LA wants to get straight into it...so let's dive into the technical rabbit hole shall we?.
Flip Flapper's plot format for the first 10 episodes goes into a "World a Week" kind of schema but using movie and anime references as it's settings, such examples being Episode 3 having Fist of the North Star and Mad Max Fury Road settings to Episode 5 having the Shining merged with yuri genre settings to even the meta-narrative of "archetypes and HECK the MECHA genre in one episode. Even their transformation sequences harkens to Pretty Cure's transformations to the point it's oozed into their attack names. The plot format surrounds Papika and Cocona trying to find the the "amorphorus" for the FliFlap organization under the various omni-genred episodes we get for unknown reasons and another rival organization by the name of Asclepius trying to get it as well for the first 9 episodes. Really these early 9 episodes was to emphasis and develop the relationship between our two main leads of Papika and Cocona through going through their trials and tribulations of their relationship and most importantly Cocona's indecisiveness, they both face when going into the Pure Illusion worlds. Come episode 10, all the hints and the reasoning to getting the amorphorus, Papika in general, Cocona's involvement in all this, Pure Illusion in general all comes into full force, something LA wasn't HARDLY expecting. In all respects, this development isn't exactly new as the hints were their just subtle in it's approach and because of this, the plot twists come episode 10 were amazingly executed, what happens after episode 10, the omni-genred feature of self-reflection and coming of age story for Cocona for Flip Flappers quickly changed into a yuri shounen anime...seriously that's the vibe LA got after this development, but that a bit later.
Papika and Cocona are polar opposites for the most part and although it's an easy opposites attract what with Papika the hyper-always genki character who's rather clingy to Cocona, her mysteriousness can kinda be a saving grace to Papika (which was LA's perspective). Cocona on the other hand, is a strict, no nonsense character though she opens up halfway through the anime though she reverts or becomes confused by her relationship to Papika (quite frankly metaphorically visually shown in one episode). There is one other character, Yayaka who's a friend of Cocona but she's ALOT more that you'd realize and becomes a rather focused character by the end of it and her rivalry both in character and relationship to Papika and Cocona respectively really made an interesting character and really impacted the major plotline during the first 8 to 9 episodes, because of that she quite easily was LA's favourite character in the series.
There are other minor characters that do get their own development episodes but through LA's perspective is shown through some of the Pure Illusion worlds, the most easily noticable being Iroha Irodori voiced by Saori Oonishi and if you could interpret it, Hidaka voiced by Jun Fukushima. Once again come episode 10, a floodgate worth of character and plot development focus on many of the secrets of Asclepius and FliFlap comes into focus and essentially reigns in character development from the various characters surrounding these two secret organizations WHILE keeping Papika and Cocona's development simultaneously. LA really can't explain more otherwise it goes GREATLY in spoilers, especially one character development who's enveloped and connect to ALL of this.
The voice acting, there are two notable seiyuu's LA has to take note of, Ayaka Ohashi as Yayaka and Minami Takahashi as Cocona, they both nailed their characters greatly as well as giving them a wide vocal range though Minami had stuck round with the indecisively shy vocals due to Cocona during the beginning but she like Papika's seiyuu M.A.O got better over time. On speaking of which, M.A.O as Papika was narrowly annoying due to M.A.O's constant hyper genki status throughout their adventures and both M.A.O and Minami Takahashi shouting each others name in a moe cadence gotten M.A.O a bit of slack, but seriously, both M.A.O and Minami Takahashi as seiyuu's definitely gotten better over time. The rest of the vocal cast was pretty decent though some had the inflictions of hyper genkiness that M.A.O had like Jun Fukushima as Hidaka and NyuNyu's voice actor (was uncredited as LA wrote this). LA thought the one notable from the minor cast would easily go to Welwitschia's voice actor Aki Toyosaki in voicing one of the episodic villains and MAN did Aki go hammy in this one!.
As for the soundtrack, LA quite easily loved both the OP and ED for this anime, but most definitely Flip Flappers OP "Serendipity" by ZAQ was LA's favourite OP for Fall 2016. The ED, "FLIP FLAP FLIP FLAP" by TO-MAS feat.Chima added to the bizarre fairy tale book feel to the anime and at times during cliffhangars did bring in either a moodswinger once this ED arrived but nonetheless both OP and ED were great for Flip Flappers. LA doesn't have much to say about the OST in general, though it was atmospheric to say the most, but the OST and the sakuga used blended soo well that LA hardly noticed the OST half the time (though LA is saying this in a good light).
The animation, as LA stated at the preamble, Flip Flappers is an outright sakuga fest of animation and it's the more fantastical and broad reach of atmospheric detail from the crazy landscapes of the desert to tron-like cities to classic architecture to the more creepy mansion worlds and fast frantic battles makes LA be reminded of an Alice in Wonderland meets Anime kind of appeal to it's animation. The character designs are "exotic" and color-coded for easy distinction, not to mention LA just loves the parallels in color brought onto Papika and Cocona, easily coming from how Papika and Cocoa's hair color swaps during their transformation sequences further emphasizing Papika and Cocona's relationship with one another. What can LA say for Studio 3Hz, but if the anime's plot isn't getting to you, the animation most certainly will.
The final three episodes if anything really did change into a cohesive narrative instead of the episodic BUT at the same time tying loose ends towards those episodic episodes and even call backs to them, this also gave a HUGE amount of character development to Yayaka, however she's a really heavy spoiler character in Flip Flappers overall, what LA will say is that because of these final three episodes, she herself came to her own realization and she became a very focused and 3-dimensional character. This also leads up to Cocona's own realization which comes in the form of the surprise major "villain" of the anime which brings themes of "fate or your own freedom" which again ties up loose resolutions towards both Cocona's adventuring with Papika throughout all the Pure Illusions to Cocona's relationship to Papika solidifying itself by the penultimate episode. As much as the narrative structure changed, it also helped that the "episodic episodes" lead into something much greater and just wasn't used to be "filler-ish" episodes which gets revisited at one point along with a few relational indecisiveness from Cocona to have a resolution but it also helped in the character development to most of the major characters as well. If there was but one flaw LA could see in the final arc was that it condensed what was the mystery and subtle background hinting to the bigger picture into a simple yet slightly complicated story with a villain who doesn't know any better (though again not a bad villain on that regards due to the circumstances) with only the major characters impacting the plot. What compensated all this was the weird and intensely fantastical final battle with this villain along with it resolving the majority of the plotlines, THAT was enough to satisfy LA with this kind of ending.
Flip Flappers' episodic omni-genred nature to quickly change into a simple story with a villain just to resolve all the mystery behind Pure Illusion, Papika and Yayaka along with Cocona's indecisiveness. Flip Flappers had a great thing going with it's fantastical Pure Illusion worlds and the romp and character self-reflection, "coming of age story" as subtle hinting as good themes coming from these wondrous Pure Illusion worlds, it stumbled slightly however once it went into a cohesive narrative and turning what could have been turned into an anime with a bigger picture into a simple story, but LA can quite honestly give a saving grace for how the ending was resolved along with that final battle, but other flaws such as it's lacking character development from it's minor cast but nonetheless, LA doesn't think Flip Flappers NEEDED to fill ALL basis to be a great anime, what Flip Flappers ended with was good enough not to get LA's scorn for. Yet still praise it's storytelling in the form of Cocona's coming of age story, brilliant animation, soundtrack and satisfyingly resolved ending.
