Flip Flappers Episode 13 Discussion

Chiibi said:
Hmm I still have questions....

Where are Mimi and Salt now? Are they dead in the real world? :(

If so, where will Cocona live now?

Why was Uxekill a normal rabbit when Yayaka mentioned him? Was that also a Pure Illusion world?

What's up with cyborg Granny? If Cocona doesn't remember anything at all....did they erase her memory before she met Papika again in episode 01?

Nexxkinn said:
I was right to rewatch this show right from begining to catch what both director and writer want to tell you.

Seriously, folks. Go rewatch everything straight from the first episode.
I am pretty much satisfied with this show.
Damn, congrats for your debut as a director, Oshiyama!

Solid 8/10, and would add .5 if you aren't satisfied enough that you want to redraw everything.

SeijiroUshio said:


Mimi was still in Pure Illusion, Salt didn't die, he was with Sayuri and Dr. Hidaka in their somewhat new base.

Yes, that was Pure Illusion, the creepy painting to be exact.

Robot Grandma was just robot Grandma, nothing more nothing less.

I think that was the case because Cocona at that time was still being watched by the KKK group aside from Yayaka.

ecwarriorz said:

So I was bored and I made this. I have to agree with the trend. I really liked episodes 1-10, but 12 and 13 felt kinda...disappointing, I guess? I don't know. It seemed a little rushed at the end (maybe?), and there were a few loose ends left untied. Nonetheless, FLFL was an awesome show. I loved watching Papika and Cocona going on adventures, and I really do hope they'll make an OVA to tie up those loose ends. I'll miss this amazing show!

Mogami-kun said:
I liked Mimi transforming, Nyunyu actually doing something even though it ended up pretty inconsequential and Salt shooting his dark PI self, but that's pretty much it. They went for a safe generic happy ending and left a lot of cool stuff out (the twins never got to henshin, Sayuri didn't hook up with Salt, Nyunyu never was actually important to the plot, Iroha never got to return).

The show was the best stuff anime-wise I've seen in years as far as episode 1-9 are concerned, but I didn't enjoy the plot episodes besides some awesome fights and transformations, but that was never the main appeal of Flip Flappers for me. 8/10 as a whole.

Fai said:
So just as I guessed we got Cocona reaffirming her identity and seeing herself as herself(instead of a repeat of her own mother), which leads to the perception of her world changing revealing the actual real world, with the world of Cocona having been pure illusion too.

A lot of this show is about perception, as the reference to Jakob Von Uexküll hints at. Uexküll was german Biologist most famous for his works on how organisms perceive their surroundings. From the verys tart that felt like a huge hint that what we saw in the show was Cocona's perception of reality and the way she perceived her issues and problems in life and the way her brain processed that. Likewise that is also hinted via Iro's plot and the way Iro's perception of her world would shift depending on her moods and how she felt.

I guess if we are to view the events we saw in pure illusion via perception of Real World that was revealed in the end for us, I guess this is how the story went if we separate Cocona's perception of the events:

Cocona's mother and father most likely divorced due Cocona's mother pursuing another woman. That was the calamity, the tragedy that colorfully was portrayed in the show In Cocona's perception that essentially was represented via two versions of her mother due to her perception of her mother having split into two, essentially taking away her "ideal" mother she knew, while her father grew distant.

What's more, during this hard time, due to the process of adolescence and questioning your own sexuality, Cocona found herself attracted to another girl in school, which made her question whether she herself is just a repeat of her mother's path, walking the same path, becoming her mother. This conflict of identity, mixed in with trauma from her parents divorce was essentially represented through childish imagination of pure illusion world. What we saw through the show was Cocona's subconscious view of the world, as a try to reaffirm who she is, as she is growing up into adulthood, to find her own identity.

Thus what we effectively saw through the show was the embodiment of that inner conflict of Cocona, the stream of consciousness that represented the real world problems and psychological dilemmas in a colorful childhood vision of "pure illusion".

• We saw Cocona ponder whether she is someone now that her parents were swept from under her feet. What is her place in the world what she wants of it. And the more she felt rejected by the world the more chaotic and dangerous her perception of the world got(cyborgs, impostors and all)
  
• We saw Cocona try to process whether she is allowed self expression or has self expression via how Papika challenged her restricted nature, with Papika Cocona and Yayaka essentially embodying the psychological concepts of Id, Ego and Super Ego and Cocona trying to attain emotional and intellectual balance in terms of how she perceives herself.
  
• We saw Cocona question her desires, her sexuality and how it defines who she is or who she could be.
  
• We saw Cocona wonder about the nature of her feelings towards Papika and whether they are okay. What makes Papika into Papika, would her interest be different if Papika was different, etc.
  
• We saw Cocona wonder how what happened to her family affected her. Whether by getting closer to Papika she is becoming the copy of her mother or whether she is walking her own path. Is she bound by what happened to her parents, is she repeating her mothers mistakes, is she becoming her mother? Or is she walking her own path that her parents approve of in spite of their own mistakes that she is not guilty or responsible for.

We saw her try to process , in a childish idealized way, of what happened to her family and what it means for her now that she is growing up and entering adolescence. After all divorce during puberty can hit hard in terms of how our identity forms. In this case we have been seeing how Cocona is processing everything that has happened around her and inside her in such a time.

We saw her try to process , in a childish idealized way, of what happened to her family and what it means for her now that she is growing up and entering adolescence. After all divorce during puberty can hit hard in terms of how our identity forms. In this case we have been seeing how Cocona is processing everything that has happened around her and inside her in such a time.

In fact if you look back at the show it all lines up in order - we start with Cocona's identity, Cocona trying to proccess the idea of her birth and how desires affect people(episode 2) and it slowly goes back to the issue of her family and comes back to her identity.


In fact if you look back at the show it all lines up in order - we start with Cocona's identity, Cocona trying to process the idea of her birth and how desires affect people(episode 2) and it slowly goes back to the issue of her family and comes back to her identity.


Now with this episode, having resolved her identity crisis and established herself as a separate identity from her mother(and whatever happened to their family in the past) Cocona essentially "grew up", entering back into reality and is free to pursue Papika romantically, even though show annoying yet again tries to be too ambiguous there. Of course veering back into childhood fantasies is not something restricted form Adults so there's nothing stopping Cocona from viewing the world in such a colorful fashion again, that's what dreams and imagination are after all. However Cocona is no longer bound by that world or by what happened to her parnets, she is free to be herself, she has liberated herself from her conflicts and identity crisis, achieving adulthood.

Its hard to get a read on this especially with the knowledge that original writer quit after Episode 6, but at least parts of this episode seem to correspond with what was being built up.

Still great ride. Not perfect and some things feel off, but still great. Easily 8/10 for the whole show. Maybe even 9/10 not sure yet tbqh.

AnimeFanboy1234 said:

...You're overthinking it. You can add some deep, complicated, layered meaning to anything.
Keijo could be taken as a message that being sexual is totally cool.
Harem anime could mean as a social commentary of girls' lust and issue with communicating their sexual desires.
Anime's colorful artstyle could be seen as a reflection of Japanese peoples' dissatisfaction with their appearance.
Flip Flappers is just kind of a nonsensical colorful anime.

Fai said:


There's no such thing as "overthinking" a narrative.
A proper narrative has depth that is left up to interpretation by those viewing them.

Yes Keijo COULD have that message.
Yes Harem anime can have social metaphors about that and adolescence. What do you think Monogatari franchise is?

Writing something off as "just nonsensical colorful" as if "being colorful" or "being harder to understand" makes it worse is the DEFINITION of "underthinking" it.