English Dub Review: FLCL: Shoegaze “Furu-Bari (Full Barricade)”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Two teenagers, Masaki and Harumi, confine themselves in a giant tower. They are confronted by Kana Koumoto, the protagonist of Alternative, now ten years older.

OUR TAKE

Alright, someone’s gonna have to make me a timeline of this franchise because these surprise prequels and sequels are getting confusing, and not in the fun way. First we have the original series, Classic, Progressive is clearly a sequel to those events going by Haruko having changed due to the end of that, Alternative seems disconnected until the very end where it’s implied to be a prequel (and was confirmed by Jason DeMarco in a now deleted tweet). THEN we have Grunge, which ALSO seems disconnected until the very end where it seems to be VERY EXPLICITLY a prequel despite that not making much sense. And now we have Shoegaze (which I was surprised to learn is in fact a genre of music) that is explicitly a sequel to ALTERNATIVE by at least ten years. So is the order Alt>Gru>Cla>Pro>Sho? Cla>Pro>Alt>Gru>Sho? Sco No Fro Jo To Do Ma Lo? Regardless, we are out of one FLCL and into the next in the quickest succession yet and one thing is already apparent that I think is worth pointing out. The actor for Masaki, Jesse Nowack, and the actor Shinpachi in Grunge, Casey Mongillo, are both trans, so we’ve had two FLCL leads played by trans people and I think that’s pretty neat.

But anyway, as with every first episode of a FLCL thing, there’s quite a lot to unpack here that I don’t know if I can even articulate in this review because so much of it is still processing. This is looking like it will be the first installment without Haruko in any capacity (guess we’ll see in the next two episodes if that stays the case), but she’s mentioned between Kana and Tsukanda, so her presence will at least be felt. That said, her use in Alternative was the one that felt the least meaningful so I’m curious what impression she ultimately left on Kana in the end. And you’re probably noticing I haven’t really talked about Masaki and Hirumi, who had their first scene together with Hirumi asking him if he’ll drink her pee. And as uninteresting as it might be to say, my main takeaway is simply “that’s odd, guess we’ll see more about it later”. Masaki sees visions of green ghosts until today he sees a purple ghost. If we’re pulling from the usual FLCL lore, could this be a side effect of NO, something Atomsk related, or even Medical Mechanica, who are also name dropped? Those are the main things these seasons like to circle around besides dropping new The Pillows tracks, so it’s probably one of those. Guess we’ll learn something next week! I mean, we’re bound to learn something, not sure if it’s something that really adds anything. But hey, more FLCL, so more writey typey, at least as far as I’m concerned.