English Dub Review: FLCL Progressive “Freebie Honey”

First one’s free, honey.

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Hidomi has another weird dream, this time of herself, animals, and her classmates as zombies in a found footage horror movie while she narrates in ecstatic glee. When she faces her classmates, she’s devoured quickly, with only her red horn found by zombie-Ide. She awakens, rather hot and bothered.

After getting warnings from Jinyu to avoid “the woman on the Vespa”, she arrives at school to be taught under her. Haruko is completely unmasked now that she’s brainwashed most of the class, giving them mystifying sermons about delusions and adulthood and showing them fake yearbooks. As Hidomi leaves, Haruko gives her homework to give to Ide, who didn’t show up today. She reluctantly takes it, running into the robot from the last episode along the way, and ending up in a rather seedy part of town where Ide lives. She finds him dragging cars and getting whipped for cash, showing he’s eking out a meager existence on menial labor, followed by selling odd contraptions to foreign speaking gangsters (who speak…Japanese? Is this not set in Japan?), though his ability to put up with punishment seems to really light a fire in Hidomi, starts bleeding from her nose and faints as her headphones start revving up.

Ide takes her back to his house to tend to her nosebleed, which seems to be stirring some things within them…until it turns out Haruko has been filming them. Jinyu soon arrives on her (apparently) flying car to rescue Hidomi. Haruko responds by using Ide as her own personal weapon as she goes head to head and guitar to guitar against her. They waste no time in confirming an odd thing from the credits, that Haruko and Jinyu are actually two parts of the same whole. Utilizing Ide’s N.O. Portal, she also manages to bring back the robot for a diversion, but Jinyu tries making her come to her senses by reminding her that she can’t reach “him” without becoming one. Things reach a breaking point when seeing a constantly electrocuted Ide causes Hidomi to regrow her horn and transform!…into a tiny ugly robot. One that packs a serious punch, at least to Haruko, but it doesn’t last long. Jinyu uses her car to heal them, and Ide finally gets his homework.

OUR TAKE

IGN actually released a clip of the fight in this episode last week before the premiere, and I have to admit, it had me SCARED. The animation looked flat and stiff, Haruko’s voice was noticeably higher pitched, and it seemed a bit too much like it was trying to replicate her and Naota’s brief fight from the end of the first series. This might’ve been a smarter move on their part than I thought since the first episode managed to assuage those fears somewhat, and bringing that goodwill and context around the fight for this episode certainly helped. However, there are still some nagging worries that linger. The animation was indeed stiff in a lot of places, which is an especially disappointing sight considering how sleek it was in the past. Haruko’s voice also still grates a bit, even though this could easily be explained due to the gap between seasons because Wahlgreen has certainly not lost her edge. Though what’s increasingly concerning is that I feel I’m losing touch with Hidomi as a character. Her nihilism and indecision about life in the first episode was surprisingly easy to latch onto, particularly in today’s world, though now she seems to be manifesting an almost Tina Belcher like fetishizing of the undead, which also turns out to be the activation trigger for her powers, which is to…turn into some stuffed doll-like robot? I know FLCL is mind-numbingly insane by nature, but I am wary of how much of this is genuine.

I must remember, of course, that the second episode of the last series was on a similar level of introducing new seemingly meaningless elements and odd behavior in characters. In fact, this one actually elaborates on stuff previously unexplained, like a bit more about how N.O. Portals work. It’s usually a red flag when a sequel attempts to answer too many questions left by the first part (look to Blade Runner 2049 for an example of a sequel keeping enough of the mystery intact).

But the fears are still there for now, especially in regards to the big secret behind Haruko and Jinyu’s bond. From the ending credits, it seems like absorbing Atomsk caused some physical (and possibly psychological) split in Haruko, creating Jinyu as her logical and forward thinking half. This could also explain Haruko’s hair color change from pink to orange, and why the English cast announcement lists her as “Raharu”. Her connection to that name has also been the topic of much theorizing, whether it’s an alias and Haruko is her true name, or if it’s the other way around, or if they’re both made up. And in this case, is Raharu just the name Jinyu calls her because that’s this half’s name or is it her real name and only Jinyu would know that, while Raharu considers herself complete and the real “Haruko”? Or is Haruko actually not herself until Jinyu and Raharu settle their differences and reform? And what does Haruko/Raharu/whoever want with N.O., brainwashed kids, this one unfortunate tea kettle shaped bot, and getting Ide and Hidomi to get to the Kuri-Kuri-ing?

Answers will be questioned and questions will be further questioned as we move onto episode 3.