As part of my Patreon rewards, once a season I let my patrons vote on a classic series for me to watch and write about. This time, our winner was FLCL, which, interestingly enough, I had never seen before. Coming out of it, I am genuinely impressed. It has that over-the-top aspect and unbridled imagination that continue into later Gainax works like Gurren Lagann and Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt (and more recently in studio Trigger’s Kill la Kill).
But while I enjoyed all the surreal fighting, silly wordplay, and slapstick humor, what really blew me away was the layered storytelling that was going on. Sure, FLCL has weird robots popping out of a boy’s head and an alien girl on a moped beating said robots with a guitar, but that’s not what FLCL‘s really about.
What it’s really about is the lies we tell to ourselves.
Nearly every character we see in the show is lying to themselves (and others) about a key aspect of their lives. Each episode, one of these lies is brought out into the light and confronted with the truth. It is at this moment that the episode’s robotic monster appears to battle our heroes.
While even the more minor characters are deceiving themselves with convenient lies–be that Naota’s father thinking his fan-made magazine will be popular or Commander Amarao thinking his fake eyebrows make him more of a man–the story is focused mainly on three characters: Mamimi, Ninamori, and Naota.
In the first episode, the lie is Mamimi’s: She is telling herself that she is still connected with her boyfriend Tasuku (who is now in America playing baseball). To support this lie, she spends nearly every day with her proxy for Tasuku, his brother Naota. She meets him after school, cuddles with him, gives him hickies, and even calls him by the same nickname she used with his brother.
Naota, on the other hand, knows deep down that he is being used but enjoys the attention nonetheless. After all, he has a neglectful father, his mother is absent, and the brother he idolized has left home. It’s no wonder he’s lonely. But it’s clear from the start that he feels equal parts guilty and angry at the charade–especially because he knows the truth. His brother has moved on with his life and even has a new girlfriend. And it is when he finally tells Mamimi this–makes her face the fact that she is no longer a part of Tasuku’s life–that the first robot appears.
Image source: 劇場版フリクリ公式 2018年9月連結公開 on Twitter
The central lie in the second episode is likewise Mamimi’s: Basically the entire way she has appeared to Naota is a lie. He has always seen her as she wished to be seen: as Tasuku’s girlfriend. Now that it’s obvious she’s no longer connected to Tasuku in any meaningful way (he doesn’t even send her letters), Naota starts to see who she really is.
Clearly, Mamimi has a bad homelife (she spends all her free time under a bridge) and they are so poor that she has to eat stale bread. She likewise has no friends (we only ever see her with Naota) and she is being bullied by her classmates. Without her lie to escape to, she starts setting fires. While part of this is tied up into the fantasy she has constructed about the robot, Canti, being a god, this is just another lie she’s telling herself.
She has really started setting fires again because that’s how she met Tasuku in the first place. Years ago, seeking to escape her terrible life, she set a fire to burn down their school. He rescued her from the blaze. Starting fires again is her way of crying for help, hoping that, like last time, Tasuku will appear and rescue her.
This also explains why she acts like a kid Naota’s age instead of the 17-year-old she is. She’s been trying to relive the early days of her relationship with Tasuku. It’s even implied that she and Tasuku may have never really been dating at all–that it was completely one-sided.
Once her true state of being is fully revealed to Naota, the second robot appears.
The third episode deals with the lies of Naota’s classmate Ninamori–the big one being that she doesn’t care about all the problems in her life. Everyone sees Ninamori as what they expect from the daughter of the mayor: rich, responsible, and the obvious pick for class president. She’s basically the perfect child.
But in reality, her life is full of problems. Her father has been cheating on her mother with his secretary and that information has gotten out, causing a scandal. The press surrounds her home and all signs point to her parents divorcing. Through it all, she lies to herself and others that it is all fine–that it doesn’t concern her.
Yet, Ninamori’s actions tell another story. To preserve her family life, she embarks on a plan of voter fraud and blackmail. She focuses on the school play, getting herself to be the female lead and her crush–i.e., Naota–to be the male lead. By showing the love she has for Naota (and hopefully he in return), she wants to inspire her parents in the audience to remember their own feelings for each other.
To wrangle Naota into the role, Ninamori resorts to blackmail–and in the process reveals her true, flawed nature to him. Unfortunately, when she pushes him too far, he reveals her dark secrets to the entire class, and thus the third robot appears.
Episode 4 shifts its focus to Naota himself. His big lie is that he’s okay with the status quo. In his life, he’s a passive observer. We see time and again that he is given the chance to stand out but never takes it. He doesn’t fail and he doesn’t succeed. Everything just stays the same.
Having an older woman like Haruko around reminds him that he wants more. With her, he has something akin to a mother and/or a girlfriend–a female influence in the family willing to give him the attention he yearns for. After all, unlike Mamimi, she seems to like him for who he actually is–except for when she completely ignores him in favor of his father.
But unless Naota actually takes a chance on her–takes a swing at the proverbial ball–he’ll never have a chance to keep her in his life. It’s when he finally admits this to himself and the world that the robotic satellite falls from orbit straight at him. And, as he takes his (literal) swing at the satellite, he is rewarded: Haruko comes back to help him. Suddenly his life is better than it has been in a long time.
Image source: 劇場版フリクリ公式 2018年9月連結公開 on Twitter
Episode 5 is the fallout from this. The lie that’s brought into the open is the one that Naota’s known deep down from the start–that Mamimi doesn’t actually love him.
Cocky from having made the right choice in the previous episode–and getting praise because of it–he decides to rock the status quo in other aspects of his life. Now that he’s a local hero like his brother was, it seems like the perfect time to take his relationship with Mamimi to the next level and make it a real romance. After all, she seems increasingly jealous of Haruko.
So he tries to take her on what a 6th grader believes a date to be and even goes for a kiss–only to be shocked and hurt when she doesn’t reciprocate. And the moment he brings words to the lie–that she loves him–the next robot appears.
Even then, knowing for sure that their “relationship” has been exactly the lie he feared it was, he rejects the truth. He’ll be the big damn hero again and save her, just like his brother did from the fire. But when in danger from the giant robot and crying out in fear, it’s not Naota she calls for, but his brother. Worse yet, it’s revealed that when he merges with Canti, he’s not the pilot, he’s the ammo–the giant bullet that Canti shoots at enemies.
And to twist the knife, when Haruko sees Canti powered up in his red form without Naota, she runs away with Canti, leaving Naota even more alone than when we started.
Image source: 劇場版フリクリ公式 2018年9月連結公開 on Twitter
The sixth episode is all about the series’ big lie. Despite all that has happened and how she’s supported Naota in the series, it’s revealed that Haruko doesn’t care about him at all. He was nothing but a useful tool for her to get what she was after.
Estranged from Mamimi and abandoned by Haruko, Naota spends weeks depressed. When Haruko suddenly appears again, he is understandably angry and hurt. But he can’t resist what she offers by her presence: female companionship. He allows himself to believe she has come back because she cares for him and even runs off with her when she offers–living with her as a hobo just to stay in his fantasy a little longer.
But when everything comes to a head and her goal is within reach, she doesn’t hesitate–she sacrifices him in an attempt to gain the power she has lusted after the entire time. At this moment, he can no longer deny that, despite his feelings, she doesn’t love him and never will. And soon he comes to accept that fact. In the battle, instead of a robot coming out of his head, he comes out of a robot’s head–empowered with the very force that Haruko has been chasing.
They fight but, instead of defeating her, he forgives her–releasing the power to the stars and telling her his feelings with a kiss. She immediately gets ready to pursue the fleeing power but offers to let Naota join her once again. But unlike earlier, he says nothing, implying that he has accepted the truth that she will simply use and then discard him again.
Yet, in a telling moment, she withdraws the offer–the temptation–before he can make any answer. Perhaps, in her own way, she does care about him–not enough to ever love him, but just enough to let him live his normal life without being used by her.
Image source: 劇場版フリクリ公式 2018年9月連結公開 on Twitter
In the end, FLCL is a fantastic series. At a mere six episodes long it is packed with more humor, action, and multi-layered storytelling than anime six times its size. No line of dialogue is wasted and every moment of animation is spent fleshing out both the story and the themes while being eye candy of the highest quality at the same time. With so much to unpack, it would be a disservice to the anime to watch it only once; so if you haven’t seen it in a while, any time is a good time to re-experience all it has to offer.
FLCL can be seen in English on Funimation and Hulu.
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