FLCL: Grunge

I have never felt so thoroughly repulsed in my life as I did while watching the first episode of FLCL: Grunge. Perhaps it’s a sign of the current state of the medium that a beloved OVA has been turned in a soulless cash-cow franchise with each successive sequel becoming somehow even more creatively bankrupt than the last, but regardless Grunge outdoes itself in being completely void of any artistic merit, passion, or ability to inspire anything other than instinctive aversion to the rational mind. It’s clear as day this is a vanity project, the long-dead corpse of a once great 6-episode series being puppeteered by the callous hacks over at Toonami. I can almost imagine the pitch meeting that spawned this embarrassment, and it makes me shudder.

The original OVA series was nothing short of remarkable, and you’d be hard pressed to find anything quite like it now. The cynic in me knows we’ll never get a project on this scale ever again. Something like FLCL is the culmination of so many brilliant minds putting painstaking effort into creating a work that, while totally unlike anything else at the time, was still evocative enough to strike a chord with people even 20 years later. The animation was boundary-pushing, using countless storyboarding and directorial techniques to reframe what could’ve been an unremarkable coming of age story into an adulation for the visual medium, accompanied by some of the most striking rock music ever composed courtesy of The Pillows. There isn’t a single uninspired thing about FLCL. You could probably recognize Haruko or Canti even if you’ve never seen the anime. When I look at FLCL: Grunge, I see a derisive, flavorless, calculated product. Completely devoid of any ambition, Grunge resigns itself to cheap, tacky 3D animation more fit for whatever brainwashing programs they show preschoolers on TV now; it’s fitting, because Grunge is also mindless slop, produced for America’s ever-growing army of adult children who refuse to let go of familiar things lest they be forced to step outside their comfort zones and experience the unfamiliar. Remember FLCL? Well, it’s back, with a shiny new coat of paint, but not too different. We even got The Pillows to come back! All the characters from the original show everyone loved too! You don’t have to think or learn new things, just be content with what you have. In its opening episode Grunge manages to force as many current year references to such vapid cultural touchstones as #MeToo and “mansplaining”. As if the last 10 years of entertainment weren’t already chock full of awful platitudes for the chronically out-of-touch (Californians) like this, now they’re in anime. Or whatever this is supposed to be, I’d honestly be doing anime a disservice by lumping this in with it.

What the fuck happened? FLCL was a story about maturity. Naota has to come to grips with the hard realities of life and accepts that he has to be his own man in order to face his problems head on. Screw what anyone thinks of him. FLCL: Grunge feels more than happy to oblige with what our increasingly neurotic society demands art be; inoffensive, free from anything that might offend the shareholders, or the emotionally stunted egocentrics of modern America who want everything to be safe and reassuring so they don’t have to pay $100 a month for antidepressants that don’t do anything rather than face the reality of how shitty everything is now. It’s the polar opposite of its predecessor. I hate it. If you have any self-respect not just as a viewer but as a human being, you should hate it too. If you do, Adult Swim’s execs might take a minute from counting their ever-dwindling stacks of money to consider funding animated projects that aren’t irredeemably bad.

tl;dr: it sucks. I saved you 23 minutes of your lives