The FLCL Remake You Weren’t Ready For

Whether you call it FLCL, Fooly Cooly, Furi Kuri, or That One Weird Ass Show with the Vespa Adult Swim Used to Play, the fact that it’s already been fifteen years since Gainax’s six episode OVA rocked the anime world and yet still seems due for a reboot can leave some of us fans feeling a little like…

Yeah. That. Told from the perspective of 12-year-old Naota Nandaba, FLCL details the adventures of learning how to cope with an unpredictable alien woman, fending off giant robots, and a host of other usual preteen problems. Where many modern anime attempt to stretch themselves into epics spanning what damn near feels like forever (plus filler!) and cram as many characters in as possible, FLCL manages to showcase its characters’ personalities, motivations, and arcs in about two and a half hours of film. Two and a half hours. You can’t even make a movie about a third of The Hobbit in that time today. At once a masterpiece of fast-paced action and intriguing storytelling, FLCL also gave us arguably one of the best allegories for the complexities of puberty and growing into adulthood. We were even challenged to consider how our actions blur the line between loving someone (whether romantically or in the familial sense) and manipulating that person with our own selfish desires, to question if there sometimes really is a line at all. Also, prior to this show way less people knew what a Vespa 180 SS scooter or a vintage Rickenbacker 4001 left-handed electric bass guitar looked like, …