Flip Flappers

Episode 8 is out now.

Seems Yayaka is considering jumping ship, but she had probably better hurry up before the twins submit that report. Otherwise, a pretty standard episode - I'm looking forward to seeing the analyses from people more versed in the mecha genre than I am. Best I can do right now is note that Papina is a pretty common tag for that ship, and YaPiCo works for an OT3 if you're feeling goofy.

Also, more indications that Papika knew Mimi before she blew up/lost most of herself and became Cocona, or whatever the backstory is. As I said last episode, if Papika and Cocona turn out to be pieces of the same person I will not be pleased, unless we go Garnet with it.

It really resembles KHII's Tron level before the super robots show up. Has heartless and everything

The world is clearly connected to Hidaka, but it seems to be through Bu-chan...? Wonder where that brain came from

fanservice stuff was pretty annoying this episode

also yayaka (tch) and headphones girl da best

edited 25th Nov '16 12:02:17 AM by majoraoftime

Was the male white-haired twin wearing a girl's school swimsuit? He was wearing a girl's uniform in the yuri cult episode too, wasn't he? Poor kid P:

i'm not opposed to it.

edited 25th Nov '16 4:55:07 PM by majoraoftime

Presumably it was fanservicey because they were inside the brain of the pervy robot; which isn't much of an excuse, though this is far from the worst example of "anime fanservice which is totally there for legit plot reasons, really!"

The beginning of episode 6 showed Hidaka frantically reprogramming Bu-Chan's brain, so presumably the midget genius architect is how the robot sees its master. Though in a show this weird I wouldn't be surprised if the brain in the robot is Hidaka's actual brain, with a digital replacement brain in his old flesh body.

Nice visual idea in the Cocona-Yayaka fight.

Also good animation when Yayaka swung Papika around.

edited 1st Dec '16 11:59:46 AM by majoraoftime

The shit, it has gone down.

Guess that makes Yayaka's Heel–Face Turn a fact, if only because she can't go back now. Oh, she'll struggle for a bit longer, but she will be puling off that Big Damn Heroes sooner or later.

Also, holy crap, the Cuckoo Clan has been at it for years and instructed Yayaka to keep an eye on Cocona. I'm very much looking forward to them having the words "by her side" thrown in their faces. Because seriously, man, using child soldiers ain't cool.

....Wait....

I watched the first 3 episodes and, I love it. Trippy as hell, beautiful and fun. Cocona and Papika have great chemistry. I have no idea what's going on, especially in 3rd episode which apparently decided to be Mad Max/ Dragon Ball Z mashup, but, it doesn't matter, it's fun as hell.

Gonna catch up rest of the episodes tomorrow.

There's a lot of subtext and psychological stuff going on in this series, which can help make sense of things or add more layers.

Say, the fragment of Mimi are also called amorphous, right? And "Mimi" follows the same naming scheme as Yuyu and Toto, the amorphous twins. This suggests that Mimi was one of them before she ended up turning into a bunch of rocks

Wasn't this episode called "Pure Mute"? "Mute" would be written in kana as "mi-yu-to", basically... Mimi, Yuyu and Toto. Hmm.

Episode 4: Synchronization training? So we Evangelion now? Why is Papika living on top of the school now? What is Papika anyway? Oh, I guess the training worked.

Episode: What a creepy episode. I liked how despite the ghosts being very scary, they didn't actually do much, the main problem was the time loop. Also, so many yuri jokes.

This series is getting better and better.

Episode 6 and they became Iro-senpai and then they did stuff and it helped in real world?

Also, very touching episode. Iro and Autine were adorable.

This show sure has variety, each episode does something else.

i expected many things from this show, but cute shota dokuta salt was not one of them

Hm, well, I can't say I didn't expect most of what happened in episode 10. It was well-handled, though!

Now let's hope that Mimi fucks off and leaves Cocona alone already. The poor girl's right - she's only ever been used by other people because of what they want from her, or what she is to them. Up to and including Mimi. Papika probably wasn't lying when she said that she likes Cocona for Cocona, but regardless of her own feelings Salt's been using her as a sniffer dog and little more.

Here are my guesses for next episode.

Cocona's grandmother is actually her grandmother, and is Salt's mother.

Asclepius is the foundation that had Mimi and Papika, and Flip Flappers is a splitoff group. Salt, Papika and Mimi either split off when Asclepius's aims were revealed, or left after Mimi crystalsploded.

I also see that Papika looks even more like Haruko from FLCL now.

edited 8th Dec '16 12:44:58 PM by RedSavant

Well then. Mimi being Cocona's mom isn't a shock, though Salt being the probable father is a touch more surprising. Papika being eternally 14 or whatever was something I hadn't thought about, though I suppose something like that had to happen. And nice grandma is actually evil robot. Okay, sure. I guess Cocona hates everybody now. Hopefully she gets to go on a nice rampage.

Of all the shows I expected to influence this anime, Carrie was not one of them.

OUCH, poor Cocona. Any one of those relevations is bad enough on its own - but all of them? No surprise she snapped a bit.

I did like Papika's insistence that "Cocona is Cocona", though - it gives me some hope that those two can work things out after this is all over. It would be super nice if we could get a lesbian couple and a gay couple (in Yuri on Ice) in one anime season...

Hm, only twist there that actually surprised me was grandma being evil, which still makes sense in retrospect. Well executed, though

grandma was robot, so saying she was evil feels weird, at least with the info we have

edited 8th Dec '16 8:34:53 PM by Rareitor

Kinda the reverse for me, I guess. Grandma always seemed really suspicious. Always watched Cocona like a hawk and was basically emotionless. And there was something of a dead giveaway between the first two episodes, when the bad guys catch Cocona and then she just wakes up back home with Granny acting like nothing notable happened. Probably should have guessed she was a robot, in retrospect, but she was clearly not trustworthy.

Not sure why Papika wouldn't tell Cocona about Mimi... she said it would make her sad presumably because she's dead, except apparently she isn't dead, her soul is in those shiny rocks (that sounds rather familiar...). So I guess Papika didn't know about that, somehow?

I guess we can also assume that Salt, Papika, and Mimi rebelled against the original pure-illusion research institute, and what they left behind became the crazy cultist group?

Oh yeah, and supposedly Cocona's literal dream-girl is meant to resemble that image that looks like both a young woman and an old lady. So I guess now we know what that was supposed to mean.

edited 9th Dec '16 2:18:19 AM by Kotomikun

I have no idea what's going on anymore but that next episode preview narration was best

Well finally caught up. A lot of twists happened in the last few episodes.

Didn't expect Mimi to be Cocona's mother, Salt to probably be her father and Grandma to be a robot.

Also, no wonder Cocona believes no one would like her for herself, because man, did she become progressively more unpleasant as the show went. She started of as a bit of wet blanket and it just got worse and worse. Papika really has a saintly patience to put up with her.

I think that's more than a little unfair to Cocona, personally. Cocona's going through a lot right now - she was already dealing with worries about not having her own identity before the series started, what with the school selection thing, and wanting to pick the school that would be 'the best thing to do' regardless of what she personally wanted. All of two people have ever been sort of nice to her without having to (Grandma doesn't count, because she's a grandmother, and Sayuri doesn't either, because she never seemed to take it much beyond being a nice nursing assistant). She found out that Yayaka had been lying to her for years, not about the surveillance thing but about Pure Illusion, and has been fighting her off and on for weeks - what we've seen of their interactions at school seem pretty tense, and up until episode 10 Yayaka was choosing Asclepius and the evil twins over Cocona. I'm not surprised Cocona would be upset by that.

And let's look at Cocona's allies for a moment. Salt is a bastard, and he's never made a secret of the fact that he's only using Cocona and Papika because they're the ones who can do what he needs them to do. FlipFlappers may act like Cocona's allies, but they more than anyone else in the show use her just because of what she is, without caring who she is.

And then we have Papika. Papika is exactly what Cocona needs - a shot of adventurousness and doing things just because they look fun or feel good - and Cocona is opening up and getting more adventurous herself, but there are too many things catching at her. Cocona is an overthinker, so she sees that Salt and the others aren't telling her things, but Papika doesn't mean to hide things, she just doesn't think they're important (and maybe she doesn't remember herself). But that feels to Cocona like Papika is deliberately not telling her things. It's like the scene in the latest episode - I have no doubt that Papika likes Cocona for herself, but she doesn't have the tools to explain to Cocona why she loves Cocona for herself and not as a replacement for Mimi, because explanations are something Papika is really bad at.

Basically, Cocona has always had this nagging sense that she's being used (because she is), and Salt won't tell her because he's a bastard, and Papika won't tell her because she either doesn't understand that there's a deeper meaning beyond going on adventures or doesn't understand that it's a problem for Cocona that she doesn't know something. I'm not surprised she finally gave up on them, and I hope Papika manages to find her again soon.