#this was originally going to be just Haru but I thought it'd be better with all four of them!

[curestardust]

Dust Watched: FLCL: Grunge

Genres: Action, Sci-Fi, Comedy // 3 episodes // S01/02 (x) S03 (x)

Ok, but why?

✧  story  & characters ✧

For the basic set-up, let me just copy-paste this part from an older review:

"As usual, we get to witness a coming-of-age story with a lot of weird space shit and mechas thrown in. Mechanical Mechanica is trying to flatten Earth(?), Haru is doing her thing, seducing people and beating up robots while our main character has shit growing out of his head. As I said, the usual."

The 3 episodes follow Shinpachi, Shonari, and Orinoko individually and every episode is tied together by the events that take place on the final night and of course, Haruko's involvement.

Haruko and MM are doing the same thing they've been doing for the every past entry so let's look at the characters and they're... not very good? Or should I say, they don't have enough time for their stories' ending to feel like they really paid off.

Shinpachi is just chilling. He is the son of a sushi chef and that's literally it. Shonari has the most chaotic 23 minutes of character buildng I've ever seen; from the fact that he is an alien which isn't even explained properly, to his brother being an alcoholic Yakuza member, to his bullying, crush on Orinoko, and I could keep going but won't for spoiler reasons. The pacing in his episode was horrid too and I legitimately had no idea what was going on multiple times (not in a FLCL way, but in a "bad writing" way). Orinoko has a pretty interesting backstory but I didn't like the way they wrapped up her story. Despite the emphasis being on "finding your OWN future", she pretty much gets her final decision made for her by the other two. She doesn't oppose it... but she didn't have agency in it either.

✧  art  ✧

Hooooo boy. The fact that it's CGI will already turn a lot of people off but as someone who's watched a few this show is UGLY. I cracked up at the first close up shot of Haruko. She looks so bad, oh my word.

The animation is all over the place quality wise too. It does have a few nice enviromental shots. Some of the character designs were quite creative (and more importantly, worked as 3D models), and I enjoyed the randomly inserted 2D animation shots... although they just looked so much better that I was then disappointed when it went back to the CGI.

Listen, the goofiness, the craziness, the cookiness of FLCL IS here. But the CGI is just hands down not pleasant to look at. Is there worse? Definitely. But geez.

✧  sound ✧

The Pillows is back, and while nostalgia and straight up bangers really carry this whole thing, it carries it *so hard* it almost felt like I was watching an overcomplicated 1.5 hour long music video.

✧  overview ✧

Overall, I didn't hate my (short) time with this but in the end my question is: why? This entire thing felt like an AU for the original. It's references upon references. Which would be fine but it doesn't do anything with it? WHY? We already have the original! Why was this made? Why did it have to be FLCL? A longer runtime wouldn't even have helped here (besides fixing some of the pacing) because I really don't think they had much to say or show that hasn't been done (better) before by the original or even the movie sequels.

Late addition: my score was actually higher as I started writing this coming off the hectic experience of watching... well, any FLCL media, but the aftertaste of this show is worse than I thought it'd be. I had some fun watching it but now the only things I remember are the bad parts.

My Rating: 3.2/10

[mazitdynasty]

Sunrise Fishing Trip 🐠 🌅

[Just the bg]

[sillyfudgemonkeys]

Oh? How did P5R specifically make you rip your hair out? That's the one I've seen the most love for in terms of original content post-P5 I woulda thought it'd fix a couple of your issues

Gonna try to knock some of these out cause I'm gonna go on a 6 hour car ride and weeeeeeeeee~! orz

Ngl I need to replay P5R to get into specifics (I like to try to refresh myself so I can be more.....accurate? with what I'm talking about)

But iirc the general gist was, "P5R isn't just the new content. Just because it added some cool new stuff, doesn't erase the issues the original had." It's not like P5R fixed the clusterfuck that is the 3rd Dungeon. If anything, it added something that muddied Makoto's arc even more (it's minor and missable but it made me go ?????). They game doesn't fix the uneven spotlight/presence on each char (Haru is still screwed and Sumi......).

Then there's Sumi. I love her to death. I love her and Jose, and Maruki is cool. But my god they could've handled her better (she's not bad, but she def could've been handled better). It's like what happened with Haru vs Naoto. Atlus heard the complaints about Naoto (wishing they got more of her) and Atlus said "Got it, you want the opposite of that and less!" And then Atlus did the same thing with Sumi vs Marie (or at least my issues which are) "Oh you wanted Marie to be more involved in the main story WITH the rest of the team so it felt like the rest of the team also wants to save her? Ok, we're going to do the EXACT opposite of that! :)" :/

And ironically Royal made me hate Goro more. I know, amazing. Didn't fix any of the issues I had with him, just made them more apparent.

At least that's the general gist of what I remember.

So yeah, basically it's that "P5R can't escape from P5's original sins" those are still there, and I obvie have issues with base P5. There's SOME changes like the ending but.......... *inhales* that's not apparent with the majority of the rest of the game. It's $60 for one gd dungeon and that's pretty much it. Some extra side content, but nothing else is changed. P5R doesn't get a pass just because it added some stuff, it still has the old stuff to deal with.