Anime in focus: FLCL episode 6

There comes a time in every boy's life where he must become a super powered energy beam and use a pair of guitairs as a weapon.

Alright, now for the thrilling conclusion to a borderline incoherent series. It ends in the fashion that it started, crazy, fast and interesting.

At the start of this episode, the entire town has been covered by fog, much in the same fashion Inaba was covered in fog at the end of Persona 4. (FLCL came out first) This creates an aura of things not moving forward. Furthermore, Haruko and the TV headed guy vanish, as implied in the beginning of the episode. According to Naota, things have gone back to normal. This realization causes that guy with the huge eyebrows to congratulate Naota and give him a pair of gigantic eyebrows. He then explains to Naota about the great space pirate Atomos and what he was planning to do with Haruko.

This goes on until Haruko comes back, and they do that weird animated manga thing, and ask Naota if he’s figured out what fooly cooly means. I suppose they were going for the “ending in the same fashion it begins” approach. After this, Naota goes on this weird trip thing were he meets Atomos, and winds up in a lot of fights.

As an ending episode, this one wraps up things quite nicely. While I am not entirely convinced that weird stuff will quit happening to Naota, it does give a nice climax to this chain of events. Granted, while I cannot quite express what happened into words, due to the nature of the show, it emits a sense of completeness. To put it bluntly, watching this show is akin to listening to music without lyrics, while you may be getting meaning from it, the meaning is quite difficult to fully express. I’d say the only way to truly understand this series is to go out and watch it yourself.

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Anime in Focus: FLCL episode 5

I just felt the need to point this scene out. Look at the size of that.... cell phone.

<- Previous Episode 

This episode’s theme appears to be hyper violence with a dash of Looney Toons.

This all starts out when Naota’s dad realizes that Haruko is paying more attention to Naota than himself (isn’t this familiar) and demands a gun battle with Naota. This garners the attention of the guy with the gigantic eyebrows, who winds up sending out his henchperson, whose shirt gets ripped in wonderful places. Still got no idea what these people are actually doing besides spying on Haruko. Anyway, these guys get into a rather large fight with Haruko, which winds up with nobody with a name getting killed. Clearly, everybody in this show has the aim of a stormtrooper. This suggests that every bit of violence was metaphorical and representing the characters internal struggles, or something.

Anyways, some giant thing that gets pulled out Naota’s head winds up attacking the medical building, but thankfully Naota has accepted his fate and fused with that TV headed robot in order to fight it. Haruko joins in, wearing a bunny girl outfit for some reason. While this is weird, it isn’t really enough to make me bat an eyebrow at this point.

Anyway, I’m not really sure if all of this is leading up to a finale, but there’s only one way to find out, right?

NEXT WEEK: FINAL EPISODE!

Anime in Focus: FLCL episode 4

<- As it stands, this man puffing up his eyebrows is on the level of a teenage girl stuffing her bra

<-PREVIOUS EPISODE

After the almost comprehensible third episode, I am given the proper head trip I was hoping for in the fourth episode. I’m not really sure if I had more questions answered or if more new ones were spawned. Frankly, I’m not even quite sure what was a delusion or what was really happening in this episode.

Anyway, this happens to be FLCL’s baseball episode. This one seems to use swinging the bat as its theme, where Naota can’t seem to find it within himself to swing a baseball bat like his brother did. Meanwhile, he’s feeling jealousy issues as Haruko is paying much more attention to his dad than to him.

Furthermore, Naota is being watched by some guy with pieces of seaweed for eyebrows that seems to want him to stay away from Haruko. During the episode, we see Naota hitting things with a baseball bat, presumably in order to vent his frustration about Haruko paying less attention to him. Throughout this ep, I’m not sure if his father is dead, alive, or what. I’m sure most of it’s metaphorical. Furthermore, while watching this episode, I’ve come to the conclusion everybody has super-advanced teleportation abilities, based on the places they wind up at throughout the episode. This is especially likely, since in a previous episode it was established that the medical building has no doors.

While this episode is filled with weirdness and hitting things with guitairs, I’m not sure whether to treat this as an actual anime about growing up and stuff, or a big music video by the Pillows. While it is thoroughly confusing (well, it manages to make more sense if you don’t look at everything at face value) it manages to tell a story, in a very abstract manner. This it to say this show reminds me of the weird sculptures outside the college art building.

Well, I’m more than halfway through the show now, there’s no turning back at this point!

PLACEHOLDER FOR NEXT EP LINK!

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Anime in Focus: School Days episode 10

 <- Well, she may look like she's in middle school, but she's in the same grade as Itou. Since Itou has slept with almost every other girl with a name, guess who's next?

<-Previous Episode

Ah, our little train wreck is about to happen. Itou finally breaks up with Katsura. Brutally I might add. He then kisses Setsuna in front of her. It should be noted that during the episode, Katsura mentioned something about a nice boat.

After this, Itou goes about sleeping around with most the other female characters with names. Katsura isn’t taking this all very well, as seen in the scene where she’ standing in the kitchen, looking depressed, and her eyes start going towards the set of knives sitting on the counter (Why yes, I am serious)

I like where this is going.

Meanwhile, Itou hasn’t been having as much filthy sex with Saionji anymore. In fact he seems to be paying more attention to Otome, the girl he want to middle school with, and slept with in the last episode. This is because Itou sleeps with women in the same fashion I eat Cheez-its… he can’t just stop at one.  

Meanwhile, the basketball team is having a farewell party. Saionji is invited. Unfortunately, this party turns out to be a setup for a  tape showing everybody who had sex in the backroom during the school festival. This causes some screaming, especially from Saionji, who sees Itou sleeping with Otome.

Meanwhile, Katsura’s been wandering around like a zombie for some reason. It’s kind of creepy, really.

This has me exited for the next episode, since everything looks like it’s on the verge of exploding in the most horrible ways possible.

Next Episode->

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