haruko is not the only reason the first series exists. this series tries to convince us that she was. its goal is not to get us to think that, but that’s the end impression, because she is the only reason this series exists. there’s a Whole Ton Of Shit in this series, but it’s all deliberately nonsensical. it’s affected. there are like ten side characters. why does FLCL need ten side characters? who knows. it acts like making these side characters occupy themselves with a bunch of nonsense is cool, like knowing that it doesn’t need them but then having them anyway is some kind of joke everyone is supposed to be in on.
I think those other characters mostly exist to occupy space for visual chicanery. FLCL was visually inventive. FLCL 2 is visually busy, because it knows it has to be visually inventive. it isn’t. but it ain’t bad. if you take this show moment to moment, you’ll get a lot of moments worth hanging around for. you probably won’t get anything else. it could’ve fucked up enough to make haruko not cool anymore. it doesn’t do that. so that ain’t bad.
It was just an okay anime. Not the kinetic energy or semi-pathos of the original. It tries to pull a Dougie except there is no payoff.
But none of the REALLY LOVE GUITARS, and Robots, and wonderswans, and different animation styles.
It really loves shots of schoolgirls’ thighs.
There was more than a little emotional manipulation by playing a song from the original and every time I start liking it for about 5 seconds. Then I snapped out of it and realized I didn’t care and it was just trying to trick me into thinking about something I do like.
Eventually it’s just an anime girl yelling Doushite and well okay.
This sounds depressingly like the thing I expected/feared it would be–sounds like it’s shackled by its desire to be a worthy sequel to a singular work, focusing on making the surface jibe with that while not grappling with the spirit of the thing (either itself or its predecessor), while also “updating” the Millennium Anime for the present era (I also should probably not that I have a lot more sympathy for late 90s baseline anime bullshit than twenty-teens baseline anime bullshit).
I mean, I’ll watch it when it’s on one of those fancy streaming portals Supersonnick was talking about up there.