FLCL, a six-episode anime series that’s a stirring coming-of-age tale complete with great rock music, giant robots that grow out of kids’ heads, and aliens that hit people with bass guitars, was announced to be getting not one but two sequels series last year. Now we have the footage, and it looks weird… but in an unexpectedly weird way.
Here’s the brief trailer that ran at Anime Expo this past weekend:
And here’s the official synopsis, according to Adult Swim:
In the new season of FLCL, many years have passed since Naota and Haruhara Haruko shared their
adventure together. Meanwhile, the war between the two entities known as Medical Mechanica and Fraternity rages across the galaxy. Enter Hidomi, a young teenaged girl who believes there is nothing amazing to expect from her average life, until one day when a new teacher named Haruko arrives at her school. Soon enough, Medical Mechanica is attacking her town and Hidomi discovers a secret within her that could save everyone, a secret that only Haruko can unlock.But why did Haruko return to Earth?
What happened to her Rickenbacker 4001 she left with Naota?
And where did the human-type robot ‘Canti’ go?
Hmm. I’ve already said my piece about how the first FLCL was lightning in a bottle, and trying to capture it again could lead to disastrous results. Having finally seen this snippet of footage, I’m not convinced it’s doomed, but neither have I been even slightly convinced these two sequels are necessary. I’m glad, however, that they got the Pillows to do the soundtrack again. Because if they hadn’t gotten them, there would absolutely have been no reason to bother.
FLCL 2 and 3 are scheduled to air on Adult Swim in 2018.
Comments
3 responses to “The First Trailer For The FLCL Sequel Is Weird, But Not In The Way I Expected”
Pillows!!!
It just looks pretty but a bit generic and soulless. Which is about what you expect, since it’s Production IG and that’s all they’re ever capable of doing apparently.
But I don’t think anyone in the industry could pull of a sequel now. Gainax in the 90s was a massive pool of talented animators (most of which aren’t there any more) and with FLCL they just cut loose and did whatever they wanted. Very hard to recapture that again even if you put all the same people back together.
It has nothing of the frantic and elastic, action-packed absurdity I’d expect them to showcase in a teaser for a new FLCL. I expect this will be an adequate (or even good) and very polished anime series and a tolerable sequel to the story, but I don’t expect it to be anything like the spiritual sequel that Kill-la-Kill was.