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EP. REVIEW: FLCL Progressive

If there's one good thing that could come out of this, however, is that there might finally be a good scale figure of Haruko. The few that were released have... not aged well.

This show has become a collage of fetishes. Not that I'm kink shaming, but it's like a laundry list of people's turn-ons, often paired in obvious, brazen fashion. The last time I saw so much fetishistic content, it was Totally Spies.

Well I'm glad you understand the concept in theory. That was actually the only thing i was arguing. You had said it was a disingenuous way to get audience members to grow attached to characters and my goal was to argue how that isn't true. You using JP and Sonoshi from redline is actually a very good example of this, which brings me to your point about the movie having established a previous context that made all those adrenaline pumping ordeals endear us as the audience to JP and Sonoshi. You're absolutely right about this: I'm well aware of progressive's problem here which is why i said that the show doesn't do a good job of communicating the sentimental layer necessary to make Ide and Hidomi's relationship hit as hard as it should. Still, because Ide has shown himself to be a likable dude as function of his courageousness and bravado to protect Hidomi, I can at least understand why Hidomi would like him and find him as important to her as much as she does.

-Sexually charged all the students in her class to figure out which ones had the most potential for N.O. More specifically, she was spending extra time with Ide with the hopes that he could cultivate his power well enough to allow stronger beings to be able to pass through his N.O portal

-Upon realizing how much N.O. Hidomi has been storing up as a result of all her suppressed emotions, Haruko starts getting Ide and Hidomi to interact more often so her N.O channel can open up. The climax in ep 1 convinced Haruko that there might be something going on between Ide and Hidomi. The anticlimaxes of Hidom's N.O fits in ep 2 and 3 are measures by MM to prevent her from being able to tap into supernatural power effectively (or haphazardly depending on who you're asking) i.e. the enzyme inhibitor, hence why her transformations in ep 2 and 3 where so weird; as if she was being restrained. Keep in mind the headphones have been a way for MM to keep Hidomi in check so that her N.O. doesn't allow her to pull insane beings from the outer edges of the space like our boy Atomsk. We'll be sure to get clarification as to who gave Hidomi the headphones by the final episode (which i hope is an extra long one like the original)

-Haruko tries to instigate Hidomi on her own to get her to "overflow" and after that fails, MM locks the headphones into her skull

-Haruko eats Jinyu and restores her full power/whole being. By the way, your whole complaint about the ep 4 MM robot being useless is also assuaged here. I had suspected this but i wasn't sure so i didn't want to say anything on the manner, but like the armed gunman in the original flcl, the MM robot of ep 4 was dispatched as some sort of activation protocol. In the original, it was the hand grabbing the iron; in this one, it's propping the iron up right as if one is waiting for it to heat up before proceeding to flatten out the wrinkles. This is why you don't put all your eggs in one basket and assume until you have all the info. That being said, one of my gripes with progressive's approach to its storytelling is that it plays its cards so close to its chest, making it difficult for viewers to get a grasp on where the main plot is going..but then again you can also levy that complaint to the original's narrative as well.

-Now that the Iron is up, Haruko is trying to finish digesting Jinyu while waiting for end game (it seems that Jinyu wasn't sitting well in her stomach; either that or it was an allusion to pregnancy and there might have some relevant bearing on the plot going into the finale)

You can ask similar questions about Naota's brother: he's gone and as a result, Naota feels like he's lost the only reliable adult in his life; he feels like he doesn't hold a candle to his brother; but why does he idolize him so much? Why should I care that Naota doesn't respect the other adults in his life but his brother? Naota doesn't really say much about his brother and what we do get, we hear in passing from other characters in the show like him being great at baseball. With Hidomi's situation, her dad is gone and it affects her because her sad, but it makes her mom sad too. As a matter of fact, it seems that a good chunk of Hidomi's sadness is a consequence of how much her father's disappearance has saddened her mother rather than her own personal feelings (although she does have them). Seeing the lengths her mother goes to be all cheery and shit when in reality she doesn't completely feel that way eats away at Hidomi. As Hidomi said in ep 4; with the headphones, she shuts out her mom's sobbing and crying so that she doesn't have to deal with the reality of that pain all the time. The information is there; the difference between the original and progressive is how they go about communicating their protagonist's angst. We see how Naota behaves around his family, how he responds when his brother is brought up in conversation, how he looks up to Haruko, his desire to "deal" with mamimi and fill the shoes of his brother as her "protector"...the original shows all these different shades of Naota and his interactions with the cast and the situations around him (i.e good writing); and its because of this that we develop a sentimental connection to him as viewers (or that at least it's easier to). With progressive, there's less of a focus on driving that dynamism in Hidomi's interactions with people and so her character doesn't come off as endearing. We know why we should care, the episodes have told us why? but that's part of the problem, it told us. As hallucinogenic progressive likes to be at times, it verbally exposits at moments when it should be showing, which works against the show's storytelling.

"I mean, it's probably hard for the town to forget the big red birb but how does she know that's what Haruko wants?"

We already know why. I guess it was a "blink and you'll miss it" but when Hidomi starts overflowing in ep 4 and releases enough N.O. for Jinyu and Haruko to come out of her. You can say it's sort of a callback to the original when Naota learns about the truth of medical mechanica after being used to activate the plant. As the both of them were escaping from her head, she learned of Haruko's intentions and why she split into Jinyu, and by doing so, she learned of Atomsk and MM, hence why ep 4 ended with her saying that she knows what Haruko wants and refuses to go with her.

But we know what the flower pot does; it reverses the flow of N.O; so rather than something traveling through the portal, it can seemingly mimic Atomsk's power in that it can act like a black hole of sorts and pull things in. What you don't know is how immigration bureau plans on using this to combat medical mechanica.

I definitely think I hated episode 5 the least. Dream sequence was tight. Somebody on the production team learned how to use the Pillows well for the first time since episode 1. The visuals overall were solid, I liked the expressive character animation with gestures and facial expressions. But the problems i have with the show overall are coming to a head. It's so obnoxious that we need to wait until the last episode for anything to really make sense...

I’ve hated this series so much until this episode. I wanted to like this FLCL more than anything because of how important the original is to me but it just couldn’t connect. THIS episode finally did it though, this is FLCL.

Why couldn’t the entire season be like this one? Ugh!

Both episode 4 and 5 are a more cohesive flcl package. You're really sleeping on ep 4 and Yoshihide's Inaba's more erratic yet sensible storyboarding and visual language. And what did you find so egregious about the use of Thank you my twilight in the premiere's opening ep?

we love lain wrote:

Both episode 4 and 5 are a more cohesive flcl package. You're really sleeping on ep 4 and Yoshihide's Inaba's more erratic yet sensible storyboarding and visual language. And what did you find so egregious about the use of Thank you my twilight in the premiere's opening ep?

I actually adore that song. My problem was with the sound mixing and having it too loud. It felt like they had to make it front and center so we knew right away The Pillows were back. I can’t tell you how many times I had to rewind to try to make out that opening narration. It got a lot better but with this episode, I was just feeling a stronger FLCL-ness to the series and that a perfect balance was struck with visuals and music. It couldn’t be easy making the series because of concerns of rejection for not being FLCL enough or relying too much.

I really liked the art direction in this episode. Why is the tone so inconsistent?

I'm not talking about the individual character arcs in original. I'm talking about central plot itself, which was quite flimsy at best. The overarching could never be followed on a first watch...that is pretty much a fact. Everything about the plot was esoteric as hell until the final ep and even then most people had to watch the show several time to pull the pieces together. The difference with the original and progressive is that character motivations (especially ones tied to the plot) remained clear. I hope you can see a trend here where you make a complaint and i point out the underlying reason why the complaint has legitimacy. I feel like some of your complaints don't actually get behind why your issue is an issue. By making what seems like a surface-level complaint, you miss the real reason why the complaint is an issue and conflate the surface detail for the actual problem when it actually isn't.

"Naota saw irons flattening out the planet, even if Amarao wasnt screaming about them flattening the wrinkles so you can't think, I feel like that was a clearer vision than Hidomi's"

That isn't exactly clear what the MM irons are actually doing, but ok. Either way, i found Hidomi's brief flashes, while discordant in presentation (intentionally so) in ep 4 effectively explaining why Hidomi knows what Haruko wants; I mean, how can she not know after seeing all that.

"They do acknowledge the headphones are an MM device but I'm not sure where you're getting her transformations being tied to MM from"

How can you get that from what the show is presenting you. Whenever her N.O. starts activating, the Headphones immediately go haywire. As Jinyu stated, the headphones actively intend to inhibit her N.O energy spikes. Hidomi is going "beserk" in a way, put that loss of control is more akin to signal misfire as a result of the inhibitor than Hidomi just going berserk on her own volition, hence why i said the off-kilter transformations are a product of MM's interference. It just makes sense. Just wait for a blu-ray commentary or something and then remember this comment

"I could see how this bugs Ide but it's hard to empathize with him when it honestly seems like overflowing would be the best thing to happen to this girl. Just let it out, don't bottle up your emoshuns."

Sure and then have some sort of unexplained catastrophy happen as a result

"I'm baffled as to what Haruko has done to earn Ide's ire, not what she's done period."

This one is pretty clear; I don't see how it's not. Now if you want to criticize why Ide's loyalty to Haruko was affected by an insular character like Hidomi, sure; I can get behind that. A few of your complaints seem surface level rather than getting to the root of why something is a problem. Not that I'm disagreeing with all of those complaints, but you should highlight the actual issue tied to your complaint rather than conflating that issue with the surface level observation. Our whole talk about using adrenaline pumping situations to facilitate fondness between characters is a good example of this in that before, you were calling that type of writing disingenuous when the real issue is that either there should be a preexisting context or the situation should have more dynamic character beats within it like you later on go to clarify; although you should have said that in the beginning as that should have been the main takeaway, not what you originally said.

It's safe to assume the pole is legitimatley meant to be a part of the robot; you're splitting hairs here.

That's very strange because the first minutes of the premiere were the moments i felt the sound mixing was the best throughout the episode. I could hear Hidomi's monologuing perfectly and the music always knew when to subdue itself and when to crank up in like the sudden boom when Hidomi's N.O. goes off after Atomsk's corpse opens its eye or the crescending of the music as she dashes towards MM. I really don't see the problem with that section. As the eps went by, the sound mixing definitely took a hit; however Ep 5 is by the far the best at using the pillows track both in terms of audio mixing and picking the right song to fit the mood of the scene. The directing is just good here and i wish we got more of that with progressive