Lets get into this, I have read some other posts and a few things that i noticed is that many people think really different about this series. personally i think flcl is unique and fun to watch, it certainly isnt something you will see often. Which makes it a decent show for sure and i rated it with an 8.
But what i really want to know is why the people that rated this like a 9/10 or higher liked this series so much, and think this is a real masterpiece. Also it has an rating of 8.05 which i personally think is really high because most people will just watch this and think wtf is this about. I really wanna know why you think its this good in a proper and distinct way and not something like this:
Quote from an other post:
''You think Clannad is the best thing ever, I am not surprised that you can't understand the subtlety of good drama and proper storytelling :)''
Please no comments from people like that. share your opinion, hate all you want, ill be waiting for my perfect answer.
I already wrote about it here, but I'll copy-paste my response.
I like FLCL because of many things, but I'll go with the two easiest aspects to explain.
Naota Nandaba is a character who I find pretty easy to understand and sympathize with. The trait that kicks off the rest of his personality (and pretty much all of FLCL) is his idolization of his older brother Tasuke at the beginning of the show. It's never explicitly stated that he idolizes his brother, but it's constantly implied by things such as Naota carrying around his brother's baseball bat, dreaming of his brother, being amazed by Haruko at the end of the first episode and saying that she reminded him of his brother, calling out for his brother when in trouble, etc. But before the show begins, Tasuke has moved to America, which is extremely important in a character sense and in a presentation sense (which I'll get to later) for FLCL. What this means for Naota as a character is that his role model is gone, an impossibly long distance separated from him. Remember all those airplanes in FLCL? Yeah, that was basically just the show's way of telling you in that Naota's thinking of his brother overseas.
Although we never see Tasuke, what we see of Naota's idolization of him has him hold the brother figure up as a kind of standard with which to compare other people and his own life. Naota acts in the way he thinks mature adults like his brother act, which is "Life is boring and meaningless". Because people don't meet Naota's idealized standard of maturity (not even his brother by the time Naota sees the letter Tasuke sent, which is why he says "back when I used to admire him" when reflecting on his dream), he ends up looking down on them ("Stop acting like a kid!"), calling the life he lives boring and ordinary, and developing a system through which he defines embarrassing actions as immature ("School plays are for kids!"); more or less coming off as a 12-year old Holden Caulfield. The obvious irony here is that Naota is actually the most childish character in the show; he can't handle spicy food, hates sour stuff, and whines constantly about his life and other people. This isn't all there is to him, but I can only really explain why by detailing his relationships with the other characters.
By leaving for the US, Tasuke also leaves his girlfriend Mamimi back in Mabase, who latches onto Naota as a coping device. Like Naota, she's a person who idolizes Tasuke; she was saved by him in grade school, and she more or less sees him as her guardian angel. She doesn't really take Naota seriously apart from using him to cope with Tasuke leaving, as evidenced by her referring to him by a shortened version of his brother's name ("Ta-kun"), which puts him on the same level as a kitten she finds and takes care of. Her coping mechanisms are constantly reinforced by how shit her life is. She gets bullied by other girls from her school (which is why you only ever see her at places like the bridge, never at her highschool; hell, she shows up waiting by Naota's elementary school instead in one episode), is practically homeless to the point of asking for food from Naota's bakery, and is implied to have a poor relationship with her parents at the time of FLCL (For example, she refers to a memory of her school play as a good memory because her parents both came to see her). What she means when she tells Naota that if she doesn't molest him, she'll "overflow" is that she'll be consumed by just how utter shit her life is if she doesn't use him as a coping mechanism. Aside from her Ta-kuns, she has a another coping mechanism where she destroys stuff to lash out at the world that mistreats her.
Naota doesn't understand most of this stuff at the beginning of FLCL, but because he thinks he got it all figured out and knows everything, he ends up making some extra crappy remarks to her in the first and second episodes. When she calls him to get him to go meet her in the middle of episode 1, his momentary annoyance at his idea of a boring, "normal" life being disrupted clouds his judgement and he lashes out at Mamimi by telling her that he's "busy" and to go out with her friends. He feels pretty guilty about this remark when he realizes that Mamimi is homeless and probably has no friends by the end of episode 1, which prompts him to rush out and find her in an attempt to help her.
Upon finding her, he realizes he doesn't actually know how to help her, and ends up trying to play psychiatrist. He doesn't really understand her situation, but he guesses that he can get to the root of the problem by talking about his brother. While his guess is actually kinda right, he isn't very tactical in his control of information-He says anything that comes to mind without really thinking about it, and blurts out that his brother has gotten a girlfriend in America, the only thing he knows that could get Mamimi to "overflow" with how shit her life is. In addition to this, he makes a similar mistake in episode 2 when he says "I guess highschool kids have it easy" in reference to how Mamimi can so casually talk about a video game where she burns down buildings until the video game world ends. He doesn't know then that Mamimi usually skips school due to bullying or that she's using the game as a proxy through which to lash out at the world. She worships Naota head-robot as "Canti, the god of the black flame", because 1) she sees him as another replacement for Tasuke, except this time as a guardian angel instead of the comfort food-level she puts Ta-kuns at, and 2) she sees him as a way through which she can imagine her game where "Canti" burns down the world is real. When she says she doesn't need the game as Naota picks it up and offers it to her, she means 1) that she thinks she can actually end the world, and 2)she's going to burn some buildings IRL.
When Naota is unwillingly eaten by Canti and indirectly protects Mamimi through Canti getting a powerup by eating him, he comes to the wrong conclusion and decides that he's going to embrace being a replacement for Tasuke by staying by her side.
Here's where Haruko comes in. She's a wild, crazy young adult, just the kind of person Naota hates and calls immature. However, unlike the other people he looks down on (like his father), she's also aggressive and manipulative, which Naota doesn't know how to respond to. He simultaneously hates and doesn't understand sex, and believes that anyone interested in it acts the equivalent of his father, but when Haruko comes into his world like a guitar being smashed over his head (literally) he finds that even he himself is not immune to puberty and gets his first boner from the encounter. Due to his principles, he acts like he hates having Haruko around, but he's also entranced by her actions. Like Mamimi, he doesn't really understand her, but this time he's aware that he doesn't, and is fascinated by her. Unlike Mamimi, she's got a grander plan for herself-namely to get Atomsk's power for herself. Because of her scheme, in episode 4 she manipulates Naota from a kid who never takes action and "isn't the type of person who'll swing the bat" to a kid who swings a guitar bat against a satellite baseball and hits a home run, which messes up Naota's relationship with Mamimi.
As stated previously, Mamimi 1)wants the world to end, and 2) sees Naota as comfort food. By taking action ("swinging the bat") and smashing the satellite bomb that would let her town be destroyed, Naota has toppled both expectations. On the other side of the relationship though, Naota is feeling pretty good about himself. By swinging the bat, he feels that he's no longer a shallow replacement for Tasuke anymore (this is made obvious by the conversation at the beginning of the episode between the players constantly comparing him to his brother when he doesn't swing the bat) and can become Mamimi's actual boyfriend. Flattery from his friends in episode 5 when they find out he saved the city gets him feeling extra sexy about himself and assuming that Mamimi must be attracted to him. She's not... but she's isn't the kind of person who understands Naota enough or the situation to actually tell him so, and through a series of misunderstandings on the part of Naota's inflated ego, he ends up believing that she lusts for his dick and nearly ends up raping her (There's a reason the "Cafe" looks less like a cafe than a love hotel.). He eventually realizes that she doesn't actually love him at all, but due to his newfound ego her turning her back on him and calling out for his brother is infuriating for him. In a moment reminiscent of a certain scene several years later in Gurren Lagann that you probably all know, he states his individuality from his brother, takes back his name ("My name is NAOTA! Don't ever call me Ta-kun again!"), calls Canti willingly, and... isn't much help. The robot that came out of his head that day is defeated by a Canti that doesn't have Naota inside him, and the episode ends with Naota being both figuratively and literally being used as a stepping stool for Haruko's deal with Atomsk.
Naota finds out that he's not as important as he thought he was, so he reverts back to the bored, depressed kid from the beginning of the show when Haruko leaves with Canti, her biggest clue to Atomsk. He has matured a bit though, and he understands that he has to let Mamimi find herself on her own; he can't help her progress when she doesn't take him seriously, and it's only detrimental to himself if he tries.
Alright, time to talk about Amarao. Who, you ask? He's the eyebrows guy. Amarao is a representation of everything Naota shouldn't become, a bitter adult who's simultaneously in love with Haruko and hates her, a manchild who hides behind fake eyebrows to look poweRful and sexy but only make him look ridiculous (which is why everyone keeps on drawing attention to his eyebrows instead of paying attention to what he's saying). When his fake eyebrows are removed, his true personality is revealed; a child who's as whiny and out of his league as Naota ever was, a man who never took action and swung the bat, staying permanently in a position of condescension towards his own situation without trying to change it.
He puts some fake eyebrows on Naota too in the belief that they'll make the kid similar to him and be unable to use N.O. very well, therefore rendering Haruko's motivation for interfering with Naota moot. Like many other things, he's wrong about this. Unlike Amarao, Naota is a kid who already knows what it's like to swing the bat, and his fake eyebrows fall off the minute he sees Haruko again. He realizes that he can no longer find it in himself to think of a life with Haruko as anything less than amazing in comparison to the life he already has ("Every day we spend here is a whole lifetime of dying slowly."), and runs away with her the minute she offers him a passenger seat.
Running away from your problems isn't really the best way to deal with them, but it's the easiest option. When Amarao shoots Naota and Haruko down in the climax and demands that Naota stop helping her (He hilariously fundamentally misunderstands Naota by using "You want to help that highschool girl, right?" as a ploy to get the kid on his side. Naota understands that the best he can do for Mamimi at this point is by leaving her to her own devices, which he's already doing.). Given an ultimatum between being used by Haruko or Amarao, he obviously chooses the former. However, once he's been sacrificed for Atomsk, he realizes that he just allowing the same thing to happen as he always did; being used by someone else for their own personal benefit. He understands that he doesn't have to choose between being used by one person or being used by another-he's capable of making his own decisions. To represent this progress, he takes control of Atomsk's powers himself, instead of being used as a power source by Canti without being able to control what's happening like in episode 2, 3, and 5. He goes against Haruko as Amarao wants, but he spares her life and finally does something that isn't pretending or running away; he confesses his love for Haruko in the most childlike manner, which ironically solidifies his maturity, and releases Atomsk.
At the end, Haruko offers him once more to go with her, but this time he stays silent and immobile. After a moment, she decides that he can't and leaves in the same way Tasuke and Atomsk did, blasting off into the sky. Naota digs through the rubble and picks up the guitar she left. Like the red bat in his room, he'll always have a memento to remember Haruko by, but he knows that chasing after some random ideal of power in Atomsk isn't really his thing, and it'd be much more productive to stay in his town and face his ordinary problems. You may become an adult, but you never stop growing up.
A note about Ninamori: Ninamori is a character that mostly serves to parallel Naota's journey, if only in a highly condensed version. Like Naota, she acts how she thinks mature people act (which leads him to believe that she actually is mature), which are basically: pretending her problems don't bother her and using underhanded tactics to solve those problems. Like Naota, her maturity is as fake as her glasses and she has to face her problems in the end anyway by breaking down in front of her parents and telling the truth, something she casually mentions in the final episode as something Naota should do instead of running away. There's a fun detail in one of her casual clothes; she wears a USSR shirt as a sly reference towards her rigging the votes for the school play. While Naota spends the entirety of FLCL pining after women out of his league who have no romantic interest in him, the fact that he more or less ends up with Ninamori at the end without realizing it is a nice touch.
FLCL is one of a few in which I can say that the presentation is integral to the identity of the show itself. To keep this from becoming a clusterfuck, I'll separate this into narrative style, art, and sound.
Narrative style: The way FLCL chose to tell its story is actually pretty well-thought out. It's labeled sci-fi, but it's obviously not a show where that's the point. The sci-fi part only really comes from Haruko and Amarao, the most important on-screen adults in FLCL, and serve as less of a plot and more of a representation of how Naota sees the vision of the adult world that Haruko brings: a vast, complicated amount of lore that he can't even begin to understand. The way events and information are portrayed so blistering fast, how over-the-top action scenes come out at every other second, how the story at first seems like a disjointed series of events, and how it all adds up at the end of the day to something resembling a slice-of-life show more than any genre are all part of the experience of Naota tumbling headfirst into adolescence. When he says that "Nothing amazing ever happens here. Only the ordinary.", he's half right (but not in the way he thinks he is); the strange and surreal events that happen in FLCL are just symbols for various ordinary events for a kid going through puberty.
Rather than the backdrop about aliens and intergalactic wars, the plot of FLCL is just the evolution of the main character and his relationships (I know this is MAL, so let me clarify-yes, that does count as a plot. A plot is just a word used to describe what happens in a show. A character changing is something that happens. Purely episodic shows like Mushishi also have a plot; they just have episodic plots.). This is laid out in a very purposeful way where everything is presented solely to emphasize what Naota sees; for example, we are thrust into FLCL after Tasuke leaves without actually seeing him and Naota interact. This is because what Naota thinks of as Tasuke isn't really a real person, he's just a representation of Naota's false idealization of maturity; the real Tasuke who gets an American girlfriend doesn't live up to the kid's idealization (Thus prompting the "back when I admired him" line). The fourth wall can also be broken just to emphasize how unaware Naota is compared to everyone else (Notice how he's never one of the characters who break the fourth wall).
Art: The art is also pretty specific as well. When the show shifts to South Park style in the 5th episode, it only does so to Amarao's scenes, empathizing his childishness (which is further shown through the dialogue of him begging for candy from a kid). There's not much I have to comment on here. FLCL goes through several different art styles in the span of a few seconds, but they're tailored to what the show is trying to convey.
Sometimes it's as simple as a character expressing shock
and sometimes it's as complex as loneliness. The room is empty, and we see what remains of Tasuke's belongings on his empty bed frame. The whole room is bathed in golden light and the door is slightly open to suggest the world outside Naota's room, but the shot is framed in such a way that he has his head covered under Tasuke's bed to show his alienation. And of course, then the sound of an airplane flies overhead.
Sound: The rebellious punk rock music feeds into the coming of age story (or maybe I should say anti-coming of age story, considering Naota's lesson at the end of the show is that you never stop maturing) of an angry 12 year-old Holden Caulfield perfectly. When the show opens with One Life, you can feel the laziness and boredom of Naota in the tune. Likewise, when the show pops in Crazy Sunshine in the fourth episode, it suits the visuals for obvious reasons; the setting is night, but the satellite baseball lights up the sky like sunshine.
I don't know how to close this off, but I'll provide two bits of information about the soundtrack 1) It isn't really true that the entire soundtrack was just songs made before the series. Most of the soundtrack was, but I Think I Can and Ride On Shooting Star were produced specifically for the show. 2) The lyrics actually add a lot of accentuation to the scene they play in. For the most obvious example, see the lyrics of Happy Bivouac and compare them to the scene it appears it (the beginning of episode 4).
Cause the characters in FLCL is just plain awesome. I love the animation and soundtrack too, thought it was a harem at first but it was something far superior . It was also freaking awesome to watch
I already wrote about it here, but I'll copy-paste my response.
I like FLCL because of many things, but I'll go with the two easiest aspects to explain.
Naota Nandaba is a character who I find pretty easy to understand and sympathize with. The trait that kicks off the rest of his personality (and pretty much all of FLCL) is his idolization of his older brother Tasuke at the beginning of the show. It's never explicitly stated that he idolizes his brother, but it's constantly implied by things such as Naota carrying around his brother's baseball bat, dreaming of his brother, being amazed by Haruko at the end of the first episode and saying that she reminded him of his brother, calling out for his brother when in trouble, etc. But before the show begins, Tasuke has moved to America, which is extremely important in a character sense and in a presentation sense (which I'll get to later) for FLCL. What this means for Naota as a character is that his role model is gone, an impossibly long distance separated from him. Remember all those airplanes in FLCL? Yeah, that was basically just the show's way of telling you in that Naota's thinking of his brother overseas.
Although we never see Tasuke, what we see of Naota's idolization of him has him hold the brother figure up as a kind of standard with which to compare other people and his own life. Naota acts in the way he thinks mature adults like his brother act, which is "Life is boring and meaningless". Because people don't meet Naota's idealized standard of maturity (not even his brother by the time Naota sees the letter Tasuke sent, which is why he says "back when I used to admire him" when reflecting on his dream), he ends up looking down on them ("Stop acting like a kid!"), calling the life he lives boring and ordinary, and developing a system through which he defines embarrassing actions as immature ("School plays are for kids!"); more or less coming off as a 12-year old Holden Caulfield. The obvious irony here is that Naota is actually the most childish character in the show; he can't handle spicy food, hates sour stuff, and whines constantly about his life and other people. This isn't all there is to him, but I can only really explain why by detailing his relationships with the other characters.
By leaving for the US, Tasuke also leaves his girlfriend Mamimi back in Mabase, who latches onto Naota as a coping device. Like Naota, she's a person who idolizes Tasuke; she was saved by him in grade school, and she more or less sees him as her guardian angel. She doesn't really take Naota seriously apart from using him to cope with Tasuke leaving, as evidenced by her referring to him by a shortened version of his brother's name ("Ta-kun"), which puts him on the same level as a kitten she finds and takes care of. Her coping mechanisms are constantly reinforced by how shit her life is. She gets bullied by other girls from her school (which is why you only ever see her at places like the bridge, never at her highschool; hell, she shows up waiting by Naota's elementary school instead in one episode), is practically homeless to the point of asking for food from Naota's bakery, and is implied to have a poor relationship with her parents at the time of FLCL (For example, she refers to a memory of her school play as a good memory because her parents both came to see her). What she means when she tells Naota that if she doesn't molest him, she'll "overflow" is that she'll be consumed by just how utter shit her life is if she doesn't use him as a coping mechanism. Aside from her Ta-kuns, she has a another coping mechanism where she destroys stuff to lash out at the world that mistreats her.
Naota doesn't understand most of this stuff at the beginning of FLCL, but because he thinks he got it all figured out and knows everything, he ends up making some extra crappy remarks to her in the first and second episodes. When she calls him to get him to go meet her in the middle of episode 1, his momentary annoyance at his idea of a boring, "normal" life being disrupted clouds his judgement and he lashes out at Mamimi by telling her that he's "busy" and to go out with her friends. He feels pretty guilty about this remark when he realizes that Mamimi is homeless and probably has no friends by the end of episode 1, which prompts him to rush out and find her in an attempt to help her.
Upon finding her, he realizes he doesn't actually know how to help her, and ends up trying to play psychiatrist. He doesn't really understand her situation, but he guesses that he can get to the root of the problem by talking about his brother. While his guess is actually kinda right, he isn't very tactical in his control of information-He says anything that comes to mind without really thinking about it, and blurts out that his brother has gotten a girlfriend in America, the only thing he knows that could get Mamimi to "overflow" with how shit her life is. In addition to this, he makes a similar mistake in episode 2 when he says "I guess highschool kids have it easy" in reference to how Mamimi can so casually talk about a video game where she burns down buildings until the video game world ends. He doesn't know then that Mamimi usually skips school due to bullying or that she's using the game as a proxy through which to lash out at the world. She worships Naota head-robot as "Canti, the god of the black flame", because 1) she sees him as another replacement for Tasuke, except this time as a guardian angel instead of the comfort food-level she puts Ta-kuns at, and 2) she sees him as a way through which she can imagine her game where "Canti" burns down the world is real. When she says she doesn't need the game as Naota picks it up and offers it to her, she means 1) that she thinks she can actually end the world, and 2)she's going to burn some buildings IRL.
When Naota is unwillingly eaten by Canti and indirectly protects Mamimi through Canti getting a powerup by eating him, he comes to the wrong conclusion and decides that he's going to embrace being a replacement for Tasuke by staying by her side.
Here's where Haruko comes in. She's a wild, crazy young adult, just the kind of person Naota hates and calls immature. However, unlike the other people he looks down on (like his father), she's also aggressive and manipulative, which Naota doesn't know how to respond to. He simultaneously hates and doesn't understand sex, and believes that anyone interested in it acts the equivalent of his father, but when Haruko comes into his world like a guitar being smashed over his head (literally) he finds that even he himself is not immune to puberty and gets his first boner from the encounter. Due to his principles, he acts like he hates having Haruko around, but he's also entranced by her actions. Like Mamimi, he doesn't really understand her, but this time he's aware that he doesn't, and is fascinated by her. Unlike Mamimi, she's got a grander plan for herself-namely to get Atomsk's power for herself. Because of her scheme, in episode 4 she manipulates Naota from a kid who never takes action and "isn't the type of person who'll swing the bat" to a kid who swings a guitar bat against a satellite baseball and hits a home run, which messes up Naota's relationship with Mamimi.
As stated previously, Mamimi 1)wants the world to end, and 2) sees Naota as comfort food. By taking action ("swinging the bat") and smashing the satellite bomb that would let her town be destroyed, Naota has toppled both expectations. On the other side of the relationship though, Naota is feeling pretty good about himself. By swinging the bat, he feels that he's no longer a shallow replacement for Tasuke anymore (this is made obvious by the conversation at the beginning of the episode between the players constantly comparing him to his brother when he doesn't swing the bat) and can become Mamimi's actual boyfriend. Flattery from his friends in episode 5 when they find out he saved the city gets him feeling extra sexy about himself and assuming that Mamimi must be attracted to him. She's not... but she's isn't the kind of person who understands Naota enough or the situation to actually tell him so, and through a series of misunderstandings on the part of Naota's inflated ego, he ends up believing that she lusts for his dick and nearly ends up raping her (There's a reason the "Cafe" looks less like a cafe than a love hotel.). He eventually realizes that she doesn't actually love him at all, but due to his newfound ego her turning her back on him and calling out for his brother is infuriating for him. In a moment reminiscent of a certain scene several years later in Gurren Lagann that you probably all know, he states his individuality from his brother, takes back his name ("My name is NAOTA! Don't ever call me Ta-kun again!"), calls Canti willingly, and... isn't much help. The robot that came out of his head that day is defeated by a Canti that doesn't have Naota inside him, and the episode ends with Naota being both figuratively and literally being used as a stepping stool for Haruko's deal with Atomsk.
Naota finds out that he's not as important as he thought he was, so he reverts back to the bored, depressed kid from the beginning of the show when Haruko leaves with Canti, her biggest clue to Atomsk. He has matured a bit though, and he understands that he has to let Mamimi find herself on her own; he can't help her progress when she doesn't take him seriously, and it's only detrimental to himself if he tries.
Alright, time to talk about Amarao. Who, you ask? He's the eyebrows guy. Amarao is a representation of everything Naota shouldn't become, a bitter adult who's simultaneously in love with Haruko and hates her, a manchild who hides behind fake eyebrows to look poweRful and sexy but only make him look ridiculous (which is why everyone keeps on drawing attention to his eyebrows instead of paying attention to what he's saying). When his fake eyebrows are removed, his true personality is revealed; a child who's as whiny and out of his league as Naota ever was, a man who never took action and swung the bat, staying permanently in a position of condescension towards his own situation without trying to change it.
He puts some fake eyebrows on Naota too in the belief that they'll make the kid similar to him and be unable to use N.O. very well, therefore rendering Haruko's motivation for interfering with Naota moot. Like many other things, he's wrong about this. Unlike Amarao, Naota is a kid who already knows what it's like to swing the bat, and his fake eyebrows fall off the minute he sees Haruko again. He realizes that he can no longer find it in himself to think of a life with Haruko as anything less than amazing in comparison to the life he already has ("Every day we spend here is a whole lifetime of dying slowly."), and runs away with her the minute she offers him a passenger seat.
Running away from your problems isn't really the best way to deal with them, but it's the easiest option. When Amarao shoots Naota and Haruko down in the climax and demands that Naota stop helping her (He hilariously fundamentally misunderstands Naota by using "You want to help that highschool girl, right?" as a ploy to get the kid on his side. Naota understands that the best he can do for Mamimi at this point is by leaving her to her own devices, which he's already doing.). Given an ultimatum between being used by Haruko or Amarao, he obviously chooses the former. However, once he's been sacrificed for Atomsk, he realizes that he just allowing the same thing to happen as he always did; being used by someone else for their own personal benefit. He understands that he doesn't have to choose between being used by one person or being used by another-he's capable of making his own decisions. To represent this progress, he takes control of Atomsk's powers himself, instead of being used as a power source by Canti without being able to control what's happening like in episode 2, 3, and 5. He goes against Haruko as Amarao wants, but he spares her life and finally does something that isn't pretending or running away; he confesses his love for Haruko in the most childlike manner, which ironically solidifies his maturity, and releases Atomsk.
At the end, Haruko offers him once more to go with her, but this time he stays silent and immobile. After a moment, she decides that he can't and leaves in the same way Tasuke and Atomsk did, blasting off into the sky. Naota digs through the rubble and picks up the guitar she left. Like the red bat in his room, he'll always have a memento to remember Haruko by, but he knows that chasing after some random ideal of power in Atomsk isn't really his thing, and it'd be much more productive to stay in his town and face his ordinary problems. You may become an adult, but you never stop growing up.
A note about Ninamori: Ninamori is a character that mostly serves to parallel Naota's journey, if only in a highly condensed version. Like Naota, she acts how she thinks mature people act (which leads him to believe that she actually is mature), which are basically: pretending her problems don't bother her and using underhanded tactics to solve those problems. Like Naota, her maturity is as fake as her glasses and she has to face her problems in the end anyway by breaking down in front of her parents and telling the truth, something she casually mentions in the final episode as something Naota should do instead of running away. There's a fun detail in one of her casual clothes; she wears a USSR shirt as a sly reference towards her rigging the votes for the school play. While Naota spends the entirety of FLCL pining after women out of his league who have no romantic interest in him, the fact that he more or less ends up with Ninamori at the end without realizing it is a nice touch.
FLCL is one of a few in which I can say that the presentation is integral to the identity of the show itself. To keep this from becoming a clusterfuck, I'll separate this into narrative style, art, and sound.
Narrative style: The way FLCL chose to tell its story is actually pretty well-thought out. It's labeled sci-fi, but it's obviously not a show where that's the point. The sci-fi part only really comes from Haruko and Amarao, the most important on-screen adults in FLCL, and serve as less of a plot and more of a representation of how Naota sees the vision of the adult world that Haruko brings: a vast, complicated amount of lore that he can't even begin to understand. The way events and information are portrayed so blistering fast, how over-the-top action scenes come out at every other second, how the story at first seems like a disjointed series of events, and how it all adds up at the end of the day to something resembling a slice-of-life show more than any genre are all part of the experience of Naota tumbling headfirst into adolescence. When he says that "Nothing amazing ever happens here. Only the ordinary.", he's half right (but not in the way he thinks he is); the strange and surreal events that happen in FLCL are just symbols for various ordinary events for a kid going through puberty.
Rather than the backdrop about aliens and intergalactic wars, the plot of FLCL is just the evolution of the main character and his relationships (I know this is MAL, so let me clarify-yes, that does count as a plot. A plot is just a word used to describe what happens in a show. A character changing is something that happens. Purely episodic shows like Mushishi also have a plot; they just have episodic plots.). This is laid out in a very purposeful way where everything is presented solely to emphasize what Naota sees; for example, we are thrust into FLCL after Tasuke leaves without actually seeing him and Naota interact. This is because what Naota thinks of as Tasuke isn't really a real person, he's just a representation of Naota's false idealization of maturity; the real Tasuke who gets an American girlfriend doesn't live up to the kid's idealization (Thus prompting the "back when I admired him" line). The fourth wall can also be broken just to emphasize how unaware Naota is compared to everyone else (Notice how he's never one of the characters who break the fourth wall).
Art: The art is also pretty specific as well. When the show shifts to South Park style in the 5th episode, it only does so to Amarao's scenes, empathizing his childishness (which is further shown through the dialogue of him begging for candy from a kid). There's not much I have to comment on here. FLCL goes through several different art styles in the span of a few seconds, but they're tailored to what the show is trying to convey.
Sometimes it's as simple as a character expressing shock
and sometimes it's as complex as loneliness. The room is empty, and we see what remains of Tasuke's belongings on his empty bed frame. The whole room is bathed in golden light and the door is slightly open to suggest the world outside Naota's room, but the shot is framed in such a way that he has his head covered under Tasuke's bed to show his alienation. And of course, then the sound of an airplane flies overhead.
Sound: The rebellious punk rock music feeds into the coming of age story (or maybe I should say anti-coming of age story, considering Naota's lesson at the end of the show is that you never stop maturing) of an angry 12 year-old Holden Caulfield perfectly. When the show opens with One Life, you can feel the laziness and boredom of Naota in the tune. Likewise, when the show pops in Crazy Sunshine in the fourth episode, it suits the visuals for obvious reasons; the setting is night, but the satellite baseball lights up the sky like sunshine.
I don't know how to close this off, but I'll provide two bits of information about the soundtrack 1) It isn't really true that the entire soundtrack was just songs made before the series. Most of the soundtrack was, but I Think I Can and Ride On Shooting Star were produced specifically for the show. 2) The lyrics actually add a lot of accentuation to the scene they play in. For the most obvious example, see the lyrics of Happy Bivouac and compare them to the scene it appears it (the beginning of episode 4).
@mughyy1 i actually love u. jsyk i have this comment in a favourite tab and i visit it once a few years to remember how much i love this show
