Everything about FLCL’s plot that you will ever care to know.
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Overview
The series focuses on Nandaba Naota, a twelve-year-old boy on the verge of puberty living in the fictional, strange, and yet ordinary Japanese suburb of Mabase. The story begins when a strange energetic girl named Haruhara Haruko drives up on a Vespa and whacks him in the forehead with a heavily modified left-handed Rickenbacker bass guitar with a chainsaw start motor. It is gradually revealed that Haruko is fighting a company named Medical Mechanica in Mabase.
Naota lives with his lecherous father Kamon and his baseball-coaching grandfather Shigekuni at their family bakery. Naota greatly admired his older brother Tasuku, a baseball phenomenon who has gone to United States to play baseball, but now resents that he has gone. Note that Tasuku, though often referenced, only appears in the series through flashback scenes. As the series progresses, it is apparent that Naota has grown up without a maternal figure. In addition to being hounded by Haruko, who uses a portal in his head to transport objects over long distances, he is being watched by a man named Commander Amarao, who with his assistant, Lt. Kitsurubami, have become involved with Haruko and Medical Mechanica for intergalactic legal reasons, and are attempting to save the earth by stopping both Haruko and Medical Mechanica (M.M.).
The plot also involves Mamimi, a socially delinquent girl who used to be Tasuku’s girlfriend. Alone and friendless, she leans on other things, such as Naota or her pet cat, all of whom she calls “Takkun.”
The power of N.O. is what lets items be pulled out of characters’ foreheads. N.O. comes from the co-operation of the right and left sections of the brain. When it is activated (usually from extreme scenarios including stress and duty) things can be pulled from anywhere in the universe. Naota’s N.O. is responsible for the appearance of; Canti, Naota’s Guitar, Atomsk’s Gibson, three M.M. robots, and in the end, Atomsk himself.
For complete episode guides and more, see the episode sections.
Series Analysis
So what does it all mean? You may have just seen an episode on TV, or maybe you own the DVDs, yet the series is still hard to make sense of. Some people will never care to understand the true meaning, but I promise you that if you give it time you will eventually find the hidden door to FLCL and it will all start to make sense. When I first watched the series I was so intrigued by the unusual style and confusing dialogue that I immediately set out to find what the series meant. After watching it over numerous times late at night it came to me at once in a flash. Simply, it is a coming-of-age story, and everything is a metaphor. That is, after all, the entire purpose of the series.
Complete Analysis of FLCL
