FLCL Will Never Die

Harumi Araishu and Masaki Aofuji, the leads of FLCL: Shoegaze. Photo: Adult Swim

Just over 20 years ago, director Kazuya Tsurumaki’s six-episode anime FLCL smacked Adult Swim watchers on the forehead with a Rickenbacker bass. Its story of the preteen Naota’s psychosexual awakening vis-à-vis fighting an interplanetary megacorporation and a space pirate called Atomsk proved massively popular in America and reran for 15 years, spawning millions of fans and four revival seasons. In every iteration, FLCL (pronounced “Fooly Cooly” aloud) alchemizes a coming-of-age arc with anti-capitalist science fiction, wacky camera movements, and music from Japanese rock band the Pillows. These days, even the people who make it struggle to describe it for the uninitiated.

“The original is lightning in a bottle. I would compare it to a Terry Gilliam movie, maybe like Brazil or Time Bandits or something. It has that similar madcap energy,” says Jason DeMarco, Adult Swim’s vice-president of anime and action series. “It was literally two studios, Production I.G. and Gainax, who didn’t care about money at all, who were trying to outdo one another.”

After bringing the original series Stateside in August 2003, DeMarco now helps shepherd the revival seasons as co-productions between Adult Swim and Production I.G. (which bought out Gainax’s share of the property years ago). He credits Production I.G. and its founder, Mitsuhisa Ishikawa, with bringing the latest two seasons now airing on Adult Swim, FLCL: Grunge and FLCL: Shoegaze, to life: “They pitched it to me, and I thought both takes were interesting, and so we decided to go ahead and fund two more sort of mini-sequels.”

Emphasis on the “mini.” Every season of FLCL is self-contained, but Grunge and Shoegaze, which debuts a new trailer today, differentiate themselves even more so. Both are three episodes apiece — half the length of every previous FLCL season. They’re made in different animation styles by different studios. Neither of them materially revisit Naota or Mamimi, the leads of the original FLCL, whose ongoing stories DeMarco sees as under Tsurumaki’s purview to address — “As long as he’s not interested, neither are we.” And they’re also being released back-to-back, with Shoegaze’s first episode picking up September 30, a week after Grunge’s last. Chronologically, it doesn’t totally make sense: Grunge is technically a prequel to the original FLCL; Shoegaze, the fifth FLCL production, actually brings back characters from and serves as a sequel to Alternative, the third.

DeMarco sees the mystique and chaos of these decisions as part of the charm: “To me, that’s more interesting than doing one and then waiting eight months and doing another,” he says. “Ideally, if we’re doing our job, they both still can feel like FLCL. I actually don’t mind if people compare them. You’re probably going to like one a lot more than the other. Or maybe you won’t like either one. Or maybe you’ll love both. That’s fine.”

Shinpachi and Shonari, in FLCL: Grunge. Photo: Adult Swim

He knew that when he green-lit Grunge — which is animated by MontBlanc Pictures in an almost entirely computer-generated style, a departure for the franchise, but the result of a compelling pitch from the CG studio. “Anime fans in particular can be pretty narrow-minded about CG, so I was pretty reticent,” he says. “But when they showed me sort of what they were doing and the colors and the stylization, I just thought, This is interesting. It’s different. It feels cool.” The resulting three episodes stack atop one another like Lost or Rashomon, layering the same plot events from the points of view of three equally “main” characters and subverting audience expectations along the way.

The idea for Shoegaze was also partly driven by one its artists, animation director Yutaka Uemura, who worked on Alternative and utilizes the traditional, 2-D animation style of that show and the first FLCL. “For Japanese artists, much like for us, to take on a new FLCL is a big responsibility and an uphill battle. It’s going to be compared to the original, which is peerless,” DeMarco says. “He specifically felt there were things he didn’t say in Alternative that he could say in the sequel.”

Shoegaze follows up on some familiar characters and continues their stories, but it arguably takes one of FLCL’s boldest steps yet as the first series to not include (spoiler alert!) the franchise’s pink-haired de facto mascot, Haruko Haruhara. “That was the biggest decision we made,” DeMarco says. “Is it FLCL without Haruko? I think that’s an open question. Still feels like it to me, but I think it’s for the viewer to decide.” Despite her absence, Shoegaze does introduce a new character who embodies her energy, sexual tension, and hair color, because, DeMarco says, Uemura wanted a character who could push the protagonist in the same way that Haruko did in past entries.

In the original FLCL, Haruko Haruhara swings a mighty blue Rickenbacker bass guitar. Photo: Adult Swim

As much as that tracks with the adolescent discomfort of FLCL, it also feels like an embrace of its IP signifiers. DeMarco compares this franchise to Star Wars, Star Trek, and Marvel — brands that have long since replayed narrative beats and replaced their archetypal characters with stand-ins and look-alikes. And all of that can work, as long as the new entries still feel fresh, compelling, and personal. “The spirit of the original was about being adventurous and doing something different,” DeMarco says. “Though there’s no way we would do something purely original within the realm of sequels, we are trying to take different approaches and see if there are interesting points of view that can be injected into it.”

It also means that, like any other IP, FLCL’s future at Adult Swim is subject to audience interest, entertainment-industry consolidation, and, down the line, potential content removals. With its history of licensing the original show and with the four sequel series that they’ve put out, DeMarco feels Adult Swim has given the franchise its “best shot.” But while he’s confident the IP will endure, he doesn’t think Adult Swim will keep cranking FLCL entries out forever after Grunge and Shoegaze roll out.

“Whether or not there are more is probably going to be up to Production I.G. and how these perform,” DeMarco says. “A​s far as our involvement, we’ve done everything we wanted to do. We weren’t trying to recapture lightning in a bottle.”