06 Aug 2003, 03:55

FLCL (aka Furi Kuri aka

FLCL (aka Furi Kuri aka Fooly Cooly) is without a doubt the most insane, incomprehensible, and entirely enjoyable anime I’ve seen in a long time. I caught the first episode of it on Adult Swim last night and was blown away. The animation goes over the top to riff on every manga-style animation gimmick imaginable in hyperactive rapid fire succession, and then throws in a ton of new tricks to boot. The show itself is highly self-referential and it knows that it’s so cool that it doesn’t even have to bother with making sense right off the bat to get you hooked. As for the story, well, see… there’s this alien girl riding around on a vespa carrying a Rickenbacker with some kind of motor and a ripcord in it… and then there’s a boy who has giant fighting robots THAT JUMP OUT OF HIS HEAD!! So as you can see, very basic stuff here, nothing too strange… If you even remotely like anime and have no problem with shows with a severe case of ADD that go out of their way to confuse you, then you really ought to check this out.