Adult Swim announces two more seasons of FLCL to celebrate Toonami’s anniversary
FLCL Shoegaze and FLCL Grunge are coming at some point
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If you have fond memories of running home from school to catch new episodes of Dragon Ball Z or Gundam Wing, prepare to feel like you’ve just realized you’re living in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber (where time passes much more quickly inside than on the outside): Today is the 25th anniversary of when Cartoon Network debuted its anime-centric Toonami programming block, meaning—if you do have those fond memories—you are an Old Person now. Luckily, Toonami (which has since grown up along with you to be an Adult Swim programming block) has a little gift for you in the form of brand new anime, including two new seasons of one of the all-time greats of the medium.
This comes from Variety, which says Toonami has ordered two new seasons of iconic coming-of-age sci-fi comedy/drama/action show/anime parody series FLCL titled FLCL Grunge and FLCL Shoegaze. This will make it five seasons for a show that seemed to have landed on a pretty definitive and touching conclusion after just one, with Adult Swim previously ordering two new installments—FLCL: Progressive and FLCL: Alternative—in 2016. One of the hooks for those two seasons was that they were animated by different creative teams, and Toonami is keeping that going for these two as well. Director Yutaka Uemura and studio team-up Production I.G x NUT, who also made FLCL Alternative, are turning for Shoegaze, while Grunge will be directed by Hitoshi Takekiyo and produced by MontBlanc Pictures.
As for what FLCL is about, the first (and best) season focused on a 12-year-old boy named Naota who develops a weird portal in his head that releases giant robots after he meets an aggressively cool and confident alien woman named Haruko. (She drives a retro Vespa! She carries around a bass guitar!) There are wacky hijinks and sci-fi action, but the real draw is the thoughtful metaphor for growing up and having a frustrating crush on someone and realizing that even the confident adults who seem to have it all figured out are as full of shit as everybody else.
Oh, and FLCL has one of the sickest soundtracks in anime history, courtesy of J-pop band The Pillows. The Variety story doesn’t say if they’re coming back, but since they reunited for Progressive and Alternative, it would be very strange to replace them now.
That’s all pretty exciting, give or take how you felt about Progressive and Alternative, but it’s not even the extent of Adult Swim’s Toonami news. Variety says that it has also picked up an anime series called Housing Complex C from Yuji Nara and animation studio Akatsuki. All Variety says is that it’s about someone named Kimi who lives in a low-income housing complex where “an ancient evil” has begun stalking the residents. It sounds spooky, which reminds us that Adult Swim’s Uzumaki anime is supposed to premiere this year as well.
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For those wondering why these are being made, it’s because Jason DeMarco, Toonami co-creator and current head of Cartoon Network/Adult Swim’s action/adventure cartoon department, wanted to make them. Same with Blade Runner: Black Lotus, Shenmue: The Animation, and Uzumaki.
But hey, it’s Toonami’s 25th birthday! Let’s share some classic videos!
I’ll check them out. I had low expectations for the last pair of seasons, and they at least kind of met them. Neither lived up to the original show, but at least Alternative was pretty enjoyable throughout, and both seasons had some inspired bits of music and imagery.I do think it’s a bold choice to announce a new followup to those, after their let’s-say-lukewarm reception, and then to tease it with such a short CG teaser with such an unfamiliar style. Gotta acknowledge the confidence.
FLCL is nonsensical garbage that people inexplicably lose their minds over. The soundtrack is great though.
I’m not usually a fan of the “This was deep actually and you just didn’t get it” response to criticisms of intentionally obtuse media. But in this case, it was deep actually, and you just didn’t get it.
Seems reductive to usually be against using an argument except when it’s convenient for you to use it, but whatever. I think anime as a medium can be pretty amazing, but most of the stuff that get popular in the West gain the majority of its traction from people who are seeing a type of thing for the first time when they’re still young, and that leaving a deep impression. It’s like a 14 year old reading The Catcher in the Rye and learning that everyone is a phony. Luckily for all of us, most people don’t read Salinger very young (or at all) anymore. Unluckily for us, lots of teenagers saw FLCL on Adult Swim twenty years ago and never fully recovered from it.
You’re gatekeeping.
“All the music was best when I was a teenager” is real, but FLCL connected with lots of people who’d seen mountains of anime going back to the 60’s & 70’s. Many who were grown-ass adults in 2000-2004 loved & continue to love the first run of FLCL. Because it’s fucking great!
I don’t really see how anyone could possibly accuse me of gatekeeping here, but it seems like that’s one of those words that Twitter got hold of and used so often that it changed from a very specific and useful definition to an incredibly broad and banal definition.
You can keep liking FLCL if you want. I’m not trying to stop you. I like plenty of garbage media because it tickles me a certain way, or because I remember how much I liked it when I didn’t know anything. Most people still find satisfaction in eating fast food or mass produced junk food, even if they know it’s got virtually no nutritional value. But FLCL is an empty and incoherent coming of age story dressed up in a lot of zany and wacky imagery. I’m sure it impresses lots of ‘grown-ass adults’, who as I’m sure you know from interacting with people your whole life, are actually nearly all very large children who have nevertheless persisted in existing for several decades. But it’s not, you know, any good.
“I’m not gatekeeping,” the internet commenter said. “I just happen think that people who like this thing I don’t are nearly all very large children.”
Oh, gosh no, I think most people are very large children, regardless of their tastes. Their immaturity prescribes their behavior, not the other way around.Also that’s definitely not what gatekeeping means, or at least, not what it meant. And I’m as descriptivist as they come, but you can’t blame me for not understanding you when you’re using a word that definitely had a clear definition, but somehow over the past few years has seemingly watered down to “elitist” or some other vague pejorative reflecting a sense of superiority. You could have just called me a snob, but then how would we manufacture this tweetstorm? Maybe that’s just me gatekeeping gatekeeping, though.
So arguably the least interesting thing to come out of Gainax is getting another sequel?
I hope Shitani-san gets the call for another season. You can tell how the Anime industry tends to spit out it’s old VA’s so if they’re doing this it would be nice to see that the original VA is treated fairly. Especially when the voice is so intentionally irritating and I’ll be honest I sort of have a pet peeve of people complaining about it. That’s the character.
However I would not be suprised to see some random 20 something now doing the same basic voice as was the case in at least one of the series from the last go around.