The Hell Did I Just Watch? (FLCL)

So I just watched something called FLCL, pronounced "Fooly Cooly". Put briefly, it's the story of a young boy struggling his way through puberty while sexy and/or robotic intergalactic space pirates fight with domestic security over the transportation potential of the inter-dimensional portal in his head where his brain should be -- set to punk music.

I can't say I understood it, but I liked it well enough.

So this is Naota.

He's the main character. An ordinary middle schooler. His big brother's run off to America to play baseball, leaving his lonely ex-girlfriend to, I don't know, move on to the next in line?

Sullen doesn't even begin to describe this kid, but I'm pretty sure "moody" comes with the territory. He's a kid, growing up. It happens.

So one day he and Mamimi (that's the slightly not-right-in-the-head girlfriend-ish character's name) are standing on a bridge when a crazy chick on a vespa slams into him, and then, if I'm remembering this right, she hits him in the face with an electric bass.

That's Haruko Haruhara. She knocks him unconscious, gives him "mouth to mouth" because I think she's a little perv, and then moves in with Naota's family (such as it is: Naota's dad, a skeezy Manga dealer, and Naota's grand-dad, an only marginally less skeezy old man).

After she hits him in the head, giant robots start (after a delay) climbing out of his forehead whenever he gets, I don't know, angry or sexually confused or pretty much any emotional state associated with being a boy growing up. So it happens pretty frequently.

Yep. Forehead.

This is a very. Weird. Story. I want to say it's all allegorical, and it kind-of is. It's about growing up, and sex, and finding your place in the world, but it's also about forehead-robots and space pirates.

It's also the kind of anime where people will as often look like the pictures above as they will like this:

or like this:

or like this:

or like this:

Yeah, this anime has whole scenes of frantic page-flipping manga, and references to other pop-culture phenomena, so the animation's as likely to look like this:

Yes, that's a giant iron. Just watch the damn show.

As this:

Or this:

What's with those eyebrows?

And the music is awesome. Shinkishi Mitsumune and the Pillows have put out Three. Separate. Albums. of pretty awesome music.

So: roundup. It's a crazy-as-hell, funny coming-of-age story, with girls and robots and aliens, set to punk, all by people who know anime and the people who watch it. It's filled with in-jokes, meta-references, and easter eggs, and it's a travesty that it's only six episodes long.

Five out of five, watch it. You won't understand it, but you'll like it.

Now to leave you, here's a picture of a giant robot, and a link to the closing credits song for the show, "Shooting Star".

Don't say I never gave ya nothin'.