I just can't understand how everyone finds FLCL so confusing. It made perfect sense to *ME* the first time though. I'll sumarize the first episode below, as best I remember.
Naota is a fairly normal kid, in a fairly normal town. There's a wierd factory in the middle of the town and his brother's girlfriend Momoichi obsesses on him as a substitue after the brother moved to America to play baseball, but those are the only particularly unusual things in his life. His father runs a bakery and is an anime otaku, but aside from dressnig like Lupin III and the occasional rant about his glory days as a fanzine editor this doesn't impact much on his son's life.
Naota, however, happens to have just the right brain or head or something like that structure to be used as a hyperspace gate, and the alien woman Haruhara Haruko detects this somehow (it may have been reported by his cat), and gives him a bruise for the hypergate stuff to grow from, on is forehead, since what'ss supposed to be coming through isn't able to form on its own. Haruhara moves in with Naota's family to stay close to him, flirting with him and his father, which irks Naota for reasons he doesn't want to think about. Momoichi is jealous of the attention he's showing to the wierd new girl and pulls an attention-getting stunt, the stress of which is the last thing Naota needs for the hypergate to work.
A robot that Haruko's after and part of another trying to retrieve it some through, and after the fight, the first robot also moves in with the family as an additional servant. (It has a large fragment of the power of Atomsk, if not all of it, but a large fragment also seems to be hidden in Naota, or get stuck in Naota when the various robots pass through his head. The first robot, who gets called TV-Lad because of his head or Canti/Cantide because of the impression Momoichi got during a previous visit to the town a few years before, seems to have the ability to call out the Atomsk power in Naota.)
Despite the inclusion of these strange people, Naota's life settles back into mostly the same pattern aside from another person at the table and another set of hands doing chores... at least until next episode.
Most of the wierd stylistic things are done to parody other shows or the genre itself, like the bullet-time not-quite-kiss/action scene, or the 'manga style' family-around-the-table scene making fun of the practise of using still shots at dramatic moments to save money on action scenes. The series overall parodies everything from Evangelion to James Bond to South Park, a particular high point being the sequence in ep2 or 3 imitating Eva's inner-shinji/outer-shinji argument monologues to show the shock of the character experiencing it as people question them about what happened. It makes about as much sense as the ones in Eva, but it makes sense not to make sense, if you follow my meaning.
- CD
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows
Naota is a fairly normal kid, in a fairly normal town. There's a wierd factory in the middle of the town and his brother's girlfriend Momoichi obsesses on him as a substitue after the brother moved to America to play baseball, but those are the only particularly unusual things in his life. His father runs a bakery and is an anime otaku, but aside from dressnig like Lupin III and the occasional rant about his glory days as a fanzine editor this doesn't impact much on his son's life.
Naota, however, happens to have just the right brain or head or something like that structure to be used as a hyperspace gate, and the alien woman Haruhara Haruko detects this somehow (it may have been reported by his cat), and gives him a bruise for the hypergate stuff to grow from, on is forehead, since what'ss supposed to be coming through isn't able to form on its own. Haruhara moves in with Naota's family to stay close to him, flirting with him and his father, which irks Naota for reasons he doesn't want to think about. Momoichi is jealous of the attention he's showing to the wierd new girl and pulls an attention-getting stunt, the stress of which is the last thing Naota needs for the hypergate to work.
A robot that Haruko's after and part of another trying to retrieve it some through, and after the fight, the first robot also moves in with the family as an additional servant. (It has a large fragment of the power of Atomsk, if not all of it, but a large fragment also seems to be hidden in Naota, or get stuck in Naota when the various robots pass through his head. The first robot, who gets called TV-Lad because of his head or Canti/Cantide because of the impression Momoichi got during a previous visit to the town a few years before, seems to have the ability to call out the Atomsk power in Naota.)
Despite the inclusion of these strange people, Naota's life settles back into mostly the same pattern aside from another person at the table and another set of hands doing chores... at least until next episode.
Most of the wierd stylistic things are done to parody other shows or the genre itself, like the bullet-time not-quite-kiss/action scene, or the 'manga style' family-around-the-table scene making fun of the practise of using still shots at dramatic moments to save money on action scenes. The series overall parodies everything from Evangelion to James Bond to South Park, a particular high point being the sequence in ep2 or 3 imitating Eva's inner-shinji/outer-shinji argument monologues to show the shock of the character experiencing it as people question them about what happened. It makes about as much sense as the ones in Eva, but it makes sense not to make sense, if you follow my meaning.
- CD
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows