What’s Great (And Not So Great) About FLCL Progressive

The second season of 90s classic anime FLCL, FLCL Progressive, recently finished its run on Cartoon Network in the US. But while it has the same villain and is set in the same over-the-top crazy world, it’s missing the beautifully tight exploration of the main theme that made the first series so great.

For an in-depth look at the original FLCL, check out the article I wrote a few weeks back. But if you want the TL;DR, the original FLCL is an anime with four levels:

1. Random slapstick comedy
2. Weird plot about robots coming out of people’s heads, guitar weapons, and giant irons
3. The trials of growing up
4. The lies we tell ourselves

Progressive is still about these things, but with a far heavier focus on the first two. It’s as wacky as the original–like Looney Tunes but with a bigger budget and a Japanese sense of humor–and it looks great to boot. The real stand out visually is the highly stylized opening scenes of each episode that show one of Hidomi’s dreams up close. In fact, Progressive is one of those shows you could watch for the eye candy alone and come away feeling pretty satisfied.

The actual plot of the show is likewise more than a little nonsensical–though this is obviously by design. One of the best aspects of FLCL, in general, is how the setting tricks the viewer. From the start you see normal kids having a relatively normal school life–at least until Haruko shows up anyway.  Thus, you naturally assume that, despite the occasional odd occurrences, we are seeing a modern day story set in a world much like our own.

But as the story unfolds, it becomes clear–especially in Progressive–that the world of our heroes is as different from our world as it is similar. Robots living in town, giant world-killing irons masquerading as buildings, cars that can fly, and the existence of aliens are all treated as relatively normal–if inconvenient.  No one really bats an eye at anything that happens. To the characters, this isn’t a surreal adventure: it’s an everyday one.

Image source: [adult swim] on Twitter

The only main cast member to return in a lead role for Progressive is the antagonist, the moped-riding, guitar-wielding, alien woman Haruko. What’s so interesting about her return is how she has changed since the events of the first series.

To be frank, she is much more blatantly evil in Progressive. In the original, much of what she does is subtle–and perhaps even caring in her own twisted way. Little by little, she makes Naota emotionally dependent on her, becoming the female influence he’s been lacking in his life. Granted she does it so that she can break him that way–but it’s a far cry from the of constant stream big, flashy shocks she unleashes on Hidomi.

Image source: [adult swim] on Twitter

This is likely because of Jinyu. After the events of FLCL, Haruko caught, but failed to contain, Atomsk: the object of her desire. As a result, she split into two people, Haruko and Jinyu. Jinyu seems to contain all of the positive aspects of Haruko (no matter how small they might have been within the original). She is serious, kind, trusting, and protective. She’s even willing and able to put others’ needs before her own. To put it another way, Jinyu is Haruko’s conscience, the part of her that kept her from dragging Naota into space at the end of FLCL to continue to use as her tool.

Of course, that means the Haruko in Progressive doesn’t have anything to hold back her previous (albeit rarely manifest) inhibitions.

Image source: [adult swim] on Twitter

This newer, eviler Haruko, is unable to even understand the hypocrisy of her base nature. She wants to be free to do whatever she wants. And what she wants is to steal the very freedom she enjoys away from Atomsk. She likewise has no qualms at sacrificing anyone and everyone she meets to achieve her goal–including Jinyu. But in the end, she is able to contain neither Jinyu nor Atomsk–and it is in that moment of tears that we see her true self shine through.

Haruko is a paradox. She wants Atomsk–likely only because he is the one thing she can’t have. But, that doesn’t make her wanting him–nor the pain she feels at his rejections–any less real. That is why Haruko is, at her core, pitiable. If she wins and gains Atomsk, she won’t be happy. But at the same time, neither is she truly happy chasing him. Her own selfish nature has cast her in a role where suffering is the only outcome. And unlike the other characters, she is unable–or at least, unwilling–to change and move on with her life.

…Which in turn brings us to the thematic side of the anime. Progressive is, like the original, a coming of age story focused on the lies we tell ourselves. However, this time, instead of focusing on the various lies of a core group–unveiling one per episode–Progressive is centered around one person, Hidomi, and the lie that lurks at the very core of her being.

Hidomi is a girl intent on shutting herself out of the world at large–so much so that she wears a pair of headphones literally all the time. This, of course, keeps her socially isolated (as we have been conditioned to think that it’s rude to talk to a person wearing headphones) and largely detached from everything in her everyday life. She is invested in nothing–not her school work, her Mom’s cafe, or even her classmates.

However, it’s not that she’s antisocial–not really. Rather, Hidomi is trying desperately to live in the past–to keep everything the same as it was the day her father walked out on her mother and her. As long as she stays the same, she can wait forever. Her father can walk back into her life and they can pick up right where they left off. She doesn’t have to deal with all the feelings of loss and abandonment–and her rage about the whole unfairness of the situation.

Deep down Hidomi knows this is futile, that her father is never coming back. Her dreams tend to focus on this theme. In one, she’s the only one left in a decaying world–i.e., the past. In another, zombies devour her–a symbol of her newfound friends dragging her into their lives.

Still, it’s easier to just wear the headphones (a gift from her father, of course) and keep both the truth and her feelings bottled up inside. That’s the real threat she faces over the course of the series. If she “takes the headphones off” in both the literal and proverbial sense, it’s likely that her emotions will overflow and come rushing out.

Image source: [adult swim] on Twitter

Haruko, of course, wants Hidomi to do just that so she can achieve her own ends. That’s why Haruko constantly tries to make Hidomi face the real world through various shocks–be that making her watch porn in class or throwing her into life-or-death situations.

But the real threat to Hidomi is making her want to move on with her life. This is why Haruko keeps pushing Hidomi and Ide together. By kindling a romance between the two, Hidomi–now an adolescent with all those bubbling hormones–will start to want to move forward with her life even as another part of her desperately clings to the past.

While Hidomi’s internal struggle and daddy issues are undoubtedly the most interesting aspect of the series, they are also handled rather poorly within the structure of the story. It’s not until the final episode that Hidomi’s situation and mindset are revealed. In a lot of ways, this feels too little too late. When watching for the first time, there are few to no hints about what’s really going on–Hidomi’s actions only make sense in retrospect. And rather than a massive info dump at the end, it would have been much better to feed the information to us in bite-sized chunks over the anime’s run–doling out hints a piece at a time to the mystery that is Hidomi.

Image source: [adult swim] on Twitter

Moreover, while the original FLCL investigated a character along with a different “lie we tell ourselves” in each episode, in Progressive, Hidomi’s lie is diluted across six episodes. With less focus on the main theme, the series feels a lot less tightly written than the original. Much of the runtime is instead spent on the nonsensical world–being random for random’s sake. In the original, even the silly scenes mattered thematically; they often dispensed important theme and character information in such a way that you didn’t even realize it had been done.

But, in the end, just because Progressive is a step down from the original, that doesn’t mean it’s terrible. Quite the opposite actually. Progressive is a solidly above average anime that uses both strong themes and visuals to build a world that’s simply a joy to lose yourself in. Regardless of if you enjoyed the humor and insanity of the original anime or have never seen FLCL before, FLCL Progressive is certainly worth your time.

FLCL Progressive aired on Cartoon Network and is available for streaming on AdultSwim.com.

Top Image Source: [adult swim] on Twitter.