Hacker Cinema
FLCL
フリクリ
2000 · TV series · 25 min episodes · 5 seasons
AnimationComedyActionAdventureScience FictionFantasy
Naota is a normal boy who kills some time with a normal girl by a stream that flows underneath a bridge. Nothing unusual happens in this town. The fact that Haruhara Haruko crashes into the main character with her Vespa a short while later and subsequently hits him over the head with her Rickenbacker 4003 bass guitar doesn’t really make any difference to any other day here. The at first glance unconnected, bizarre events that don’t seem to follow any pattern whatsoever don’t change anything about Naota’s boring life, either – because nothing incredible ever happens in this town.
3 positive2 neutralfrom 5 commenters
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6 comments on Hacker News
I'll give two series and a movie, since everyone has mentioned Kon. I think these are also going to appeal more to someone who hasn't been intimately involved in anime fandom.
-Cyberpunk: Edgerunners
It single-handedly revived interest in the game for a reason; it's excellent, particularly as a foil to GITS and a spiritual successor to FLCL (which I'm sure you've heard of). The animation style is VERY different from GITS, but no less technically impressive, and while the story is not quite as philosophical, it's still no less complete and satisfying.
-Sonny Boy
Tinges of Nolan, Kurosawa, Carroll, Cheever's The Swimmer. May seem like a slog at some points, but hang on for the sequence during the last episode. You'll know it when you see it. I don't want to give too much away.
-Mind Game
Again, don't want to spoil. I recommend watching late at night, Adult Swim-style. A prime example of anime that can't exist in any other medium.
FLCL was one of those shows I hated the first time I watched it at age 19, but I also got a vibe that there might be some subtext and metaphors that I missed. About a year later, I saw that it was on Netflix and decided to give it a second chance.
I'm glad I did, because it's become one of my favorite animes at this point. I think a lot of the veiled references to erections and the analogies strangeness of a 14-year-old-boy forcing his way through puberty were lost on me the first time, and it took until I wasn't a teenager anymore to step back and view it in an almost "nostalgic" sense.
NOTE: I have only seen the first six-episode run of it. I can't speak to the newer reboot series that came out in 2016.
I also enjoyed Ergo Proxy, Texhnolyze and Planetes. Ghost in the Shell is still the only movie I revisit every now and then (out of all movies ever). They are all slow, I want to take the time to watch them again some day.
Very different but I also enjoyed Naruto as I grew up myself. It's long (but you can skip all fillers) but sometimes very deep. I enjoyed Kenshin but never finished it.
As mentioned below Samurai Champloo is also nice and Steins Gate (nice, strange atmosphere) and Death Note: very psychological: He thinks that I think that he thinks and I'm smarter so... Love that. And One Punch Man, puts a smile on my face.
If you want weird: FLCL. What was that about?
FLCL is a world where change seems distant or impossible, and the sameness itself is stifling and a major source of conflict in the plot, as in Seinfeld.
Steins;Gate's protagonist's alter-ego Hououin Kyouma is a larger-than-life egotistical (comedy) genius which is analogous to Jerry when he's on-stage in the monologue segments of the show. But that same SG protagonist as his "normie" self Rintaro Okabe is crippled by self-doubt, upstaged by his own alter-ego, and would do anything for his friends, much like the version of Jerry we see outside the monologue segments. If you've seen the last episode of Seinfeld, the parallels between the two are a bit more clear. In Seinfeld, the past catches up with Jerry and the crew, and they cool their heels in jail as a kind of karmic payback or comeuppance for their years of prior shenanigans. In Steins;Gate, at a certain point the comedic backdrop lifts, the folly of Rintaro's ego and hubris is laid bare and elevated, and the karmic debt seeks its due via time and space.
I feel like FLCL is about a hell of a lot of things, it just is not very interesting in really articulating them in great detail.
It's still a hell of a thing worth watching, I should really get around to watching the sequels sometime.
For a British flavour, try:
People Just Do Nothing, two pirate radio DJs and crew trying to hack it https://imdb.com/title/tt3762198/
Detectorists, two small town “smartest guys in the room” try to rediscover their friendship through their shared love of metal detector operation https://imdb.com/title/tt4082744/
And for a Japanese kick:
FLCL, a coming of age story about nothing, but writ LARGE https://imdb.com/title/tt0279077/
Steins;Gate, hard to generalize and hard not to spoil anything but it feels like if Back to the Future were made as a modern anime https://imdb.com/title/tt1910272/