Let’s review this son of a female dog!
FLCL is one of my favorite, non-Osamu Tezuka manga series of all time. It ranks next to Read or Die and Sorcerers and Secretaries (technically not manga, but OEL anyway) on my “Top Ten Manga NOT Created By Osamu Tezuka” list. The other spaces are empty because I only seriously started reading manga that wasn’t written by Osamu Tezuka this year, but I expect I will find a sufficient number of manga that I will like which wasn’t written and drawn by the Mangakami.
Anyway, it’s my job to tell you why FLCL as a two volume manga series stands out from the crowd. It has a very different art style to most shounen and shoujo series, and it defies genre to the extent that Tokyopop don’t even have a genre lable for it on the spine.. Damn son. Bitch be trippin’ generic boundaries.
FLCL is not a manga which can be understood in the first sitting. In fact it will probably take me a University education (of the pretentious art school variety) and a lot of Bailey’s to fully understand what the hell is going on here. But the main character never truly discovers what is going on either. His brother lives in America as a baseball player, and his 20-year-old ex girlfriend Mamimi is left behind in Japan to fool around with the juvenile protagonist.
Yes, there are cradle snatcher jokes made, but there’s a certain melancholy about Mamimi, and the other students, who try to comprehend the mysteries of a society they’re living in where adults think they know everything, when they see them falling very, very far from their pedestals every day. This is truly a Gainax manga plot, undeniably. Gainax plots tend to be upbeat apart from Neon Genesis Evangelion, the soul crushing, depressing and dark exception. FLCL, or Fooly Cooly as it is properly called, is a manga series which is short, like youth, and is all about the development of human relationships at a young age, battling through all the misinformation adults feed you when you’re a kid while the juvenile characters view all their faults in their parental figures.
There’s surrealism to be sure, the dream like image of the robot with the halo flying over a charred burnt out house is reminiscent of… everybody’s thinking it, but I’m sayin’ it, photographs I’ve seen of the firebombing of Osaka. Fire is a motif, depicted as a “cleanser” of decay and depravity. The adults in this certainly are depraved, and there are hints of Freudian symbolism (the main character’s contemplation of killing his father). If anything this work is representative of the “coming of age” genre, only instead of sleazy American Pie kind of trash you get something that’s quite mature, but not really bleak. It’s not Junchiro Tanizaki’s Quicksand bleak by any means, or Neon Genesis Evangelion bleak. Instead there’s the sad melancholy of a loss of innocence.
If you’ve seen the anime, read the manga, there’s something to be said for the still images in a raw style the mangaka has used, it’s a bit different to the FLCL anime style but not too different. I’d recommend it for people who’ve become jaded with anime and manga and need to be reminded of mature but funny storylines which got them into the hobby in the first place. It’s by no means for anime beginners, as FLCL relies on a lot of meta-references to the medium for its jokes to work. But it is something that has to be experienced.
* * * * *
Copyright (c) Jacob Martin 2009
7 comments ↓
[...] See original here: FLCL Vol. 1 and 2: Electric Boogaloo [...]
Nice! I have these volumes in a box somewhere. Good reminder to read, esp. since I’ve not read manga in a while.
Also, I like the theme! Red is a plus.
[...] of Brilliant Blue (Comics Should Be Good) Michelle Smith on CUT (Soliloquy in Blue) Jason Martin on vols. 1 and 2 of FLCL (Asperger’s Anime Blogger) Lissa Pattillo on vol. 1 of Gakuen Prince (Kuriousity) Connie on [...]
I love Fooly Cooly one of my favorite manga and anime series. You actually felt apart of it like you were trying to figure out this life just like main character was, which made it fun.
http://www.animekin.com
I love Fooly Cooly one of my favorite manga and anime series. You actually felt apart of it like you were trying to figure out this life just like main character was, which made it fun.
Even though the review was made awhile ago, I’m glad to find a good review of FLCL. All I normally see are complaints about the artwork and the anime being better.
[...] Jacob’s reflection on FLCL. [...]
Leave a Comment