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R2 DVD Reviews
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Written by maehara
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Thursday, 29 May 2008 16:00 |
 Another two episodes of whacked-out fun, as FLCL returns for its second volume. Is there more to Haruko than there appears? What exactly has she been doing to / with Naota's dad? And who exactly is the man with implausibly bushy eyebrows?! All this and more, coming right up...
3 - Marquis de Carabas / Maru-Raba
Naota's classmate Ninamori has problems of her own - daughter of the Mayor and stuck with having to keep a perfect public persona, despite her father's own misbehaviour, she's beginning to feel the strain. To add to it all, she's been landed with the lead role in the class play, and her co-star (Naota, natch) isn't really putting in the effort. Probably because he's grown a pair of kitty ears. A combination of a major press scrum at her house and her discovering Naota's ears, though, sees them spending a lot of time together. Maybe too much time together - especially when the next robot Naota and Haruko have to deal with comes from Ninamori's head...
4 - Full Swing / Furi Kiri
Haruko's taken up baseball, and is busy single-handedly winning every game for her team. Her team-mates wouldn't mind so much, if sitting on the bench wasn't so dull. Naota's also taken up the game for a rival team - they'd been hoping he'd be as good as his older brother, but no such luck, the kid has no talent at all. Canti, on the other hand, is an ace fielder... Anyway. What does all this have to do with anything? Let's just say that baseball skills are about to become very important for Naota. He's also just had a visit from a man with very scary (and apparently self-aware) eyebrows - he's been noticing the strange things that have been happening around Mabase lately, he knows Haruko's involved, and he has a warning for Naota. Meanwhile, Haruko seems to be taking advantage of Naota's dad...
Those baseball skills? Try batting an incoming bomb back into orbit - Mr Eyebrows (real name, Commander Amarao) knows it's coming, knows Haruko has something to do with it, and wants to know more... He doesn't do much here, but there's a running gag about his huge eyebrows and I'm sure he'll be back for the final episodes. Also on the weird from is the little subplot around Haruko taking advantage of Naota's dad - or is that just a robot that looks like him? It's purely a little diversion that doesn't seem to play any real part in the story, but it's a fun little diversion.
The Ninamori episode is the better of the two here, though. Is not quite as heavily
on crack as the other one, and fitting in with the show's underlying 'coming of age' theme it gives Naota a chance to spend
some time with someone who could almost be called 'normal', as far as anyone is FLCL meets the definition. She's
cute, cynical, and the sort of person who you can never be sure is telling the entire truth - an unfortunate side-effect of
being a politiican's daughter, I guess - but she's great fun to watch and she seems to keep Naota on track far better than Mamimi ever could. More his age, too. The battle scene at the end of the episode almost spoils the episode, actually - it's a little out-of-place with the rest of the ep - but not so much as to be an annoyance.
FLCL could never be accused of being dull, and it's got very few flaws, either. If you were being picky, this volume has some filler scenes that don't seem as though they belong, but overall it's another two episodes of great entertainment - on one level it's pure mindless fun, on another there's plenty of metaphor to take out of it if you look beneath the surface, and both levels work really well. This is definitely one of GAINAX's best works (the only thing I've seen from them that actually lives up to their hype), and an easy recommendation. Go get.
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