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Anime

'FLCL: Progressive' Airs on Saturday and I’m Stoked for More Extremely Confusing Plot

The show is praised for its zaniness and metaphors, but I’m most excited for its plot.

A new episode of FLCL (pronounced "Fooly Cooly") will air for the first time in 15 years on Saturday, and I can't wait to dive back into this wild universe.

When it came out in 2000, FLCL was hailed as “the most bizarre anime series ever created,” and beloved by its young audience for a satirical take on mainstream anime and a nuanced portrayal of chaotic adolescent emotions. Writer Yōji Enokido and director Kazuya Tsurumaki tossed 12-year-old Naota Nandaba into a world so confusing people still argue about what happened in the show. Anyone who had a rocky adolescence (read: everyone) could relate to his frustrations navigating gender roles, romance, and the changes his body was going through.

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Now, the first episode of FLCL: Progressive, for which production company Production I.G brought on a whole new writing and directing staff, promises to flesh out one of anime's most enigmatic universes, and I'm pumped as hell.

When Progressive picks up, it's been years since Naota harnessed the power of the Pirate King—and his own volatile feelings toward Galactic Space Police Brotherhood agent Haruko Haruhara—to thwart the evil corporation Medical Mechanica's attempt to destroy life on Earth. The new series centers on a dispassionate 14-year-old girl named Hidomi who, like Naota at the beginning of his journey, complains that "Nothing amazing has ever happened," in her life.

Where Naota lived with his single father, Hidomi lives with her single mother. Like Naota, she rejects friends' and family's attempts to connect until she's subject to a hit-and-run and starts getting accosted by giant robots. A large, iron-shaped building looms large in the background of her sleepy town. The setup in Progressive is nearly identical to the original series, but the difference I'm most excited about is the introduction of another Galactic Space Police Brotherhood agent named Jinyu.

Jinyu shows up early in the first episode and hits Hidomi with her car, just as Haruko hit Naota with her scooter. Jinyu stoic and cool-tempered, the perfect foil to Haruko's mischievous personality. Haruko was self-serving and destructive, but Jinyu seems to protect Hidomi, shouting, "Don't lay a hand on her!" in the trailer. In fact, she's hunting her wildcard counterpart, and warns others to watch out for a woman on a Vespa. My hope is that Jinyu will finally give us some answers about the FLCL universe.

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Haruko's actions are largely why viewers walk away from the original series with wildly different interpretations of what happened. In the first episode, she hits Naoto with a guitar and opens a portal in his head to pull out giant robots. She's searching for the Pirate King Atomsk, whose incomprehensible power she wants to harness. She constantly antagonizes Naota to make him sprout more robots, hoping one will be the Pirate King. She doesn't care what happens to Earth, only her own power. Marc Handler, the ADR director who translated FLCL into English, is among those who see the story as a dream Naota uses to cope with overwhelming feelings. “It seems to me that Haruko is a manifestation of Naota's sexuality. She says things like ‘I am an illusion,’ Handler points out in an Anime News Network interview. “She's really a manifestation of his own sexual impulses and feelings.”

A straight read of the show is more fascinating to me. Taken literally, the show examines the geopolitics of a massive, heartless corporation defying the intergalactic government to steamroll a backwater planet for its own gain. In Jinyu, I see an opportunity to learn what's really going on in the world. What is the evil corporation's plan for Earth? Who are the Galactic Space Police Brotherhood? What is humanity's place in the universe? These questions are drawing me into FLCL: Progressive as much as the promise of new genre-bending flourishes like the scenes stylized as manga pages and a killer soundtrack by J-rock band The Pillows.

Early reviews of the season premiere complain that the new series isn’t as edgy as its predecessor, and seemed to rely on the same tropes it used to lampoon. But fuck the haters. I'm here for the story. The return to this crazy world is something to be amped about.

FLCL: Progressive returns on Saturday, June 2 at 11:30 PM during Adult Swim's Toonami block.

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