Sep 4, 2022
I normally don't write reviews for anime like this, but I felt like this one deserved at least a few words.
After finishing Progressive, I was expecting the worst, but Alternative ended up being a pretty smooth ride. It's nothing particularly special, but sometimes an ordinary adolescent life viewed through an extraordinary lens can resonate when watched at the right time.
Probably the series' flaw, but an inescapable one, is how superficial the ties to the original FLCL are. The original story more closely tied the ridiculous robot scenes, Miss Haruko Haruhara, and the main characters together in a symbolic fashion that earned it its cult following.
...
Both Progressive and Alternative attempt to tread new ground, while also bringing in the old elements, and ends up massively convoluted. Haruko's role is ambiguous at best, and contradictory at worst- I've seen people argue that that is the point, that she can do "whatever she wants", but even in the original she did have a goal, and she needed Naota for it. Medical Mechanica is thrown around as a buzzword, and bizarre robots seem to come from everywhere, just for the action, but there is no clear point to it.
On the other hand, as a modern take on the old FLCL story, the character writing and the outcomes aren't too bad. It may have been done before in other shows, but as a coming-of-age story that parallels the old one, it does a good job. The four girls that Alternative follows all have their struggles, passions, secrets, disagreements that make seeing them interact worth watching, definitely more so than the characters in its sister series Progressive. FLCL is also an opportunity for the new studio to flex their animating muscles, and work on scenes from drastically different genres and themes all in one spot, and that definitely comes through as well.
Overall, far from perfect, and perhaps juxtaposed with FLCL Progressive, it just seems good in comparison. I don't think that they had to rely on FLCL in order to justify creating something like this, and I'm sure that long-time fans might hate the new series cheapen the original by association, but as someone who only saw FLCL several years ago, I managed to get through it pretty easily. It was also nice to hear the pillows again as well, although the way songs were recycled both between the series and across episodes was kind of strange. It would definitely be easier to recommend to someone who hasn't seen the original, but either audience might get a little fun out of this sequel.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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