ECP Flash Forward: FLCL Progressive 1 - "REstart" (June 2, 2018)
A new season starts, a mere 17 years after the last one
What I watched: The first episode of FLCL Progressive, an anime series created by Katsuyuki Motohiro and Production I. G., based off the original FLCL created by Kazuya Tsurumaki and Studio Gainax. “REStart” was directed by Kazuto Arai and written by Hideto Iwai. The episode first aired on adult swim on June 2, 2018 at 11:30pm, with the English dub cast featuring Kari Wahlgren, Allegra Clark, Xanthe Huynh, and Robbie Draymond. The Japanese version was aired as a compilation movie that first screened on September 28 of the same year, with a voice cast starring Mayumi Shintani, Miyuki Sawashiro, Inori Minase and Jun Fukuyama. Progressive is currently available for streaming on the adult swim page in the US and on VOD elsewhere.
Starring: For 15 years after its original release, FLCL was a stand-alone work, and nobody really thought it should be anything else. Then, in 2016, it was announced that there would be two sequel series, FLCL Progressive and Alternative. The move was part of adult swim’s attempts to move into first-run anime. While it had been one of the prime ways Americans gained exposure to anime in the 2000s, the rise of genre-specific streaming sites (most notably Crunchyroll) that premiered episodes on the same day as their Japanese airing had made it increasingly irrelevant in the fandom. The new FLCL series would be shown first dubbed on adult swim, before even its Japanese release. And new episodes of FLCL would be the flagship of this effort.
However, almost no creative names from the original series was involved, even at the studio level. Gainax, which was a shell of itself after most key staff had departed to either Studio Khara (headed up by Hideaki Anno) or Trigger (led by Hiroyuki Imaishi), sold the rights to the franchise to Production I. G., which originally planned to make a remake of the original series (an even more suspect enterprise.) Production I. G. was and still is a respected studio, best known for its work on the cyberpunk Ghost in the Shell series, but didn’t exactly specialize in absurdist comedy. Tsurumaki, Enokido, and most of the rest were gone. The Pillows returned, but only for a few songs. For better or for worse, it was up to the newcomers of Production I. G. to make this version FLCL feel like a worthy successor to the original.
What happened: The sounds are familiar, but the image is not. The Pillows play as a girl with long dark hair, cat-ears headphones, and a sharp red horn sticking out of her forehead, wanders through an apocalyptic wasteland. Her body is gradually falling apart, succumbing to an unclear “decay.” Her gloomy voice-over reflects the landscape around her. We see the irons mowing down the world that we saw in the final episode of the original FLCL. The girl stumbles across a giant body, and its eye opens to stare at her. Her horn bursts open, and with a cry of pain she is covered by metallic equipment, turning her into a sharper-angled, state-of-the-art version of Canti.
All of this is just a dream, as our protagonist waits up to her alarm playing a chiptune version of the same song. The girl, Hidomi, is stopped by her youthful mother before going out, who comments on her “tsundere persona”, but she leaves without stopping for breakfast. In a car, a hooded figure watches Hidomi go to school. For a moment, she’s represented as a pink cartoon ghost as people greet her without response.
The following scene is shot from the perspective of a boy in the classroom, Ide, as he brags about his romantic conquests to a pair of credulous friends. He says that he spent a romantic evening with their substitute teacher. It turns out that his big idea for a date is that he has a free ticket to an art gallery. When we see Ide, he’s a nerdy guy with glasses and a familiar bandage on his forehead. Ide upbraids his friend Mori, who is wearing a “unisex” neon green sweater and skirt, and tries to get support from his quiet friend Marco. Hidomi blithely ignores them all.
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