I think this is kind of a reverse Hype Backlash for me. According to the TV Tropes Page FLCL , I came in expecting some horribly confusing bull** or badly pieced together You Tube Poop, but instead I get this relatively simple storyline. It's only really confusing to those who feel the need to analyze every detail.
You are displaying abnormally high compulsions to over-analyze works of fiction and media. Diagnosis: TV Tropes Addiction.I find that half the anime that are "confusing" really aren't.
Ghost in the Shell: SAC and Neon Genesis Evangelion for example both made perfect sense to me, at least overall (there were niggling details I didn't get).
If you want something really confusing, see this.
If your mind isn't blown by just the intro, then nothing will stand in your way.
The main difficulties in following FLCL is actually catching all the explanations about what's going on the first time. Most of this is not a barrier to understanding what's going on. It's stuff like the nature of Medical Mechanica, how N-O works, the nature of Atomsk, what Amarao and company actually do, and what his history with Haruko is, and whether or not Mamimi is actually a crazy arsonist or not.
But those are all, while interesting, sort of superlative information. You can easily get everything you need to get out of FLCL to understand its attitude, its message, and to enjoy the hell out of it (if you're going to enjoy it at all).
I actually understood what was going on (mostly) the first time I saw this series.
The manga on the other hand...
GUNDAMU GUNDAMUI don't think this anime is crazy because it's a Mind Screw, since it isn't really; I just think it's crazy since it's balls-out rapid-fire painstakingly-animated absurdism.
edited 21st Oct '10 7:01:44 PM by Sporkaganza
Always, somewhere, someone is fighting for you. As long as you remember them, you are not alone.I'm just posting this here because i felt I was so very extremely clever when I found it out: Each of the girls has their own type of drink; Mamimi is sour, Haruko is pulp, and Ninamori is carbonated. And going by Amarao's obsession with spicy bread, he once had his own collection of love interests denominated by flavors of bread. Am I right?
That sounds as plausible as anything.
I picked up the series collection a coupla months ago and finally had a free, no-interruptions afternoon yesterday to watch it. This is easily the most intense WTF-fest I've seen in I dunno how long, and I loved it. I'm gonna rewatch it with the dub sometime soon, I think I missed a lot by trying to keep up with the subtitles...
The main plot isn't too hard to follow, but a lot of individual scenes can be confusing since it's often difficult to tell what's an important plot point and what's a random gag. Plus there's the fact much of the dialogue consists of non-sequitors, puns/pop-culture references that most non-Japanese people aren't going to understand, and statements so full of Does This Remind You of Anything? that they almost seem unrelated to the situation they're describing.
I interpreted the drink thing as representing Naota growing up and being a bit more willing to try flavors that a kid generally wouldn't like. He had a strange new experience, and despite all the craziness, he's not completely averse to going forward. You know, like puberty.
Also, I can't help but think of that shot of the can, its opening ringed by drops of juices, was, well... uh.
The symbolism reminded me a lot of that certain scene from End of Evangelion, although turned on its head (no pun intended) meaning-wise. There were so many parallels with the Eva characters and the cast from FLCL that the statement on the trope page about it being a six-episode condensing of Eva actually fits to a large degree.
edited 18th Jul '11 9:40:55 AM by Willbyr
Finally got the chance to watch the dub...easily one of the best dubs I've come across, right up there with Cowboy Bebop.
I hereby necro this thread from the graveyard! Activate trap card!
So I went and bought the manga.... I can't understand the details but the plot is simple.
...a little brother should belong to his older sister, right? - Orimura ChifuyuLOL.
FLCL has almost no discernible plot. Or to be more precise... no one can claim to get the plot because we are not told 90% of it.
Themes on the other hand...
Thus Animes like Paprika... Lain...Parnoia Agent... and even EVA... have easier to understand plots.But maybe they have themes which are harder to grasp.
I do have to admit that the separation between what we consider Theme and Plot is semantic... Thus there will always be some overlap between the two.
But childrens of Post-modernity as we are... we have been so trained to disregard plot over themes (Not saying is a bad thing) that we confuse them both.
edited 29th Nov '11 5:42:50 PM by Baff
I will always cherish the chance of a new beggining.Oh, and he saves the world a couple times in there.
As I said, simple as they come. Sure, there's a lot of questions that aren't adequately answered, but that's a distraction. Really, there's more distraction than plot in the series, which might be why it's hard to follow for some.
edited 29th Nov '11 6:06:18 PM by Nyktos
I guess it is.What's not to understand? A kid is seemingly attacked by a crazy woman, but the crazy woman turns out to be an alien and she targeted the kid because his head is ideal for a dimensional portal. Monsters occasionally show up because of said portal, and the kid uses a robot and some guitars that came out of the head portal to fight them. However, the crazy woman is using him to spring her Worthy Opponent / Boyfriend, an intergalactic pirate king, from prison. Some government dudes know this and want to stop her. The leader was one of her previous attempts at this plan, and he uses special eyebrows to keep his head portal from activating. The pirate king is in the custody of an evil intergalactic corporation that wants to iron out the wrinkles in everyone's brains. In the end, the pirate king is freed and the evil corporation is foiled and everything goes back to normal.
I understood this on the first viewing people, it's not that difficult!
edited 29th Nov '11 6:39:59 PM by LizardBite
YES.
Although you didn't mention Kanti. a medical robot made by medical mechanica. Atomsk, using Naota's NO channel, manifests through him to defeat various assassin-bot things made by medical mechanica that go after Haruko to stop her from releasing Atomsk.
That was my understanding.
SPATULA, Supporters of Page Altering To Urgently Lead to Amelioration (supports not going through TRS for tweaks and minor improvements.)

So I just started watching the first three episodes of FLCL and honestly, I don't know what's the deal about people complaining about the lack of coherence. It's pretty much just a simple story about a boy who's with the (ex) girlfriend of his brother and they meet a super Genki Girl who turns out to be some kind of Alien Investigator (or something) and later he discovers he has the ability to shoot robots from his head. Nothing to it right?
I mean, I can understand in the first ep that it might confuse people a bit but c'mon- pretty much every episodic anime is confusing the first time! It only really tales the second episode or so for it to start making sense.
You are displaying abnormally high compulsions to over-analyze works of fiction and media. Diagnosis: TV Tropes Addiction.