Monday, July 9, 2018

FLCL Progressive

In a town that seems nice and quiet, Hidomi Hibajiree wanders town with no emotion, no care and no desires.  That is until she meets two guitar wielding women: the cool and composed Jinyu and the eternal hyperactive rebel Haruko Haruhara.  Now the world Hidomi wanted to ignore is getting turned upside down.  She’s about to navigate the trials of adolescence with two competing mentors and Ide, a classmate head over heels in love with her.  Either Hidomi’s going to learn to love life for what it is, or the world is going to end in a number of chaotic ways…no pressure.

“Nothing amazing ever happens here.  Everything is ordinary.”  I feel like this could be the tagline for FLCL as a whole.  You take everyday, seemingly normal and mundande life and give is a serious shot of Anime adrenaline and see where the day takes you.  That adrenaline shot is Haruko herself and after 18 years of waiting (15 for me since I first saw FLCL on Adult Swim in 2003), the Anime that changed everything returns to change everything again.  It was hard for me to figure out how to approached FLCL Progressive.  The first season (man ive really gotta call it that now don’t i?) of FLCL is my favorite Anime of all time, often challenged but never defeated.  In my mind, it is perfect, even if it is an Anime I wouldn’t recommend to newcomers who would be totally lost at seeing all of the references and in jokes.  A sequel wasn’t necessary and it seemed like that was the case until now. 

So, how does Progressive answer the challenge of continuing it’s predecessors story?  Well it starts by following some of the general rules of making a sequel: darker, bigger, louder, and a general sense of more.  From the get go, we see an sequence that is both dream and nightmare as lead character Hidomi finds herself rotting away in a ruined city only to transform into a sweet looking mecha and goes to battle the legion of Iron Bases of Medical Mechanica.  It’s imagery in the same vein as The End of Evangelion and also sets the tone for things to come.  FLCL Progressive can definitely be as zany as its predecessor.  But it also tries really hard to stand out, which helps and hurts it at the same time.  At times, Progressive is too dark.  Other times, it’s trying to hard to tell a story in a heavily cryptic manner instead of just having as much fun as possible.  And there are moments when you realize that not all of the sum of the parts are really needed (and if they were they were never established very well).  It’s confusing, it’s manic and sometimes Progressive wants to do too much.  But then again, so did the first season.  Like I said, it’s hard for me to judge or critique because I can tell there’s strong effort in each frame of these six episodes.  Was I not paying close enough attention?  Am I not smart enough to understand it all? 
At the heart of this sprawling epic are four key players: Haruko, Hidomi, Ide and Jinyu.  And when all four of these characters are the central focus is when FLCL Progressive is at its best.  Hidomi and Ide are great follow up characters to Naota.  Best yet, theirs is a very sweet love story that the first season only kind of toyed with a little bit.  Hidomi’s quiet detachment is just begging to be the subject of Haruko’s attention and Ide’s clamoring affections.  Ide is far more vocal and alive than Hidomi and genuinely likes her for who she is.  Each moment these two share a tender bit feels earned and progresses naturally (no pun intended).  Jinyu is a blast.  She the more serious Haruko but still says things that Haruko would in a way, such as when she apologizes to Hidomi’s mom that she didn’t kill Hidomi after smashing into her with her car.  There’s an air of maturity to Jinyu, reflected in her speech, fighting style, maybe not her wardrobe (sexy as it may be), and it makes her an ideal guide for Hidomi and Ide.  And then there’s Haruko, the epic gal herself.  She’s still as crazy as she ever was but Progressive handles a different side to Haruko only glimpsed at towards the end of Season One.  Turns out she and Jinyu are after the same thing for different reasons and the same could be said of Haruko and Hidomi as well.  Digging so deep into Haruko’s character brings about a more menacing side that was kind of unsettling.  Yeah she was selfish in Season One but only felt like a villain for a very brief moment at the end and was always lovable in a weird way.  Here in Progressive, Haruko cares little for the damage she causes in order to reach her goal and when she felt unlikeable, that didn’t sit well with me. 
There are a slew of side characters in Progressive but none of them feel as integral as I think the creators hoped.  Ide and Hidomi’s classmates Mori and Marco kind of just observe from time to time and don’t add anything (even Marko’s crush on Hidomi is blink and youll miss).  Then there’s Eyepatch and Masuro, two men who are working with leftover tech from an old character and an amusement park to fight their own war against Medical Mechanica.  Commander Amurao they never are and I always scratched my head to wonder why they were even around.  Add in Aiko, a girl who was hinted to be connected to Contee the robot in someway, for just as little reason and I began to realize, all of these characters could have been jettisoned and not much would have been lost.  Everyone in the first season of FLCL had a purpose, even Naota’s classmates.  No matter how small their role, no character felt forced in.  Progressive has a few too many characters who either aren’t clearly defined or just don’t need to be around at all.

Ok, so clearly this isn’t going to be a 10/10 knock out like the first season was.  I talked about the flaws but what about the wins?  Well, as it turns out, it was right that one of the first things confirmed about this project was the return of The Pillows.  Each and every track they composed for FLCL Progressive is going to be just as remembered as any track from the first season.  Even if the end theme isn’t “Ride the Shooting Star” or is even that unique live action still footage, “Spikey Seeds” and the Easter Egg laden end credits sequence is my favorite track of the new era of FLCL.  Speaking of the animation, while it’s not changing at a rapid fire pace as the first season, the shifting animation styles are still around in Progressive.  Much of that can be seen in Hidomi’s episode opening dream sequences.  Theyre a wonder to behold and terrifying to watch (especially the zombie one in Episode 2).  Episode 5 boasts an art style different from every other episode from start to finish and there’s even a new Manga scene that’s quieter and more subdued than the legendary sequence from Season One.  There are also plenty of Easter Eggs and surprises for long time fans and sometimes they can excite and frustrate in equal amounts.  But Progressive always strives to tell its own story and stand very little on the shoulders of its previous story.  Truth be told, having only Haruko as the chief returning character wasn’t a bad thing.  I’ll always wonder what happened to Naota, Mamimi and the other residents of Mabase City.  But I was enjoying Hidomi and Ide’s story so much that I never missed that group (in a good way).  There’s a lot to speculate and theorize about when Progressive ends, more so than Season One and it makes me wonder just how much story there is to be told when FLCL Alternative drops in September. 
So, I guess I should wrap this up.  FLCL Progressive is ambitious, it tries super hard to change the Anime game the same way FLCL did many years ago.  It goes for broke and sometimes it does stumble.  It wants to be more mature than before and, as a result, loses the fun feel that made FLCL so special to begin with sometimes.  I didn’t agree with every creative choice but I did like a lot of the presentation from the story to the main characters to the music (probably the only area where Progressive really matched FLCL blow for blow).  It’s not bad.  Nothing was ever going to top the first season and I doubt Alternative will either.  However, FLCL Progressive made it into existence and it did so on its own terms, with little help from what came before it.  It had a lot to prove and, at the end of the day, it’s worthy of an embrace into the wide world of FLCL.  What can I say?  The ride was worth it in the end.

8/10
And with that, the long (but not too long) wait begins.  FLCL Alternative drops on Toonami on September 8th.  Which means you’ll be able to see my initial thoughts on it when First Impression Friday returns September 14.  As for a full season review of Alternative, I’ll save that for a Thanksgiving special.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go online and find out when Progressive’s soundtrack is going to be released so I can get that in my life ASAP.  See ya around.

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