FLCL Progressive

Nothing amazing ever happens in this sequel. Every second we spend watching it is like a whole lifetime of dying slowly.

Hyperbole aside, I'll just be upfront: I didn't want this to happen. For years I was happy and confident that FLCL was seemingly sequel-proof. It's a perfect little character piece that crystallizes its particular time and place, celebrates all the excess and id-groping of the anime medium, and does it with heart and literacy. Nothing about it needed any elaboration. You can just ignore bad sequels, yeah, but they somehow make the original less "special." I wanted FLCL to stay special. Leave it alone.

Naturally, they ... didn't. I worked up some extremely cautious optimism and gave it a shot, anyway.

You can count me among the disappointed. Maybe Progressive isn't FOR us--the original was for older millennials who inherited the sensibilities of gen X, this one is apparently for younger millennials/gen Z. Re-using the throwback 90s alt-rock of The Pillows doesn't exactly scream "2010s zeitgeist," but ok, let's go with that. Well, Progressive does at least perfectly capture the soullessness and creative bankruptcy of this decade.

It's important to note that Studio I.G stated they planned to use young, somewhat inexperienced animators in order to capture the same kind of creative spontaneity as the first FLCL. Basically, trying to recapture lightning in a bottle--because that always works out, right? In the original, the approach was similarly improvisational, but it served a purpose: testing out then-new digital animation methods. Here though, it's just amateur-fetishism. The result is complete inconsistency--one episode looks like it could be any generic sterile looking moe SoL from this year, the next episode's brimming with off-the-wall animation and nice, hand-drawn looking linework. You can't really say Progressive looks good or bad, because it looks good and bad in about equal measure.

Working on a FLCL sequel should be an artist's dream--you can come up with all kinds of fucked up, evocative imagery and find crazy ways to work it into the plot and make it thematically relevant. The original nailed "magic realism with sci-fi overtones," maybe play around with some new genre combinations in this one. There's infinite possibilities besides just having robots come out of people's heads, right?

Nah. We get more robots coming out of people's heads, more phallic imagery, and more blabbing about "overflowing." Mamimi used that word at one point in the original to express how she felt in a dramatic scene with her limited vocabulary, but sure, let's have everyone use it now. Because ideas are hard. It's kinda sad seeing a show that gave so little of a fuck about what anyone expected being reduced to some kind of rote brand recognition checklist.

This might be contentious, but FLCL was never weird for the sake of it. It annihilated any border between highbrow and lowbrow, it was anarchistic, freewheeling, and almost felt like a 3 hour music video--but, it made sense as a story on an intuitive level because the creators grasped the basics of visual storytelling. The weirdness was there to give a visual logic to the convoluted web of sci-fi meta-narrative floating over the more central coming-of-age story, not to obfuscate things. There was always an emotional throughline in the craziness that kept you invested in the confusion.

Here, the pittance of novel ideas that weren't just stolen from the original take the opposite approach: the weirdness is weird for the sake of it in that generic "duuuude, LSD" sort of way that dumb people tend to falsely attribute to the first FLCL. In the original, you might have had a hard time explaining to a friend why Mamimi was walking a giant car-eating robot-dog like a pet in that one scene, but it made sense in the context of things. In Progressive, when that one side character is spinning around on the viking boat ride and some mechanical thing comes out of another mechanical thing and starts shooting missiles on a green vine thing, you're just as confused as your friend. The crazy shit is no longer there to accentuate the intimate character moments, it's there to REPLACE the character moments and to distract you from the fact you don't care about anything that's happening.

I remember all the theories about this sequel floating around online based on concept art and some animation snippets, and the interesting thing is nobody really got anything right. Not because Progressive defies expectations, but because it completely falls in line with them. Does that make any sense? It's the kind of stuff you'd never successfully predict because it's just too stupid and too obvious. You can imagine the writers sitting around in a boardroom coming up with this stuff a week before deadline, it's so on-the-nose.

"The original had a vintage vespa, so this one..."
"A vintage car."

"So we all know Haruko was this unpredictable manic pixie girl who used her sexuality as weapon to get what she wants. How do we quickly re-establish that here?"
"Uhh... I dunno... maybe, she can force high school students to watch porn on a laptop like some kind of escaped sex offender."

I'm serious, that happens. It's so dumb. Then she spends the next couple episodes barely connected to the plot, standing around and making the Dreamworks face as if to say "I'M HARUKO! Remember my memorable personality from the surprise hit OVA FLCL 15 years ago? I'll be relevant to the story by the 4th episode, I promise!"

In the original, Haruko was an awful, manipulative person, but she was oddly endearing, and you understood Naota's attachment to her. Conversely, you eventually got the sense she started feeling guilty over how she was using him. Not guilty enough to stop using him, but still, it felt like an actual human relationship, full of conflicting motives and ambiguity. There's nothing like that here. Watching Progressive, you just scratch your head and wonder "why are these kids still hanging around this creepy rapey hag who just ends up molesting and/or attacking them every episode?" Way to take one of the most alluring, dangerous, ALIVE characters in anime history and make her boring and washed up. Fuck.

I'd be fine with Haruko being recast as more of a typical antagonist if they remembered to fill that void with something, but the new characters have no soul. I know, "soul" is one of those buzzwords, it's hard to explain, but if you've seen the original you know what I mean. Naota and Mamimi had chemistry and felt like real people. They had flaws, but they weren't defined by those flaws; Naota was an angsty little ball of self-consciousness listlessly drifting through adolescence, but had a range of expression beyond just ennui. Mamimi was probably meant to either be slightly mentally retarded or somewhere on the spectrum, but I don't mean that in a derogatory way--she was like some weird wayward girl on the fringes of society you might have actually known at some point in your life. She had serious issues that the show convincingly sold to the audience--unlike a certain someone I'll get to in a moment--but again, there was more to her character than just brooding. She had an emotional range, and in the middle of that range she had her own unique "normal."

In Progressive, we're stuck with a fanfic.net self-insert "quirky" sadgirl protagonist with no apparent motivations, interests, goals or ability to make facial expressions. She has no genuine problems and looks like she could be a fashion model, but for some reason she's apparently drowning in nondescript existential malaise. The obligatory thematic undercurrent of her budding sexuality is wrapped up in miscellaneous gore/mallgoth imagery--she grins in her sleep as she dreams of zombies and dismembered corpses, etc. Because she's so QUIRKY and LITERALLY ME IRL XD :3. If you were worried that adult swim money might pressure the staff into pandering to Western sensibilities, your fears were 100% justified. This is the exact sort of fashionable fake depression bullshit that has no place anywhere outside tumblr.

I'm not saying you can't have a compelling character arc about depression or working through teen angst, I'm just saying it's all about execution. Again, just look at Mamimi in the original--her thousand yard stare, the way she tried to fill the holes in her life with countercultural debris and occult hocus-pocus, her freudian transference obsession with the name "Takkun"... She felt real. Hidomi is no Mamimi. Hell, Hidomi isn't even as interesting as Ninamori, and Ninamori was a side character who had one episode devoted to her before sinking into the background.

The less said about Jinyu, the better. She has zero personality and she looks like someone hit the randomizer in some shitty fighting game character create mode. Her voice actress stinks up the dub with the most hammy, melodramatic delivery in the show, but I can't really blame her because she didn't have much to work with voicing this bland cipher of a character. I can imagine the English audio director trying to explain Jinyu's personality to the VA in the recording booth: "she's, um... cool? And strong? And she's, uhh... uh... she wears pointy anime glasses?"

No good characters = no good character dynamics. That all-important adolescent romance angle falls flat because late in the plot, you still don't really get what Hidomi and Ide see in each other. They're both boring alphas (as much as Hidomi tries to pass herself off as some sort of maladjusted loner), they never really crack each other's shells, and they just don't have any "moments." I guess he likes her cuz she's a hot chick, and I guess she likes him cuz he's a hot guy...? Compelling stuff, right?

The first FLCL could convey so much more than that with visuals alone. Remember that part near the end when Naota and Haruko are riding on the vespa, smiling and talking about nothing in particular? No dialogue, just some song by The Pillows jangling away as their mouths flap--it's a casual but intimate conversation that we're not invited into, emphasizing how close they became. Remember Ninamori silently judging them the next day as she notices them slumming in a cardboard box? You can't have a great show that's only 6 episodes long without this kind of natural synthesis of visuals and story; everything from framing to body language communicating story and characterization.

To give you an idea of how Progressive stacks up, as soon as Jinyu first appears, she shoves the symbolic value of Hidomi's headphones down our throats in a clunky monologue. Later on, Ide--initially portrayed as this carefree class clown type character--has his "sad" backstory infodumped on us by a side character in about 10 seconds. At first I wasn't sure if it was for real or some kind of parody/meta-commentary, it was so badly done. The storytelling doesn't get much less mechanical and prosaic as it goes on.

The pacing is just baffling. How do you make a 6 episode absurdist comedy action sci-fi boring? Notice how every episode's structure is the same: we get a dream sequence intro to fill the "experimental" animation quota, then 90% of the episode is just there to set up climax. Then after the big explodey climax, we're left to assume that our questions will be answered in the next episode (they usually aren't). Rinse and repeat until ep 6.

I gotta touch on the visuals. The first FLCL was an early digital production that proved you can capture the expressiveness of well done cel animation in a digital medium. Even its color palette is more tasteful than anything coming out these days. Early digital resolution quibbles aside, it looked amazing--I didn't expect a post-Gainax "FLCL" to look as good, but I didn't expect it to be a total mess either. The female character designs could be cribbed from any interchangeable slice-of-life anime from the past few years. Everything in the first half of the show lacks shading and looks cheap. Besides a few animation bumps here and there, the action is floaty and stiff with no sense of weight or kinetic energy, thanks to a combination of poor directing and a surprising amount of studio outsourcing. The characters frequently jerk around with no in-between frames during serious action scenes, almost like those intentionally bad looking comedy budget-saving scenes in Kill La Kill--except it's not stylized or meant to be funny here. It's just bad.

The original FLCL was crammed full of fluid, stylish animation the whole way through and hidden single frame gags that served no practical purpose other than the animators having fun, since you have to pause to see them... and most of the time, this new one can't even be bothered to animate facial expressions and basic movement.

Admittedly halfway through the show, after the nth visual director switch, something happens: it starts looking... kinda good! The animation suddenly recaptures some of that sketchy, dynamic bounciness that was glaringly absent in the first three episodes; characters actually move around for the sake of it like actual humans in expository scenes; the action scenes are suddenly fluid and full of lovingly rendered mechanical gore; even the character designs are massively improved as the artists jump off those hideous early episodes' models and start imitating that classy old Gainax look. Hidomi gets an actual nose that's not just a thin line (for god sake Japan, give your fucking character designs noses again), Haruko starts looking like Haruko again, etc. It doesn't last long--they cheap out on the last episode--but give whoever directed that 5th ep a raise.

To reiterate, Progressive is a mess, and not in some inspired jam session sort of way--it seems to be a victim of budgeting and the production grind. It's like the full first half the show had to be sacrificed to make a couple episodes look good.

Anyway, a brief upswing in visuals can't make up for terrible writing and extremely formulaic episode structures. Progressive just doesn't have the humanity of the original, and you can't hide that with emotionally manipulative tactics like recycling "Runner's High" and "The Last Dinosaur." In fact, it just highlights how empty this show is when those familiar chords that used to make you feel like you were breathing sunshine suddenly evoke absolutely nothing.

When has American money getting mixed up in anime production ever led to anything you can praise without a dozen asterisks attached? By all accounts, adult swim brute forced this thing into existence, and the joylessness of much of the production process is palpable. Those Japanese tweets by some animators floating around complaining about having to deal with "stupid foreign companies" gave me a bad feeling from the getgo.

There's a resentment toward the audience permeating the whole thing. Occasionally they break the fourth wall and patronize the viewer with not-so-subtle lines about how you eventually have to "throw away your old junk" (read: "we're gonna shit all over this beloved intellectual property and you better not whine about it, you manchildren"). Art is a process of constant creative renewal--if something disappoints you, go create something yourself and do it better. That's the healthy approach, I know. But it's not the job of a mediocre cashgrab sequel to tell us that.

The first stage of grief is denial, so expect lots of faint praise for a while. Disappointment takes a while to sink in, I think. Maybe it's a kind of light Stockholm syndrome, like, we know this is what we're permanently stuck with, so we better try to enjoy it, right? I'll just be honest and say it: FLCL Progressive is bad. It could have been worse, and there's about half a decent show's worth of ideas floating around in the ether, but it just doesn't come together. It probably won't be remembered as some kind of legendary blunder, but on the other hand, it probably won't be remembered at all.

Matrix 3 was a masterpiece so why won't we give FLCL also a sequel it deserves.
- The team behind nu-FLCL, probably.

Our "sequel" is such an amazing piece that even its main character's personality is in contradiction with the point of the series. Naota wanted to be something somewhere else. He had several hard subject to deal with from love interests to his brother. His story was not only about coming-of-age, but a trip where he learnt to cope with himself and the world. In this nu-FLCL, Girl-whose-name-I-forgot is the epitome of emptiness. Person whose greatest merit is how little she cares about anything that ... is going on and how she never reacts to anything that happens. That's also pretty accurate way of describing myself when watching this anime.

The writing is utter nonsense. Random rent-a-whore girl comes out of nowhere to connect two plotlines because it wouldn't have happened otherwise. Past story used as a mystery element. The character development (or rather, sudden personality changes cast upon the main character) don't seem to have any purpose at all, other than working as plot elements in the narrative. The pacing and screen transitions are awful. Our main girl loses consciousness just so the series won't develop anywhere quite yet. Same thing is used as an excuse to teleport the series from place a to place b. All of this is so very noticeable and amateurish. I am not sure what the opposite of "solid" is in English, but I don't even have to thanks to this anime being the perfect representation of it.

The voice acting is good enough. The OST has the same songs by The Pillows and they are all great. The series sucks for its other merits, the problems don't lie here the least. The art and animation could be praised if they were the production values for any other anime than this one.

As a conclusion: I would call this series a masterpiece if I had hated the original and wanted to give it the best and most disrespectful insult imaginable. This is nothing but an artistic remaster by some self-proclaimed nu-auteur who clearly thought the fans of FLCL would let it slide because the content is supposedly 2deep5anyone to understand. It isn't and it wasn't in the original either. There was nothing -outside few obscure references- in the original FLCL for the viewer to get past what was directly told and shown. Whoever made this, obviously thought the original just "fooled" people into thinking the series is amazing. Regardless whether it did or didn't, this sequel surely didn't fool anyone. Take a trip to /a/ and witness not a single shitpost about nu-FLCL because the series is not even worth of that.

Have you ever had that moment when you are in utter awe with how animation flows past your eyes with an interesting story? That's what I got in this wacky adventure. There has been a lot of complaints, but I will only address one of them right away. Its animation is creative and imaginative and it has the pacing like Gainax shows in the past. Where it falls, however, is that this animation is not consistent. What I mean by consistency is that at the start of every episode there is a dream sequence done by a new animator. SO I DO NOT SEE ANIMATION ... BEING A COMPLAINT IF IT'S DIFFERENT BECAUSE THERE IS A DISTINCTION BETWEEN A REALITY AND A DREAM. Ok now that's out of the way I need to explain why FLCL Progressive is worth checking out.

Story:
FLCL Progressive piggybacks the story from its prequel. If you haven't watched the prequel, then I will say that it is about teenagers growing up. Some grow up too fast, while others grow too slow. Our main protagonist, Hibajiri, is a girl who seems to have grown up too quickly. What I find interesting is how the story is a journey for her to become both younger and older. She becomes more emotional like a kid and she also becomes more mature like an adult. The story is also filled with a plot behind the scenes that make up for the climax in episodes 5-6. WIthout giving too many spoilers to a short 6 episodes, I think everyone would come out with a joy ride. As for its originality, it is not really anything new for people who have watched the prequel, but otherwise from that it is noteworthy considering how the rest of the 2018 Spring and Summer are made of sequels and isekai shows. If you want a breath of fresh air then this is your best bet. (8)

Art:
As a show with a Gainax feel, things seem to flow in an imaginative way. The creative powerhouse of Gainax may have left their work with Production I.G., but I think FLCL Progressive shows that the Gainax spirit has recovered by at least a considerable amount since then. I especially liked the dream sequences in which the animation and art style was drastically different from how the show usually presents itself. In each of these moments they are not only visually appealing but also thought provoking. This combination did not fail me at all, and from beginning to end I was pleased by the presentation. (9)

Character:
I cannot say the characters are that strong because they seem mostly flat. It was hard to cheer for Hibajiri because she is a very aloof character and our other main character, Iide, doesn't seem very consistent. I will say that Haruko, the eccentric adult, carries the show until she eats someone she shouldn't have. Haruko and Hibajiri act as total opposites of one another and help make the show more coherent, yet the downside is that I'm never too sure what side these two are on all the time. Are they against each other, going toward a common goal, or does it even matter? Sometimes they are enemies, teacher-student, love rival, I will let someone figure that part for me. It's not average by any means though. Have you seen an anime with characters experiencing a multitude of relationships? So it is just fine. (6)

I do not put enjoyment as a part of the score, but I can promise you that FLCL Progressive is not a waste of time. It is a breath of much needed fresh air from generic shows.

Ah, the tragedy as old as time. A popular piece of media comes out and proves to be a hit, both critically, and financially. Some odd years later, a sequel is made that exists solely because the first one was popular, rather than because there was something to add. It gets panned, financial success or no.

FLCL Progressive is yet another example of this tale. It’s what would happen if they tried to make FLCL in the current day -as of writing, of course- without any of the charm or passion that went into the original. Love it or hate it, FLCL is a distinct ... piece of work, one filled with little references and neat, temporary art-style shake-ups to add flavor to an already eccentric and visually stunning take on the coming of age story. Progressive is milquetoast at the best of times and downright broken at the worst of times. There’s no flavor outside of moments that already take cues from its predecessor, and perhaps a few bits in the latter half. It doesn’t have anything worth covering, let alone worth bringing to the table.

It would be one thing if, in spite of this, this sequel worked as a functioning tale with the audiovisual mastery that exemplifies the best of the current age. It would simply be an unnecessary addition, but a harmless one at best. However, we instead get a mess that decides to pander. Think about it. Why else does the main character wear headphones that have cat ears? Why else do we have a loli and a beach episode? Why else do they just randomly include smartphones without having anything be done with them? Why else does this show’s equivalent to Haruko wear a sexy maid outfit? Simply because it’s hip with the current otaku crowd.

The real origins of Haruko and her Progressive counterpart, Jinyu, are not only stupid, but also somewhat contradictory to FLCL 1 and raise some questions the original was never equipped to answer. The things they try to add about the universe of the franchise are absurd and even inconsistent, even by the conventions of the franchise as well. It’s already aggravating that it’s all in service to a show that has nothing new or interesting to comment on in any meaningful way, and that the finale is this dumb mess that abruptly wraps itself up. The characters make it even worse. Hidomi is a nothing character. There is nothing consistent to her other than having a secret want to reset the world for particularly incongruous and asinine reasons. The show even claims she is going for a tsundere angle, as god awful as that observation is, and it’s as inaccurate as a blind man shooting in the dark. Even Haruko largely just an adult brat rather than the quirky, ambitious, and amoral vixen from the original. Her counterpart, Jinyu, is bland like Hidomi, but at least she is the least obnoxious character of the entire cast. The male students in the show are also nothing characters with no chemistry, even though the main guy of that trio, Lide, acts infinitely more like an active protagonist than Hidomi ever does. The loli character also isn’t any better; she’s as unremarkable and annoying as the rest. No one has any chemistry to speak of, adding insult to injury.

Outside of the ending credits and the 5th episode, the show’s visuals are rather dull and even a tad unappealing to look at. Production I.G honestly did a poor job outside of the hit and miss new character designs, as the animation was incredibly stilted and choppy --even in the more kinetic action scenes-- and the color pallet was not to my taste at all Some scenes look downright terrible, even if that's counterbalanced by a few scenes looking pretty evocative. Even in the art style shift in the 5th episode that actually made Haruko look more similar to how she was in FLCL than in the episodes preceding it, it’s arguable if the more purposely rough visuals worked. The music is as much to my uninterest as ever, with several songs by The Pillows, both new and old, and largely forgettable background music outside of that, which is barely any more memorable than the original. The only song of any note here is "Thank You, my Twilight", which is one of my favorites in the franchise, believe it or not. That's not enough to save anything though. At least the dub was nice given the awful material, I suppose.

In essence, FLCL 2 is your typical underwhelming sequel. I’ve seen worse in this regard, even in terms of sequels to Gainax shows, but damning with faint praise doesn’t excuse how pointless, shallow, and lifeless this installment really is. Sadly, its existence also slightly nullifies some of the uniqueness of the original, so doing nothing substantial to help make up for that is arguably one of the biggest crimes this sequel could have committed under these circumstances. At least it doesn’t use that show as a crutch, but again, it does that anime and several of its fans no favors, either. FLCL 3, please be a proper alternative to this mess?

I have been a fan of FLCL for about five years now, so I was understandably very excited when I heard about this coming out. I thought, even if it’s disappointing, I’ll still like it because the music will be great.

TBH, it wasn’t that good.

FLCL progressive is like FLCL with all the best things about it removed. The Pillows don’t even sound as good. In FLCL, the character design was AMAZING (NINAMORI!) but in this reboot, they managed to make even Haruko more boring. The art is consistent, although some people might like that, and plain. The animation is just painfully average. The shot ... composition and directing that made FLCL unique is nowhere to be seen. It’s so clear that the studio is trying to make money off old fans with this cheap show.

TL;DR if you liked the original, you’ll hate this corporate bullshit.

It’s useless to discuss what FLCL “was about” and what Progressive “should have been” as this is an exercise in fanboyism and nostalgia. The majority of the fans in the West watched FLCL at an age where FLCL’s messages hit the most, and given the near two decade gap between the original and the sequel, there was no way Progressive was going to have the same effect. This much is obvious. Nor is it worth comparing the production (in terms of art and animation) between the two. They were made in different eras of anime by different staffs for different reasons (the original being a ... meticulously crafted OVA and the sequel(s) co-produced by Adult Swim as a TV series specifically with the fanbase in mind). However, there is value in looking at what FLCL did right fundamentally to have so much staying power, as evidenced by the lingering interest in the dilatory sequel (and the fact that both Pillows shows near me were sold out within a couple days), as a comparison for Progressive’s utter failures.

If FLCL is a story of the confusing mess that is puberty, then Progressive is a story about strange things happening to teens alongside the awkwardness of puberty. The quirky sci-fi concepts and weird imagery in the original were affectations of the metanarrative, i.e. they were the products of its creators attempting to tell a visual story. How these symbols affect and reflect in the viewer were weighted more heavily than their relevance to the characters or the plot. The lore, arguably even the story, was never important; the grand ideas seemingly communicated through them were. This is why the original is so memorable — not because it was “random” or “wacky” but because of the artifice of deeper meaning.
Progressive's obsession with mythology is the reverse of the effect that the writers wanted to emulate; it is the distillation of the abstraction from existing art into imagery that performs solely on a diegetic level. The constant expository dialogue about shit like N.O. waves, being run over by vehicles, and the Medical Mechanica factory and their consistent (i.e. predictable) usage formalizes them into discernible elements of the story's universe, stripping them of their symbolic potential. The way the writing heavily depends on previously established symbols results in too much explication, demystifying them into nothing but what they are, which is sometimes stated straight up in the dialogue. An entity ejecting from some kid’s forehead is no longer the creators trying to portray pubescent intensity with their own idiosyncratic visual lexicon, it’s just something that happens to teens that “overflow” in Progressive. Vintage guitars are intergalactic weapons employed to interact with and manipulate N.O. waves and their manifestations — nothing more, nothing less. Big battles happen at the end of every episode because this is FLCL, and what’s FLCL without action scene sakuga bullshit, right? Now, there is nothing inherently wrong with this, but there is then no point in borrowing FLCL’s imagery, for it is meaningless and at worst perfunctory fanservice (while the actual, traditional fanservice no longer even plays a metanarrative purpose). That isn’t to say Progressive doesn’t attempt to introduce its own symbols, but these range from flaccid and unfulfilling (zombification/flesh eating) to forcefully aborted by dialogue (those fucking cat-eared headphones). [Note: If I’m missing or misinterpreted details about the sci-fi lore, it’s not because I don’t really care, it’s more that Progressive does a terrible job worldbuilding.]

And while I'm on the topic, the dialogue is another point of divergence between the original and its sequel. Too often is the dialogue in Progressive relegated to pure exposition. One of FLCL’s strengths is its use of dialogue in developing characters without relying too much on exposition. Many of the conversations are very private (often obtuse) and don’t have much literal content yet manage to colour in the characters speaking. Director Tsurumaki has confessed to cutting a lot of fat from the dialogue. In an interview for Mynavi, he recalls: “The scriptwriter Enokido-san talked about how ‘If we say that dialogue flows from 1 to 10, there’s no need to present it in this order.’ After going past 1, 2 and 3, we can just skip 4 and move straight onto 5 with the next line. As people expect that we’ll go to 6 after 5, we’ll make the next line 7.” Lines were deliberately left out, resulting in almost Hemingwayesque dialogue.
Arguably the weakest character in the original, Commander Amarao, is the one who somehow knows and understands what is going on and therefore explains it all. He comes off as a sort of narrative concession, as if the creators admit they were being a little too Dada (Tsurumaki in the aforementioned interview: “We also left out any details of the SF setting that we thought were unimportant...”), and offer the viewers some expository respite in the second half of the show (“...Well, looking back maybe we could have been a bit kinder”). However, for FLCL, omniscience is a curse rather than a boon, and narrative clarity only hurts the show’s pacing and takes a bit of the punch out of the eccentricity.

As if the writers didn’t glean this from Commander Amarao, Progressive is chock full of characters whose sole purpose is exposition. Take Julia Jinyu, who spends all of her screen time talking about her mission (Episode 3 — Hidomi asks, “Jinyu, what do you want?” Cue backstory monologue.) Or Eyepatch and Aiko’s dad, who exclusively discuss lore shit to “move the plot forward.” They have a whole conversation about N.O. waves in Episode 4 and spend at least two minutes of Episode 5 talking about a flower pot, as if everyone was watching for the intrigue and conspiracy. Who are they, Team Rocket? Get the fuck on with the show.
Even the main characters are just as susceptible to imprudent, talky monologues. There’s a scene in Episode 4 (by far the worst offender of info dumping) where Hidomi gives Ide an unsolicited explanation of her parental situation. She prattles on about her absentee father as if this is supposed to be some sort of revelatory moment for Ide (and, thus, the viewer) instead of lazy writing. If you want to know what the plot is actually about but don’t want to invest two and a half hours into watching this, skip to the final episode because it might as well just have been an interview with the writers in which they very openly discuss each of the characters’ motivations and arcs. There’s no ounce of subtly since the sheer weight of exposition in the dialogue is so pronounced. Scenes often end up feeling bloated because supposedly what the characters are discussing is very important. Case in point: the climax of Episode 4. Starting from the shot that establishes that Haruko has won the battle and captured Jinyu in her hands to the moment Haruko finally eats her, a full fucking minute passes. The writing is so insistent on sorting through conflicts verbally that any impact this scene could have had was aborted by the hammy dialogue.

Expanding the lore isn’t necessarily a bad thing to do, but Progressive isn’t a companion piece made simply to develop the world of FLCL a la The Silmarillion to The Lord of the Rings. It’s a self-contained story about fledgling teen romance that stands on its own. Or, rather, it wants to be. But it spends way too much time dissecting the semantics of FLCL to become anything other than a milquetoast tribute. A show based on a literal interpretation of FLCL actually sounds interesting; a show that wants to be FLCL but half-asses the symbolism by taking it too literally does not. Guess which one is labelled Progressive?

I am one of those, I am the one who is always praising FLCL for the energy, for the characters and for the immense fun instilled by that dementia atmosphere. I am also one that didn't think FLCL needed a sequel but I was glad nonetheless it got one.

I think that it was impossible to recreate what the original had since the original was more about experimentation than about creating a coherent story. Watching the new series is like watching a mirror being held close to the original. It lacks character. The action is slower, the insanity is tamed and the focus seems to ... be more on answering the loose plot points than about doing something new.

It doesn't help that the animation is not on par with what the previous FLCL offered. All of this puts weight on the parts that didn't work on the original.

The characters feel a bit dull. I dislike the women with the glasses and I believe that Haruko has become more insane and less energetic at the same time. She notes that she became more like an adult and that is true. I will say that the kids are done the right way. They do have a chemistry and they do express more than any other character in the story.

Overall, I give this anime a 7. I should have given it less but it still reminds me of the original and I am biased.

FLCL Progressive sits in an awkward position. It was an unexpected sequel to an anime that aired 18 years earlier. The original FLCL was a zany visual affair that still holds up today and helped define what anime is to a generation of Western fans who grew up on Toonami. FLCL is genuinely great and benefits from a tremendous amount of nostalgia. There is no way that FLCL Progressive was ever going to be better than the original, especially considering how anime production has changed dramatically since then. That said, FLCL Progress is a very good anime that I found more interesting and entertaining than ... most other anime that have been released in recent years.

A quick note on production, FLCL took 11 months to release six episodes, FLCL Progressive did that much in just over a month. If FLCL Progressive had the same development time, episode two wouldn’t have even come out by the time the six actual episodes aired. There was more time to work on individual episodes in FLCL, and later episodes were able to react to and change to responses from the first episodes.

The fundamental problem with FLCL Progressive is that it is more FLCL than the original FLCL. FLCL was groundbreaking at the time and pushed what anime animation can do. As the years have gone by, stunning and creative animation have become more common and better done. Animators who most likely were inspired by FLCL have sought to outdo that anime time and again. The animation in FLCL Progressive is great, but not universally so. There are shots that did not have the time and resources they deserved, and the better shots don’t stand out as much as they would have in 2001.

The story suffers from another bout of one-upmanship in FLCL Progressive. The original anime was known for having a story that was hard to follow, and FLCL Progressive accomplished having an even less structured story. It felt like the anime determined to communicate to its audience using raw emotion rather than more logical words. In that respect, I find that FLCL Progressive was extremely effective. The overall presentation did a great job of capturing certain emotions, but there in lies the problem. In same way that a facial expression can be more powerful than a statement, but a statement can carry orders of magnitude of more information than a facial expression. FLCL Progressive does much, says little, but emotes extremely well. There are many moments within each episode that are fascinating and food for thought in their own right, but those moments don’t build to dramatic points in each episode. There is better dramatic buildup through the entire season, but its not the best you’ll see.

The clearest flaw of FLCL Progressive is the main character, Hidomi Hibajiri. It is hard to write an exciting action-oriented story with a main character who’s defining feature is her lack of agency. Hidomi is a person who is stuck in a malaise. She sees no future that she is interested in pursuing, so she devotes no energy to actually progressing. She does grow and change as the series progresses, but not in a strong enough way to carry the story. The result is virtually every other character in the story is more interesting, and I suspect most viewers would rather just see the events occur in their perspective. The real shame is that FLCL Progress made many great characters who don’t get nearly the amount of time they deserved. It doesn’t help that some big moments do not occur on screen and are only implied by the characters involved after the fact. Ko Ide is the character who would traditionally have been the protagonist but was deliberately prevented from doing so. The protagonist switch was an interesting idea, but one that I feel clearly produced a lower quality result.

The music was good, just not as good as the original FLCL. This is more due to the structural faults of FLCL Progressive rather than the music itself. Music can only enhance a scene, it can’t create it. The music was great in FLCL because the key points were already strong visually, thematically, and built up to in the story. The song Little Buster was made epic because the scenes it appeared in were legitimately epic. FLCL Progressive doesn’t have moments as strong, so the music falters even when it is timed right, which it isn’t always.

To sum up this review, I find it best to use a FLCL analogy. The original FLCL has taken the place of Naota’s older brother in relation to baseball. It has become a distance example of perfection that is forever unattainable. FLCL Progressive has chosen the route that Naota did, by deciding to not even play the game. FLCL Progressive is seeking its own path to respect and greatness and made a valiant attempt even if it did fall short in many respects. The original FLCL showed how foolish it was to judge Naota solely on his baseball abilities, in this manner I also consider it foolish to judge FLCL Progressive solely on how it follows the original FLCL. It is also important to remember that much has changed in 18 years, and the challenges of today different, even if they bear some similarities to problems of the past. FLCL Progressive is a worthwhile anime in its own right, but it will also be the little brother.

Ah yes, the sequel that no one thought was necessary but we felt blessed to get... I wish I had something more to say about it but the process of eventually watching I can only describe as being akin to fanfic. They loved the original. They wanted to build on it. They didn't get how it worked.

I'm going to try to lay out some positives first before jumping in with the more frustrating aspects.

* The Pillows are back and provide the soundtrack. The main theme for Progressive, "Thank you, my twilight", with all it's silly Engrish, is great and I ... won't hear otherwise. Hearing it start up in the scattered episodes that it did was always a highlight.
* Hidomi's VA, Xanthe Huynh, I had literally never heard of before but she was legitimately talented in voicing a character that was emotionally muted in spots and utterly manic in others as the plot dictated. I think she even outshone Kari Wahlgren, who was playing the Haruko character for all it was worth.
* Hidomi Hibajiri and Ko Ide are both interesting concepts for characters. I don't want to spoil them completely, but neither is totally what they seems, Hidomi presenting as a nihilist tsundere-like with morbid dreams and Ide as... well, basically a "bro" or the junior high equivalent of it despite not exactly looking the part. Both have more to their motives than you initially suspect and, while the reveals are in some cases too reliant on exposition for my tastes, it works to confirm junior high and that phase in one's life as a failed form of posturing.
* Episode 5. The animation quality was not at all consistent but they blew the budget on episode five and it shows. We also get the return of "manga" style, difficult as it supposedly is.

So, there's some decent stuff in there. I think that had it been a standalone and not trying to riff of a seminal work released some fifteen years prior, we would have been okay with it as its quirky self, but it suffers too much from comparisons and from here I have no choice but to address the negatives with spoilers and comps to the original.

* Subpar Narration. One of the odd triumphs of FLCL was the recognition that, without being hit over the head with it, Naota was fundamentally an unreliable narrator. It's not that he was trying to lie to you as other famous literary unreliable narrators were, he was merely convinced that in order to present a narrative of his own life, he needed to protect Samajima Mamimi or whomever or do X. The experience of watching FLCL was the experience of watching a teenager, immature but thinking that he knows how the world works better than everyone else around him, try to craft a story in which his life makes sense both in the moment and going forward as far as justifying action he's yet to take. After so many of these episodes in which Naota appears to make a decisive declaration that doesn't add up to much, you realize that it's not a bug, but a feature in trying to capture the teenaged conviction about what's to come. Hibajiri narrates... a little... but it's predominantly not as things are happening to her but rather as she's dreaming. Without getting into the persistent argument of "it was all a dream!" presenting relevant stakes within art, the whole thing is structured about as well as, say, when a long running series that builds its narrative arcs around fixed points in the schedule goes through a series of flashbacks or flashforwards preceding each episode in order to give you the illusion of development towards a specific endgame. Even without that unflattering comparison, you have a double removal within the dream sequences in that you are not only conscious of the dreaming, but have Hidomi's more Id-like subconscious emerging, no less nihilistic, but at least willing to have fun, and said subconscious is anomalous with the exception of episode four when it comes out to play in full. This could be analogous to the lazy writing that comes with "here's an episode where the characters are drunk" or "here's an episode where a magic spell causes them to be more candid than they would ordinarily." Naota's narration and all the attendant flaws were highly organic, arising out of his character and shortcomings. Hidomi's narration is artificial, rarely utilized, and mostly in the service of reminding the audience of what the shows fears they may not have picked up on.
* No Conceits. Each episode of the original was wrapped around a conceit that was developmentally reflective of where Naota was at as he was trying to become an adult. You had a video games episode, an airsoft / paintball episode, a class play episode, a baseball episode (I also discovered DBZ had a baseball episode which I watched the same evening as the finale). There's nothing in particular to organize any of the episodes of Progressive. You could conceivably say that ep 2 was a part-time job and ep 3 was riffing off the beach episode trope, but they weren't really doing anything with them. The potential was definitely there to explore something, as the original tried to deal with male-gendered tropes (maybe class play excluded) and there could have been ways of exploring Hidomi's more feminine presentation through consideration of other rites of passage. They just didn't.
* Amorphous Time. FLCL was very much of a time and place in its references, which was risky but I think worked, it's just hard to tell what the staying power will be once those references fall out of circulation. Progressive shied away from making any references to topical pop culture at all. The closest it came was talking about gendered clothing, ultimately a non-starter, and having Hidomi scrolling through her phone. References aren't going to make or break a show, but the original used them in a smart way where you could see the gestures they were making and how they were supposed to sync up with your understanding of the characters making them, especially in how Haruko referenced bands that presented as counter culture. There's nothing really "2018" or any single year about the issues the kids were dealing with or the world they were living in, and thus the whole exercise lacked that feeling of both density ("I can follow this thread and see how far it takes me") or being grounded in a specific setting or timeframe.
* Haruko. It's both too easy and too difficult to level one's aim at the show's "star," but the Haruko of the original was genuinely ambiguous as to her motives and aims. You can't really forget some of the revelations of the FLCL finale, but Haruko's personality in the sequel could be summarized as manic, controlling, and covetous, and not even Jinyu (as a largely unnecessary foil) can really overcome the fact that you're watching a character who mind-controls most of a classroom for... reasons? If it brings out anything, it really batters you with the "adults are wrong, kids are also wrong" motif from the original but not to any productive effect. Moreover the brainwashing bit is scarcely relevant to anything that's happening, outside of "let's get everyone to the amusement park!" late in the series, ultimately another failed conceit.
* Mori / Aiko. I suppose this is going to be a possibly polarizing opinion, but I liked Aiko's initial episode because I was convinced that we were finally getting a social commentary that was topical, in that Mori is pretentious and attempts to be fashionable but has almost no understanding of human nature, culminating in him paying Aiko to be the shy "I'm so embarrassed" anime girl stereotype because it's what he thinks he likes and it's what his notion of a relationship is. Aiko cutting him down to size and just taking his money in episode three was excellent, because it took to task all the dudes with similar notions, of such there are enough among the weebs. And then he continued to follow her around anyway and did a few selfless things in the finale episode and got the girl. Without really developing as a character or getting what was wrong about his prior behavior. I don't have an inherent opposition to the dumpy guy getting the girl, but for god's sake, at least have him come to some sort of realization about how awful his earlier behavior was.
* N.O. Overload. The trouble with just about every series, but particularly shonen, is that once certain abilities become prolific among the characters, they stop working as what singles out the original characters and makes them unique. Hidomi and Ide probably would have been enough, Marco, maybe, since they did it with Naota / Ninamori in the original, but when the whole junior high population appeared to have some version of N.O. that was being sucked out by Interstellar Immigration during the finale, to power whatever was fighting the giant iron, it felt that was taking away from the characters we were most familiar with.
* Lazy tie-ins. I don't really know what to do with Canti or Amarao or the mystery of the bass because even though the promo material asked "what ever happened to" this or that, the payoff was never there. Canti was little more than a Macguffin. Amarao was a visual name drop and then an actual one. The bass was there, but the potential tension between the Jinyu aesthetic and the Haruko aesthetic was never exploited nor spelled out particularly. The impression was given that Medical Mechanica was now just about everywhere and yet they simultaneously had very little "presence" in the show outside of the visual of the iron, which was rarely used to any particular effect, certainly not the siren and steam burst that accompanied Naota's more emotional moments. In short, they utilized a lot of the imagery without actually doing anything with most of it. Or rather, while the original highlights such characters and traits, the sequel referred to them, and then refused to expand on them. Thus, it positioned itself with the more lazy of the sequels, asking us "remember when?" without improving our understanding of what was happening.

Objectively, I'm not sure Progressive is bad, although a lot of people will probably say it's bad (MAL has a lot of 3/10 reviews right now), whereas I merely found it to be mediocre and poorly thought through. I'll still be watching Alternative when it arrives on the scene in the fall, but I feel like a lot of the wind's been taken out of me in terms of enthusiasm.

Set an unknown number of years following FLCL, FLCL Progressive focuses on middle-school student Hidomi dealing with growing pains, while becoming entangled in a conflict between Haruko and a new alien named Jinyu as the two seek out the great power coming from Hidomi for their own differing reasons.

Being connected to the original FLCL, Progressive certainly had some big shoes to fill in trying to make as much of a strong impression as the classic series did in mixing up manic comedy with exploring coming-of-age themes. I was initially cautious hearing news of the series having new seasons made as I felt the original series ... told all it needed to with Naota's story and was concerned if it could explore any further with the franchise, especially with the number of recent titles based on older properties that I've had an underwhelming response to. Fortunately, my concerns were expunged when I got a chance to watch through Progressive as it actually does quite a bit to establish its own identity over the original FLCL.

The coming-of-age focus found with FLCL is still retained in Progressive with its exploration on new character Hidomi. Being in middle school, Hidomi is at a different point in life compared to Naota as she copes with her own growing pains and her perspective is a bit more darker compared. She prefers to disconnect her from her surroundings by regularly wearing a pair of headphones and she has some rather dark dreams showing her feelings on reality due to some family troubles. Throughout the series, Hidomi is shown to gradually change her personality throughout the series thanks to the chaotic adventure she is roped into from Haruko and Jinyu's conflict with one another, demonstrating changes to her personality and becoming more active at engaging with others.

As for the trademark comedy of FLCL, it is still there albeit not as over-the-top and a little more subdued within Progressive. Haruko still displays her nuttier side as a front to mask her true motives and the show has its bizarre moments pop up, but it is nowhere as absurd as the original series where you have the infamous animated manga sequences or breaking of the fourth wall. I've seen some fans of the original FLCL criticize this quite a bit in Progressive considering the manic comedy of the original series was a trademark for it. But considering the somewhat more darker and serious feel of Progressive compared to the original series, I felt the more subdued humor worked appropriately for Progressive considering the show's focus being more on how overwhelming a teenager's mind can be coping with growing up, compared to approaching adolescence within the original FLCL.

As for the major plot, the crux of it involves Haruko and Jinyu's conflict over Atomsk's power, with the latter trying to prevent Haruko from using Hidomi as a means to lure the Pirate Lord out. In a unique instance for an anime, FLCL Progressive makes use of its ED sequence to show the rather unique connection that Haruko and Jinyu have with one another and I'd at least implore folks to watch it at least once since it offers some major fleshing out of what led to Jinyu being a relevant character within Progressive. Anyway, Progressive's plot is fairly straightforward with Hidomi's growing pains and Haruko and Jinyu's conflict, until the anime's second half when factions from the original series like Medical Mechanica and the Bureau of Interstellar Communication make their presence felt. This is where FLCL Progressive's comedy is at its most manic with the many events being played out with character and faction conflicts. While it may be a treat for fans of the original series, this can make the plot convoluted at points for newer fans of FLCL to approach since they may not be as familiar with events from the original series considering the 15-plus year divide between both titles debuting.

Presentation wise, FLCL Progressive retains the artwork style of the original OVA series albeit with a bit more polish and detail with Production I.G. at the helm of animating it. It still makes use of a number of different animation styles at points to hammer in the show's themes, this notably shown in Hidomi's dreams that can be quite dark and macabre due to reflecting the grim view Hidomi has on confronting reality. The Pillows return to provide music for FLCL Progressive's soundtrack as a mix of new and old songs are provided as insert tracks for the series that still work nicely to accompany the anime's key scenes and are still memorable to listen to over 15 years after the original FLCL.

Overall, I would say FLCL Progressive certainly defied whatever concerns I had going into it as a follow-up to an older anime title. The series is able to establish its own unique identity in exploring a teenager's perspective to growing up, while retaining the themes and comedy of the original FLCL and further exploring the franchise's world. If you were a fan of the original FLCL OVA series, I would strongly recommend giving this series a look.

I just want to start this with a disclaimer that this review was written after one viewing. I feel like FLCL is the sort of show that requires two or three viewings minimum to fully digest, so consider this tentative:

While (in my current opinion) Progressive didn't outshine the original FLCL I still feel as though it was a decent successor. I respect that the team behind it decided to create something different rather than just re-skinning Naota's story.

Progressive definitely has some interesting characters and relationships, but I feel like some of them are a little bit understated/one note. Fuyumi was easily the best character ... that the show has to offer. Like the original Prog thematically focuses on abandonment/loss (with a lot more focus on loss then in the original) and I appreciate the approach that was taken to writing its protagonist. The message that I walked away with after one viewing is that it isn't healthy to cost through life waiting for somebody else who isn't willing to give you their time, and that growing up means learning to live life for yourself.

I was a tiny bit concerned that Haruko was going to feel like more of a "main character" within FLCL's new installments, and while Progressive did explore her character a bit more than the original (namely toward the end) I feel like she comes across more as a connecting through-line between the original, progressive and alternative. It never felt like this was her story. I'm not quite sure how I feel about her lack of growth after the events of episode 6, but for now I'm going to give the production team the benefit of the doubt and hope that they plan to resolve this in Alternitive .

However, I feel like there was a lack of focus that definitely impacted my enjoyment of this season. Whereas FLCL classic was a very grounded and personal story with the backdrop of an intergalactic war, Progressive had a lot more of a concentrated overarching narrative that heavily focused on the world's lore set up by season one. In my opinion this is where the show sort of derails a bit. I feel like not enough focus was given to the coming-of-age aspect. Hidomi's story was great, but I feel like some of her friends should have been expanded on more than they were.

****Note: In this paragraph I talk about FLCL Prog's use of references to the original. read at your own risk****

My other big gripe with this season is how it sort of uses nostalgic callbacks in really boring ways. The thing that stood out to me the most was the treatment of Masurao– the son of Amarao from season one. I could not for the life of me describe his personality if I had to, but the final episode revealed his relationship to Amarao by referencing his father's trademark eyebrows. In the original this was a design element that had a bit of nuance behind it. It was meant as a visual metaphor for Amarao's insecurity and need to overcompensate for his shortcomings, which was easily his most prominent personality trait. Here it just felt like an empty reference, and while I appreciate it to a degree (I'm being pandered to after all) I can't help but feel as though this show dropped the ball when incorporating certain nostalgic elements. The Iconic song "I think I can" was used multiple times throughout the show in scenes where it did not belong. I feel like using it as a generic "VS Haruko" theme completely misses the significance that it had in the original. It played during the scene where Naota's character arc finally resolved and seeing it misused here was pretty disappointing. Canti was the one exception. I didn't mind his presence, in fact I LOVED seeing him again. Certain other songs were re-recorded and used. There was even an episode that was straight up named after "Fool On the Planet", and while part of me appreciates this part of me wishes that new songs had been used for these scenes instead. FLCL classic was so reminiscent of its time that it has an inherent sense of nostalgia to it, and I feel like Prog should have done the same thing. I'm really like this season trying to have its own identity, but I feel as though using references like this detracts from that.

Was it good? Yeah. Is it worth your time? Of course. But would I say that it's necessary? Not particularly.

The beloved bastard child of anime industry from 2001 finally got a sequel and there is nothing progressive about. If anything, it has regressed and become a creative desert. Progressive is boring and forgetful.


For example, in the first 4 minutes of FLCL, we are introduced to the main characters. Their dynamic, their behaviour, they show enough to catch our interest to see what will happen to this ordinary pair, Haruhara shows up pretty quickly.

In Progressive, we are introduced to a walking corpse of a character, one that does not even say good morning to her mother when she meets her for the first time. Which ... helps little to make this character likeable and the show spends remaining time attempting to convince us to like this walking corpse of a character.

A blank wall is more interesting than the main character. In the original Naota at least had goals and a interesting personality, he actually wanted to do something. Meanwhile this girl (whose name I'm already glad I've forgotten) doesn't have 1 personality trait whatsoever. She has weird personality shifts, yet most of the time seems like she's remembering Vietnam flashbacks or some shit. The only tangible thing she had going for her was that she wanted to fuck the glasses guy (and btw that relationship felt as forced as the new Battlefield V trailer). Other characters are mostly uninteresting too. They even managed to ... fuck up Haruko somehow, she also became one dimensional and just stayed like that. Now excuse me while I go bleach my eyes out, until I reduce my vision enough so that I incidentally cut my balls off with my pants zipper and die of blood loss, so I don't have to see another shitty reboot like this again.

Unfortunately, this sequel of a personally beloved work has met my negative expectations. I find it hard to interpret the validity of the critiques I have with FLCL Progressive due to measuring it up to the original series in my mind. With that said, I really don't see much value to this franchise installment that makes it stand out on its own. Where FLCL Progressive stands out is on some of the animation sequences and its quirky personality; unfortunately, I can't say either of these qualities are outstanding enough to outright recommend it.

While some sequences of animation were spectacular, the animation typically ranged from ... ok to lazily inoffensive most of the time. Reception of this quality of Progressive is going to be a bit mixed among viewers. I can understand why anyone else may praise the animation of Progressive, however, due to my indifference of the subjective quality of most of the animation in Progressive I find myself needing to look elsewhere for the worth of this series.

To me, the personality of the show comes off as a straight attempt to replicate the chaotic tone of Haruko's presence from the original FLCL series. To be fair, Progressive does have a different tone when Haruko is not in or influencing a scene, but these moments tend to be more intermediate than anything. FLCL Progressive's personality is a mere shadow of the tone and themes of the original FLCL series for the sake of its appeal. As harsh and dismissive as that sounds, the coming of age metaphors and additions to the "lore" and world-building seem to lose all meaning when the story of FLCL itself was always self-aware that it never really mattered. Judging from the credits sequence of episodes 1-5 and the way Haruko is presented throughout the series, FLCL Progressive seems to expect viewers to have already have watched the original series. This is where the problem with tone and narrative arises, in my opinion. When continuing a story that acknowledges that it doesn't matter in a literal sense, you create a purposeful progression of pointlessness. FLCL Progressive's narrative may not always be clear, similarly to the original series, but interest to understand and create one's own meaning from it all isn't something that could be maintained through replication. The main times I found interest in Progressive's narrative is during the dream sequences that prologue episodes 1-5. Despite any value those sequences may have, they're mostly inconsequential to the rest of the Progressive series.

Trope attributes aside, the characters of Progressive are more or less un-offensive. Although, a concerning problem is if any interesting or even significant character growth happens in Progressive at all. It's a somewhat debatable topic and honestly, it's more at the back of the mind rather than a major issue. Main characters Hidomi Hibajiri and Ko Ide are presented with plenty of depth to work with; however, with a narrative that expresses coming of age themes, there's still much to be desired when it comes to challenging their mindsets. While I may not be bothered by the characters, I do see a huge missed opportunity in having audiences connect with Progressive's rehashed tones and themes through the characters. Relatable or simply memorable characters can have a huge impression on viewers just as much as much as the quality of the story. With an uninspired tone, FLCL Progressive gains little from the way it portrays its cast of characters.

I want to say The Pillows did a fantastic job with the music again, but there were a few tracks I found there were utterly forgettable and wondered to myself if they were done by The Pillows in the first place. The noticeable new tracks were phenomenal and the usage of old tracks from the original series is pretty nostalgic. However, some of the old tracks from the original series did feel very out of place in certain scenes. While these tracks may be out of place, I'm unsure how much this critique is overemphasized due to how well the original series uses its music in comparisons.

As much as I want to ridicule Progressive for trying to mimic the tone of the original FLCL series, I don't want to demonize it for being not as good as something else I love. It is possible to appreciate the animation that I said I was indifferent about. This is also the case for the tone and narrative that I said was pointless. Unfortunately due to this series being a "progressive" continuation of the original series, FLCL Progressive asks to be directly compared to a work that it never had a chance to compete with, as far as most of the fans are concerned. FLCL Progressive sets itself up for failure, so I can't recommend it.

Fortunately, the series is short and the urge to satiate one's curiosity shouldn't be too cumbersome to those who are still interested in checking it out. I don't know if being a more unique work from its predecessor would make FLCL Progressive a more enjoyable experience, but that approach may have been less self-defeating. If that is indeed the approach the future FLCL Alternative will take, then the reception will hopefully be more positive.

Lol. All the haters on this thread failing to realize the original FLCL made as little sense as this. Never forget the goal of the original was an animation team blowing off steam with the combination of a dope soundtrack.

That's exactly what you're going to get here. The pillows + weird animation that shifts randomly and makes it exactly what I expected it to be. If you like something that's absurdist, has a cool rock soundtrack and is fun to watch but doesn't make too much sense you've definitely come to the right place. If you're looking for something deep and meaningful I suggest you ... look elsewhere.

Watching FLCL Progressive is like going to see a band you loved in high school on their reunion tour. They play some of the hits you remember, but a lot of the concert is new songs from their comeback album, and yeah, the songs definitely sound like they’re by the same band, but they’re missing that magic from back in the day. At its worst the new stuff sounds like the band was on autopilot, like music created for the sole purpose of having something to sell on tour.

The singer, bald now, struggling to fit into those tight leather pants from his youth, can’t ... quite hit the high notes anymore. The bass player refused to join in on the reunion, citing a lack of artistic integrity within the rest of the group, going so far as to say they’re “only in it for the money”. The guitarist, who long ago forsook his experimental, roughshod roots for a poppier, more mainstream sound, strains to recreate his past. He looks bored, as if he’s only going through the motions. The drummer, of course, died in 2004 and was replaced.

The concert ends with the band’s biggest hit, played without flourish, sounding just like it does on the radio. The lights come on, and for the first time you notice the rest of the crowd – they’re all so young, and you’re a bit embarrassed. You leave the venue, and on the drive home you reach for that old CD, the one you fell in love with almost two decades ago.

You turn it off before the first song ends.

It just isn’t the same. In fact, it’s an entirely different album from the one you loved so much just 2 hours before. You question what you liked about it in the first place, and you think “maybe it’s not the band that’s changed, maybe it’s me”. One day, perhaps, you’ll find it - out of its case and scratched all to hell, sitting underneath your Nissan’s manual, crushed in the glove box with some napkins and half a pack of gum. Maybe when you throw it on some of that old magic will be there, and the embers of your love will reignite like a rising phoenix.

But maybe, you think, you ought to have left the past alone, and left your good memories as they were, memories. You keep driving, vowing not to taint the fond thoughts of your past any further. "There's no way I'll watch Alternative," you tell yourself.

This is not the original FLCL. That seems like an obvious statement, does it not? Yet it would seem that many viewers were expecting a complete imitation of FLCL in FLCL: Progressive. So the fact that Progressive is tonally distinct from the original FLCL has been viewed as a failure to imitate the original. What this viewpoint fails to realize is that Progressive is a vastly different show than FLCL for a reason. Why bother merely imitating one of the best OVAs in anime history when you can work with the established world to create a new kind of show?

Story: 6
That said, the story is ... structurally similar to FLCL if not thematically. Haruko is wreaking havoc again on Earth, but this time we know her end-goal early on due to the context of FLCL, to capture the power of Atomsk. Hidomi and Ide are her new targets as their adolescent heads are ripe for producing N.O. channels.
It's surprising how consistent the universe of FLCL has remained. Many devices and mechanics introduced in the original (that may have seemed like nonsense) are touched on or expanded upon in Progressive. This includes: N.O., Medical Mechanica, the Bureau of Interstellar Immigration, the Fraternity, Atomsk, and Haruko's motivations. To juggle these concepts established in FLCL, sometimes in little more than one line of dialogue, is impressive. Because of this however, Progressive feels much more straight-forward than FLCL, which is one of the main reasons some fans of the original are disappointed. Since the writers are working with an established universe, they take less time indulging in the fast-paced zaniness that made up FLCL's interpretation of a plot. The show still leaves plenty of dangling threads that it doesn't bother to explain though.
Yet the show works on its own merits. Progressive is definitely a much more "modern" anime, but what makes it intriguing is that it's a modern anime framed through the bizarre world of FLCL. Whereas in another context Progressive could be an average shoujo/coming-of-age story, the fact that it is in FLCL's world enhances and elevates it in new ways. For example, when the female protagonist finds her main love-interest in a compromising position with another woman, she doesn't just break down crying and run away like one might see in a typical shoujo. No, instead the N.O. channel in her head reacts and turns her love-interest into an inflatable skin-suit that floats off into space. A tropey story has no time to be tropey in this universe.

Art: 8
The character designs are great if not as instantly memorable as some of FLCL's designs. Hidomi and Jinyu are the new stand-outs with cute and cool designs respectively. Hidomi's robot design seen at multiple points in the anime looks awesome. Haruko's new outfit also suits her well.
The animation, like the story, is less kinetic this time around. This is a major point of contention for fans of the original and though I understand why, this show is not an imitation of FLCL. I love the fact that Progressive involved younger animators and gave them a chance to leave their mark. Hidomi's dream sequences are highly memorable and unique. The dream at the start of episode 5 is striking and episode 5's visual style is really excellent on the whole.
In defense of some vocal critics, I don't think the color palette of Progressive is as consistently aesthetic as FLCL. Progressive uses much brighter, sometimes pastel colors, but it looks much more standard than FLCL's more washed-out, austere appearance.

Sound: 9
The Pillows are back and just as good, if not better than ever. Watching anime with The Pillows' music accompanying it just feels inherently cool. The opening dream sequence in the first episode featuring the chiptune/alt-rock "Thank you, My Twilight" while Hidomi's robot battles a legion of Medical Mechanica irons is an incredibly compelling hook for the show. The ending song, and consequently the main theme of Progressive, "Spiky Seeds," is a great song and its opening guitar solo coupled with images of apocalyptic destruction as Haruko reaches for Atomsk is wonderfully indicative of FLCL's now overarching plot.
That said, the music was not always implemented so effectively. I thought that the rerecorded music that was used in the original FLCL was a nice touch, but the use of these songs seemed unnecessary at times. While I loved the use of "Little Busters," and "I Think I Can," I was less enthusiastic about the usage of "Last Dinosaur" in both episodes 5 and 6. Having been used in FLClimax, the final episode of the original FLCL, this song clearly invokes feelings of those climactic moments in the original, so to use it twice in consequent episodes seems like overkill.
In terms of voice-acting I watched the dubbed version. The original FLCL is one of my favorite dubs of any anime. Kari Wahlgren's performance as Haruko defined her career in anime for good reason. In Progressive, Haruko's character is more straight-forward and so is Wahlgren's performance. That said, she retains Haruko's zany chops well and gives the character exactly what she needs vocally. The rest of the voice-cast gives perfectly acceptable performances as well, especially Allegra Clark who gives a stern yet adorable performance as Jinyu.

Character: 7
Hidomi and Ide are a fun pair of main characters. Their budding feelings for each other coupled with their opposite personalities and social differences lead to an interesting dynamic between the two. Haruko plays a more antagonistic role in this story than in FLCL. Hidomi and Ide are both more aware of and discontented with the fact that Haruko is taking advantage of them than Naota was in FLCL. Because of this they are more directly confrontational toward her which is a nice change of pace. Jinyu plays a fun counter to Haruko and her backstory which is implied near the end has interesting implications on her and Haruko's relationship with Atomsk. There is a moment in the last episode where Haruko finally breaks from her sadistically irreverent personality and it is satisfying to see that she not only still has real human emotions (as indicated near the end of FLCL), but also that her destructive tendencies tend to get the better of her and that she is aware of this fact. Whether or not she feels like addressing her shortcomings is a different matter.
The side characters are all fun and have moments where their distinct personalities get to shine. Though they have almost no bearing on the plot, they provide some interesting commentary and diversions from the main story while sometimes expanding upon plotlines from FLCL. That said, none of them are as memorable as characters like Mamimi, Ninamori, Amarao, or Naota's father from FLCL, and for the most part none of their actions directly or significantly affect the main characters.

I really enjoyed watching this show. I have probably seen FLCL more times than any other anime I've ever seen. Its many runs on Adult Swim had me baffled and enthralled as an elementary/middle schooler in the mid 2000s and it has only improved upon each viewing. While Progressive doesn't have a nostalgic hold on my heart like FLCL does, and its slower-paced more direct story is not as bewildering as its (nearly 2 decades old) predecessor, it provides another unique, poppy, and (most importantly) FUN dive back into a borderline nonsensical universe that I and many others have come to love. I'm happy to see this passion project between Toonami, Production I.G., and The Pillows finally take flight and I'm excited to see what comes next in FLCL: Alternative!

Like many other fans of the cult classic OVA, I was very worried when I first heard there would be a direct sequel to FLCL, so much so that I put off watching it for a while. Well, I am happy to report that I enjoyed FLCL Progressive! To make a Star Wars comparison, I'd say Progressive is "the Force Awakens of FLCL projects," because it is a sequel and sort of reboot that very closely imitates the story of the original almost beat for beat. So yeah it gets no points for originality (more on that in a bit) but I'd say fans of ... the original will find a lot to like here.

My fears were assuaged a bit when I learned that Production I.G was handling this sequel, since I had to remind myself that the original FLCL was actually a co-production between Gainax and I.G, so it's not like the studio didn't have familiarity with the project. Progressive was in good hands. And let's be clear, you will NEVER be able to recreate the lightning-in-a-bottle, manic creativity perfection that was FLCL! That being said, I was just so happy to return to this world, to see characters like Haruko again (without whom I think we can all agree this FLCL would be DEAD ON ARRRIVAL). Haruko is best girl 5eva, change my mind! The soundtrack of the original can never be matched, but to their credit I.G actually brought back the same band, The Pillows, who not only re-recorded old songs from the original, but also added some killer new tracks! The artwork is stunning and the studio *tries* to emulate the experimental scenes from the original with mixed results. We have a similar "animated manga" scene like the original but Progressive's isn't as good, and we even have a truly beautiful rotoscoped sequence with Hidomi that needs to be seen to be believed. Still, I wish they'd gone further with the experimental scenes, like maybe do a "live action paper mache" segment straight out of Panty & Stocking?

Each episode opens with a very trippy dream sequence where Hidomi imagines herself as a corpse rotting away or being devoured by zombies, and at times she seems almost turned on by the idea? Hidomi's possible sexual fascination with the macabre, her secret wish for her own death, these were elements I wish had been explored more in the show. Instead they are a few trippy scenes that are quickly forgotten about. Lame! I've seen mixed opinions on Hidomi on MAL but I really thought she was the only new character who truly felt like a "FLCL character" if that makes sense. Sure, the girl starts out pretty one note and emotionless, but we learn that she's just tuning out the world with those cat headphones because she's running from her problems. Her storyline with her and her mother keeping the cafe open and trying to keep up hope that the father would return, well, it was my favorite part of the show. Haruko was the same Haruko we loved in the original. Ide was fine as a love interest for Hidomi though a little bland, and Ide's two friends were just as bland as Naota's friends in the original. I liked the potted-plant, rent-a-date girl because she felt like a quirky side character from the original. Jinyu is basically a Haruko clone..even though Haruko herself appears in this? Jinyu drives a vintage car like how Haruko drives a vintage vespa, she carries her own guitar, hell she even has the same spurned lover relationship to Atomsk like Haruko. Yeah more I think about it this character was redundant and totally unnecessary.
Especially in the scene where Haruko gets rid of Jinyu so quickly, like what was the point of this character?

There are plenty of things I can see fans complain about. Why does Ide wear a bandage on his forehead? Because Naota did in the original. Why do characters talk so much about "overflowing"? Because Mamimi used that term in the original. Why is the robot Canti here? Because he was in the original. Why is Haruko back on Earth trying to break Atomsk out of Medical Mechanica's facilities AGAIN? You know why. Again like The Force Awakens, Progressive was a FLCL that banked on nostalgia and played it nice and safe.

I'd give the classic FLCL a perfect 10/10, and while Progressive is NOWHERE NEAR as good as the 1st show, I still enjoyed it and give it a strong 8/10. Maybe in time I'll go down to a 7 but right now I'm feeling generous and was just so happy to return to this world and see Haruko's crazy antics again.

I'll be honest, I came into this with fairly low expectations. If there is any series that basically is the definition of a one-shot, it's FLCL. The combination of talent, circumstance, writing, acting, all of it, were so perfect and really only could have come about at that one time. So when I heard there was going to be a sequel series, I was highly dubious. Honestly, I was somewhat disinterested. Sure, there were plenty of unresolved threads, like who really is Atomsk, what's the real deal with Haruko and what about Medical Mechanica? But like many great works ... of fiction, often the specific details of a story are less important than the themes that story is trying to get across. FLCL was about growing up primarily. It was also about a number of other things if you dig deep, but growing up was what it had on its sleeve. However, if you wanted to see a sequel that decides to take the plot specifics more seriously and answer some questions, that's a fine way to go. Too bad Progressive couldn't even do that.

Progressive is basically FLCL again but with a lower budget and with less to say. I couldn't even get excited about one of my favorite characters in all of fiction period, Haruhara Haruko. She's in this and she almost feels like more of a parody of Haruko than Haruko herself, all her weirder attributes cranked up to 11 with less of her depth. Near the end I was hoping maybe she'd get some development as a character, but no, not really. She basically leaves the show on the exact same note she did in FLCL.

One of the wild things about FLCL was that it was a mini-series anime with basically a high-grade film anime animation quality. The animation in FLCL is out of this world. Progressive just looks like what you might see in any old 13 or 25er, and it stands out in stark contrast to its predecessor.

Honestly I just don't really know what else to say. It doesn't really bother me that this was bad because it doesn't do any real harm to the first series. It doesn't recon anything or ruin any characters. It was just kind of a waste of my time. I know if you're a big FLCL fan you'll probably want to see this even if people say it's bad, and sure, that was me, too. It's not going to hurt you to watch it and it does have some good moments and funny scenes. Who knows, you might even be one of the people who really like it. I'd say watch it, draw your own conclusions.

There's plain stupidly clueless, and there is FLCL clueless, those two very different sides of the same coin called cluelessness become very distinguishable when one first experiences FLCL and gets to enjoy it, but not necessarily fully understand the meaning behind it. That was probably the biggest aspect that made the original FLCL the loved piece of work that we've come to know. Although called a sequel, “FLCL Progressive” is a yet blunt and abstract on the surface piece of art made by kindergarten children that you'd expect from the hipsters of the era who have no sense of fashion (ironic) to call a revolutionary ... masterpiece, although it has nothing to do with the original OVA, and focuses entirely on its own made up story, with new characters, new direction, and a new premise. The majority of the fans preferred FLCL to remain the lone wolf it always was, probably that what made it unique. Many hardcore fans fared the arrival of this period, but what happened had already happened, and all that's left for them to do is let out a gloomy sigh and give this unwanted stranger a chance, maybe, just maybe it turns out to be the sequel we all didn't want, but never knew we needed. However, does it do the series any favor by existing?

- Story (6.0/10):
Much like the original, on the surface, not a single faint sense of story can be picked up, at least not that easily. They for some reason decided to skip the introduction of the town the events take place at, from the context of it all, it was probably set at the same place as the original, I don't know if it was intended from the viewers to get it themselves, either way, is it an up or a down is debatable. Unlike the original where we had a huge focus on Takkun the whole time, while the remaining time we get to see about other minor characters, this sequel decided that it was a bad way to do things and thus presented 2 potential main characters. On one side you have a girl, 14 years old Hidomi Hibajiri, the typical depressed teenager that does in her daily routine nothing outside of waking up and going to school, sometimes working part-timely in her family coffee shop run by her mother, very boring life. On the other hand, there's Ko Ide, a go-lucky dude looking like a main-side-character hybrid in attire. Both immatures get caught up in some serialization of events caused by the familiar Haruko Haruhara and the new figure from the same race, Julia Jinyu.
And before you ask, yes, both teens are cursed by the fate of having inter-galactic robots coming out of their foreheads, not only that but many other characters as well, which makes it less special of an ability than we are familiar with.
The humor was just a NO, predictable jokes with pretty much dead humor. The pace wasn't as fast as the original, and you'd think it would be a good thing, but the original still managed to do things better than this sequels despite the speed gap.

- Art (7/10):
FLCL has always proven itself to be outside of the visual borders of the traditional Anime, so whacky at times and yet so creative, very diverse and alive, the alteration of the colors and camera angles to even completely flip a switch on the art style portrayed. However, seeing a 2018 production pale in comparison with a production from 2000 is just utter nonsense, absolutely unforgivable and disappointing. Not to say that overall the quality was horrible, but the fact that it was unfaithful to what made the original so big is such a turnoff.
You could really sense their desperation to recreate FLCL but in a more modern art style standards, turned out to be non-fitting at all, like reliving the nightmares of the new Teen Titans and Power Puff Girls shows, and we all know how that ended, makes you wonder if they learned any lesson from that. They even went as far as trying to adopt the same animation concept but in a different direction, like remember the classic fast-paced manga panel scene from the first episode of the original? I think I just witnessed an act of murder in its case. Also, the very low FPS rate on some of the most important battles that were supposed to be fluid and dynamic was completely unsatisfying, feeling like staring at a footage of a painted wall drying at 8 FPS. All that was left is the nostalgic vibes of the aesthetic scenarios from the original, there was nothing of that sort in this. I would at best get 3 or 4 wallpaper material screenshots from the entire 6 episodes while compared to the two number digits I can get from a single episode of the original.

- Sound (7.0/10):
Music played a huge role in making the original series as memorable as it was, big thanks to the Pillows for that. And fortunately enough, we got them back in this sequel too with some of the reused tracks from the original that added a sense of nostalgia to the show, that was very appreciated. I remember watching the subbed version on my first experience, and it was phenomenal, I never got near the dubbed territory and I never enjoyed it in FLCL at least (I still prefer some dubs over subs though), but one issue I had with this is the non-existence of a subbed version, yes that's right, being an Adult Swim original it came only dubbed and we may never live to see a subbed version in the works. For all that matter, I really hated it, for the most part, especially Haruko's performance, it was super cringy, uncomfortable and hard to take in context. I was okay with other voice actors though, Julia's, Ko's and Hidomi's were superb at what they did. The soundtracks were above average and so were the sound effects used making you feel home but not to the degree of the original.

- Character (4.0/10):
It would seem that FLCL Progressive would be this revolutionary step up from the original seeing how it had a huge ego just because it decided to come up with the original idea of having more than one main character, but it ended up barking with more than it could deliver upon. While Hidomi was on some level, a solid FLCL protagonist material, looking like the main character for a change, and having a motive about her depression, Ko, on the other hand, was just there to fill up a spot that we expected way more from. Looking at his design, he doesn't look like the main character, probably just a bit that you are guaranteed to mistake him for a non-protagonist if you were to put him among background crowd. I understand that design doesn't define a good character, and with this, we move to their reasoning about choosing him to be a main despite all of that. Throughout the 6 episodes, we never got anything backing this guy out, I guess he exists solely for the purpose of being a trigger for Hidomi to act heroically.
Now to the most controversial part, Haruko Haruhara, this was what set me off. It was like introducing a completely near-perfect replica of her, having the same voice and wearing the same skin, but it was still surrounded by an aura screaming this is a stranger. Yes, she had always been unpredictable, random, as abstract as a classic painting by Picasso, but it seems as if the creators forgot how to reproduce what they once perfected.
Behind all of this mess was a shiny gem of a character, Julia Jinyu, an extraterrestrial related to Haruko that takes the side of the main characters acting like a mix between Canti and Haruko. Very lively and vibrant design refreshing to the eye, totally something worthy of the original. The rest of the cast resides in Hidomi's mother, very one-dimensional character that didn't offer much, and some classmates of the main duo, which by the way acted like a complete waste of potential.

- Enjoyment (6.0/10):
I was very skeptical at the very beginning about watching this, but no matter how long I avoided it I knew I would someday watch it. It was all in means of experiencing something new about FLCL but I was never more wrong. In terms of FLCL vibes, there were none. I remember it to be a show with a special layer of depth that made it look very depressing and gloomy, kind of the GTA IV is on consoles, covered in a blue filter that makes New York feel like the opposite of what you'd call liberty city.
I enjoyed some characters, for instance, I rooted for Hidomi and Ko all the way, there was this fat guy who was desperate about getting this loli girlfriend, and it was a sight worth seeing. I don't know if the one chuckle I cracked during watching this is worthy of making the show humorous, but a diamond under countless trash doesn't make the garbage a diamond mine.

- Overall (6.0/10):
For those people who really want to re-experience FLCL anew, I highly recommend rewatching the original instead of diving into this strange territory of disappointment, that is, if you were expecting this to offer the same things. With that said, if you're open-minded, and watch to see something new that's not entirely FLCL-ish, you might get something out of this. Although it's not going to be of the same depth mind you.
And for those people who for some reason want to skip the original FLCL and watch this as a means of guidance into the universe of FLCL than just don't, this installment is the wrong place to start, as it can be described as everything but FLCL.