"You can't win the game until you swing the bat."
-maxim

There's not much a point to summarizing FLCL--pronounced, "Fooly Cooly". Either you have seen it, are going to see it, or have decided it's not of interest to you. Besides that, what literally happens in FLCL is only half the story; and the series is famously obtuse. FLCL has been, since its release, read as everything from a parody of Ganaix' own Neon Genesis Evangelion to a critique of Japan's low age of consent (yes really, look it up). FLCL is probably best understood as an anime that looks how puberty feels, and indeed on the longtail, the show hasn't persisted in cultural memory entire episodes or chunks at a time the way many more narratively straightforward anime have. What burns into the brain about FLCL is fragmented images--a yellow vespa, "Lunchtime!", "never knows best" scribbled in pencil on a cigarette, a Rickenbacker bass, the giant iron resting on the hillside, Naota's horn protrusions, eyebrows, just to name a few examples--plus knotty fan theories, and the soundtrack--courtesy of Japanese pop punk group The Pillows, and one of the best of its kind.

That second point is especially funny, given that the character of Kamon seems like something of a jab at the very sort of person who'd dream up complex "explanations" for FLCL, and to tell the truth the idea of trying to solve the show does seem a bit like a lost cause, not because FLCL is devoid of meaning but for the exact opposite reason. In a way, it's a Rorschach Blot, FLCL has so much meaning--symbolism, allusion, and so on--that it's possible to read it in just about any way you want. Far from detracting from the series' quality, this is arguably what's let FLCL have such persistence. Turn it one way; it's the story that happens on the other side of a space opera, the natives of a planet being disrupted by the presence of Haruko, that hypothetical series' hero, bringing her fantastical weirdness to Earth. Turn it another; it's a psychosexual examination of Naota's coming of age, all the colorful gonzo nonsense merely being the medium through which that confusion is conveyed. Turn it a third; it's a surprisingly tragic story about a young boy who's manipulated into doing a pink-haired femme fatale's bidding in her quest to capture Atomsk for her own nefarious purposes. FLCL is all of these things simultaneously. Fiction is interpretive in general, but FLCL opens itself so willingly to so many possible interpretations, it has ended up meaning a lot to many people. Even in the official realm, the manga adaptation takes one tack (stripping away much of the comedy, and altering some key events, leaving a much bleaker story) and the novel another.

Even if you strip all that away, though, you're left with a truly bizarre action-comedy romp that really has no peers. To say that the animation in FLCL is excellent is underselling it. FLCL's visual style draws from a plethora of influences both Japanese and western (check the Looney Tunes-esque slapstick, and the South Park homage in the penultimate episode) and plays with them for all they're worth. The soundtrack too, as mentioned, is just great stuff. Single-artist soundtracks are hard to pull off at the best of times, but The Pillows' straight-ahead rock n' roll works well with the series' more experimental visuals. The voice acting--both the original and the English dub--are great, and the latter in particular is often held up as one of the best of its kind. Reworking gags that relied on obscure Japanese pop cultural knowledge and replacing them with American ones (a reference to Cherio Pop becoming a gag about Crystal Pepsi is probably the most well-known of these) and choosing pitch-perfect VAs, with Kari Wahlgren as Haruko in particular being outstanding, though in a rarity for dubs there really aren't any weak links at all.

Like a lot of people, I was fairly young when I first saw FLCL and it's tempting to--by turns--either try to strip all of its possible meanings away and present it as "purely" an aesthetic work of art, or to force it into a single interpretation, a single box. Again, to risk repeating the obvious, this is a show that has meant a lot to a lot of people. But even more than its sheer fun (and make no mistake, it is a real treat to watch even now), it is FLCL's openness to interpretation that's let it have such a legacy. For a show that never hit the same level of popularity as that other strange Gainax show people like to argue about, FLCL's fingerprints are all over modern anime. Detectable on everything from Gainax' own later Diebuster, Gurren Lagann, and Panty & Stocking. To Studio TRIGGER's grand debut Kill la Kill, to PUNCHLINE!'s whacked-out conspiracy rambling to Flip Flappers more polished (but no less weird) serial dimension-jumping take on the world story genre. And of course, because history repeats, we come to the thing I've been tiptoeing around this entire review.

At the time of this writing we are just months away from FLCL Alternative and FLCL Progressive. Two sequel series-of-sorts that sees Haruko--but no other characters--return, and to judge by the trailers and by the episode of Progressive aired early as an April Fools' prank, these series lean again heavily on the same trick the manga pulled. Less definitive continuation, more alternate interpretation (and I have a feeling that this is why the initial branding of FLCL2 and FLCL3 has been downplayed since the subtitles have been adopted), an effort to recontextualize FLCL, to turn it inside-out, or to bring it into the present day. There is a frustrating, and, yet, entirely understandable, fog of anxiety cast over these continuations of the franchise name. FLCL is a lot like Haruko herself, it will enter your life for a brief time, fuck everything up, and then leave, leaving you to wonder just what happened and what to make of it. People, from the standard anime fan on up, have been sifting through FLCL's rubble for years. That sifting has led to plenty of great art in its own right, and it's for that reason that speaking solely for myself, I look forward to Alternative and Progressive. But, one thing's for sure, no matter how they turn out, the series' renaissance ensures a single very simple thing: the future is fooly cooly.