime starts getting weird. The girl, who we’ll later learn is Haruko, states that she is an alien, and ingloriously whacks Naota with an electric guitar. As if this wasn’t enough, Naota then develops a bump on his head that grows to ridiculous proportions and weird stuff starts happening in relation to this bump.
The weirdness factor keeps dialing up. Eventually, you’ll get stuff like intense robot battles in the sky. These types of events are just normal for all the other characters, who watch it, accept it, and moves on. The only sane one seems to be Naota himself. His father and grandfather accept Haruko’s antics and no one bats an eye when she turns up on her scooter at school and runs over the teacher. There is widespread destruction as collateral damage but no one dies or notices.
Each episode has a different major event and due to this, it can feel episodic. This means it can end up feeling episodic and predictable as you know that a robot will appear, a battle will happen, and then the opponent will get destroyed. It’s hard to tell where the anime is heading towards. It’s only until the fourth episode where it is slightly clearer on what Naota’s ability is, and what Haruko did to him to cause all the strange things that is currently happening.
The way of FLCL’s storytelling is that it presents only some of the scenes and the viewer is supposed to fill in the blanks. Most of it is quite obvious and natural, and this is an interesting way to do. However, it doesn’t work all the time, but when it works, it works really well. However, don’t expect the ending to clear everything up in a dawn of realization. The anime relies heavily on symbolism and metaphors. Overall, while FLCL is a cult classic, it can be very hard to fathom. The animation is high quality and it is visually interesting. Yet, there are way too many moments where you just don’t know what is happening or what the significance of the current scene it, and this holds the anime back for newcomers.
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