A lot of people can't understand why FLCL is so beloved, often writing it off as a bizarre fever dream made into anime. FLCL is much more than that and the purpose of this review is to explain to people who don't enjoy FLCL why so many people do love it.
At its heart, FLCL is a story about maturity.
There is a plot to FLCL that strings all these events together but this review is not going to explain because it's not that important. FLCL wasn't made to be easy to understand but was made to just be a pure expression of creativity, when it was made the staff at Gainax took a bunch of things they liked and combined it together and then used that to tell its overall message. It's why Haruko rides a Vespa and why she hits Naota over the head with a Rickenbacker bass guitar and not a bat or some other object and why the pillows performed the soundtrack for this anime.
This story is told entirely from Naota's eyes and therefore not everything is literal. Naota calls this a boring town even though it is clearly not boring, plenty of exciting things are happening, but none of that matter because it is boring to him. This is one of the reasons FLCL gets progressively more bizarre as the story goes on, to show how Naota is changing throughout.
Naota is constantly looking up to his brother in FLCL as he is this idealized symbol of maturity in his eyes even though he is just as selfish as any other teenager is. And due to Naota's brother seeming like this beacon of maturity a recurring metaphor for coming of age is swinging the bat. This is one of the reasons that Mamimi is often shown with a baseball bat and never swinging it and how Haruko is often seen with a bat. This brings me to my next point, how different characters are used to show different stages and types of maturity.
Naota often disregards the adults in his life as immature man-children and honestly who can blame him. But Naota only sees the adult's in his life as immature because he has a very narrow view of what a mature person is, to Naota anything that isn't his brother isn't mature Ironically because of this Naota see's himself as the most mature character in the story which just show's his immaturity and how through ou the series he comes to accept people for whoo they are showing his personal growth. I'm now going to address some of the other characters in the show and how they contribute to this story of maturity.
Ninamori is incredibly similar to Naota as a character as they both think of themselves as mature characters, the only difference being is that while Naota looks down on others while Ninamori tries to hold up a facade of maturity while using the people around her to try and bring her parents back together. She tries to appear mature by bottling her feelings and attempts to seem like a very logical person. She's fake. But one of the best things about Ninamori is that the series often shows how this facade is just that, a facade, there are a few scenes where Ninamori is caught of guard and then shows her true face. This is one of the ways she is shown as an immature character while showing that isn't mature. Until and the end of her episode she realises that acting as a fake character isn't going to solve anything and she admits to herself and everyone that she is fake and she just accepts life for what it is and doesn't try to fight against it, becoming more mature. If anything the core message of Nanamori's arc is to just be honest with yourself.
Describing Mamimi isn't easy because she doesn't easily fit into this theme of maturity, she's much older than Naota and Ninamori but is also much more immature she doesn't have a specific episode for her character arc as Ninamori does, she's just there. But while Mamimi's arc doesn't say anything about being mature it says a lot more about being immature. Mamimi is obsessive, it starts with Naota's brother but when he leaves it is Naota and Canto. When they continue to move forward with their life and leave her in her wake it is then the medical mechanica robots. What this is showing is how she needs something to lean on and how that this isn't healthy. In the most literal representation of this, the medical mechanica robot, FLCL shows how that everything will eventually outgrow her. She starts feeding the robot but as it gets bigger and bigger it eventually becomes too powerful for her to control and leaves her, she is once again left in its wake, she is lonely because she is not living for herself. At the end of her series, after everything has left her, she decides to be proactive and not reactive and leaves the town, she starts to focus on herself and others. Due to this, she matures in her own way.
Haruko is in a weird position in all of this because she isn't really a character, she doesn't change, she doesn't show different sides to themes of FLCL, she is not the main focus of the character-driven scenes of the story. She's a trigger for everyone else's development in the show, she is the chaos that disturbs the peace of Mabase. She is what gives everyone the push they need for their own growth and perfect or a series like FLCL because she encapsulates everything the show is about in one cohesive whole.
And in the final episodes Naota learns that he should just be honest with himself, he stops trying to protect Mamimi, he stops trying to comprehend Haruko and stops trying to pretend to be mature and instead starts acting selfish, childish and completely true to himself. He finally swings the bat, he finally beats Haruko and free's Atomsk but in the process loses Haruko, but instead of fighting against it he just accepts that Haruko is gone. He has come of age.
When you combine this message with some of the most inventive and memorable animation anime has ever made, one of the greatest ever soundtracks and wrap it all up in a tight 6 episode package you get one of the best anime ever made.
TLDR: While there is an overall point to FLCL it can still be enjoyed as an over the top bombastic spectacle of animation and creativity. You can enjoy it however you want to.
