Fast forward to 2019 where this decade of anime is reaching to a close I decided to re-watch Flip Flappers just to see it's truly worthy of being in my top 10 favourite animes from this decade along with stuff like March Comes in Like a Lion, Hunter x Hunter 2011, Little Witch Academia TV and The Ancient Magus Bride.
As a middle school student, Cocona has been trying to decide what to do with her life. Magical girl, however, wasn't a career path that she'd ever considered. When suddenly a strange girl named Papika thrusts her into a secret organisation called Flip Flap Conona's outlook does a radical flip-flop. Her views start to chance when she gets dragged by Papika into an alternate dimension called pure illusion where she's charged with gathering crystal shards and facing off strange creatures from various alternate dimensions with the aid of Papika.
On the surface, Flip Flappers looks like you standard throwaway magical girl show from 2006 but when you actually watch the series especially past the first episode you begin to see how special and unique Flip Flappers is. At its core Flip Flappers is a coming of age and adventure tale that features pretty colours, charming characters and attractive symbolism.
The journey aspect of flip flappers while not revolutionary is unique.
The first half of Flip Flappers is like watching two cute girls going on a journey travelling to various worlds, interacting with the set world, learning various life lessons and returning into the own world as different people. This is easily the best part of Flip Flappers story because not only the show was capable of using it's coming of age elements with its captivating symbolism that synthesise well with the narrative but it also brings out a lot of core themes and messages that strengths the characterisation for Conona and Papika.
The second third is for the most part similar to the first third however it started to introduce its core themes and story elements to the mix. Not to mention this is where Flip Flappers comes full on character-driven series putting its episodic structure in the bench. There are a lot of themes that Flip Flappers explored like growing up, puberty, understanding one another, and sexuality and these's were masterfully executed in the anime.
If you are a Yuri fan then Flip Flappers would be your cup of tea. It has a lot of Yuri elements that only strengthens the show's core themes thanks to great direction and writing.
Despite Flip Flappers being one of the more unique coming of age stories from this decade of anime, it has one major flaw that prevented Flip Flappers from being one of the all-time greats from this decade and that is the final third aka episodes 9-13.
Spoilers aside from the series kinda lost of what it so special in the first place. The shows tried to introduce a lot of new plot elements that weren't explored in the earlier episodes but these new plot elements, unfortunately, fell flat on its face thanks to the lacklustre episode count which is not enough to flesh out the new story elements in the narrative.
To the final third's credit, the ending itself was satisfying as it was able to tie up most of the loose ends. Plus the character development for Cocona, Papika and especially Yakaya in the final third is incredible completely overshadowing most of the issues that I had in the final third.
Since Flip Flappers is a coming of age tale, the main characters must be great and interesting to justify the narrative and themes? Lucky the main characters in Flip Flappers were fantastic and well thought out from start to finish.
Conona is an example of a coming of age protagonist done right. She starts off as a shy and cautious person who doesn't know what to do in life thanks to her lack of social skills that prevented her to socialise with anyone apart from her grandmother and Yakaya.
As the series progresses as Conona spends more time with Papika travelling into various worlds in pure illusion she becomes more social and confident to others.
While Conona is a greatly written coming of age protagonist, she pales in comparison to the energetic and lovable Papika.
She is my favourite character in Flip Flappers.
On first glance, she appears to your usual girl who is the thirst of adventure. She has no sense of danger and has little understanding of personal boundaries that put people off but as the series, progress Papika not only starts being a more reliable person thanks to great character development.
The best part about Conona and Papika as characters is how strong their character chemistry. At the beginning of the series, Conona didn't care less about Papika but as the series progresses they understand one other thanks to brilliant character interactions and by the end, you really feel that these two are unbreakable.
While Cocona and Papika were great and well-developed characters, I cannot say a thing for the same thing for the supporting characters. They were not bad characters but at they were pretty forgettable then again that's expected from a coming of age story that is partially focused on a handful of characters but it would have been cool to see some supporting characters get a moment in the spotlight.
The one expectation of this is with Yayaka. Despite being part of a rival/villain organisation she a nicely written character that I loved from start to finish. Her development is a strong as Conona and Papika.
Flip Flappers visually can be best described as a firework factory that is filled with pretty and vibrant colours. The various world's that Conona and Papika were beautifully crafted as they all have their own identity. The various colour palettes for the background scenery Characters designs were unique and appealing to look at.
My praise for art doesn't end there. For starters, I really love how Conona and Papika have swapped hair colours when they transform.
Then there's the symbolism which is easily the second best things for Flip Flappers.
Without getting into heavy spoiler territory I found the show use of symbolism to be very clever.
From the change of colour contrast, character movement, imagery and great shot composition the show was able to communicate its narrative and themes through visual storytelling. The only other shows that I saw visuals storytelling done experimentally well is Utena, Penquindrum and Yuri Kuma all works directed by the very talented Kunihiko Ikuhara.
The glorious art is only made better of how smooth, dynamic and crisp the animation is.
You can tell the staff were fans of Gainax and Trigger as almost every fight has that Trigger/Gainax flavour.
As much I love Flip Flappers visuals there was one thing that kinda bothered me and that's the fan-service.
Fan-service isn't necessarily bad, but, the way the Flip Flappers uses it was pretty distracting. Frequent butts, tights and crotch shots mess up certain key moments in the series.
This wouldn't be such a problem if the characters were not middle school. I understand that puberty is one of the show themes and all but did we need weird and awkward fan-service? I don't think so.
The best word to describe the soundtrack for Flip Flappers is adventurous. Done by the underrated talented music group TO-MAS the score does a fantastic job at capturing the adventurous and mysterious tone of Flip Flappers thanks to the nice choice of upbeat, mysterious, electronic and sci-fi tracks that play in the anime.
The opening theme Serendipity by ZAQ is a great opening that fits the anime perfectly.
The ending theme FLIP FLAP FLIP FLAP by TO-MAS feat Chima is one of the best anime ending themes I ever heard in an anime thanks to its catchy and happy nature that masterfully closes an episode of Flip Flappers well.
Audio-wise Flip Flappers is very good that features a lot of talented voice actors for both languages.
If I had to pick dub or the original Japanese audio it would pick the dub as it is not only it's one of Sentai Filmworks dubs, in general, the dub actually fitted the show better.
Add this up with the strong performances by Luci Christian (Papika) and Brittney Karbowski (Conona) and you got yourself a great dub especially for Sentai Filmworks standards.
Flip Flappers is one of the best and unique coming of age tales I have seen in a long while. The rich thematic exploration charming characters mixed in with splendid soundtrack and the fascinating production values really make Flip Flappers one kind of a series even with its couple of handfuls of flaws from the underdeveloped final third (despite having a lot of good moments) and the shotty use of fan-service.
Regardless Flip Flappers is still one of the best animes I have seen from this decade but it's sadly no longer in my top 10 as it is now comfortably sitting in my top 30 rather in my top 10.
Flip Flappers is a beautiful ride that I will never forget.
Thank you Studio 3Hz and the staff for making this near perfect journey possible.
