English Dub Review: FLCL Progressive “Stone Skipping”

Life’s a beach, and then the robots come.

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

In another dream, an unnervingly cheery Hidomi hopes to be devoured gruesomely but is instead attacked by raining tiny Jinyus, followed by a crushing ball of liquid that hooks several people into a giant hand and crushes them. Hidomi gazes at this lovingly as her head expands and pops.

At a beach surrounded by abandoned giant irons, Hidomi, Ide, Mori, Marco, Jinyu, and Haruko spend the day soaking up the sun, although Ide and Marco are mainly here to Mori’s so-called new girlfriend, a sheepish young thing named Aiko who carries around a flowerpot. Though Jinyu is apparently there to protect Hidomi from Haruko, who’s been stalking the two for about three months since the end of the last episode. Hidomi decides to ask what Haruko wants, and then what Jinyu wants. Jinyu responds that she used to be with someone amazing, but was left behind by him, so both she and Haruko are still looking. She then asks Hidomi, who says she doesn’t want anything.

As the day goes on, Haruko immobilizes Jinyu in cement and kidnaps Hidomi, leading Ide to go looking for her. Mori can’t help look, however, since he’s taking his girlfriend back home…who turns out to be a GF for hire with a rather nasty mouth and leaves the flowerpot with him, all of which Marco notices when he spies on them. Ide’s quest soon takes him to one of the abandoned irons, where Haruko has Hidomi tied up, gagged, and stripped, likely to learn more about her headphones and how they control her power. Upon seeing this, Ide’s portal acts up and releases a glowing green monster that destroys the iron.

During the fight, Hidomi’s mouth makes contact with Ide’s chest, causing a mass of circuits to spring out of her head and consume her. Jinyu arrives to fight, still covered in cement. Haruko somehow tames the green robot to take on Jinyu while Idea goes to save Hidomi. Trying to get the headphones off only causes them to drill into her head, though the mass collapses and falls into the beach. Jinyu tells Haruko they have no other options left, and their only move now is to go together to Medical Mechanica.

Aiko returns to her home, her guardian one of the men seen at Hidomi’s family’s café who reports to the man in the eye patch that they’ve lost the flowerpot.

OUR TAKE

Describing the events of this episode was naturally pretty tough, not just because this show is weird enough that typing the plot out makes me wonder if I have truly gone insane, but also because I have no clear idea how much of these seemingly random and weird moments will actually come into play later. Some things feel like they’re purposefully saved for later, like the mystery around Haruko and Jinyu’s separation and search for Atomsk and Hidomi’s headphones, while others I can’t imagine having further significance later on, like Aiko and her damn flowerpot.

This season of FLCL seems to be following a more serialized storyline than the first, which at this point mainly had mostly stand-alone stories each focused on a single character. I remember the third episode was actually the most incidental, focusing on Naota’s classmate Ninamori, who basically went through a more condensed version of Naota’s character arc within that episode, and actually felt like it would’ve been an example of what the show would’ve been like if it was more formulaic and had more time to give to background characters. To both compare and contrast, THIS third episode also feels mostly incidental, despite containing some seemingly plot relevant moments towards the end. The stuff with Mori and his fake girlfriend was a surprise (especially in how her attitude changed on a dime) but it was hardly in the forefront, nor did it end up being particularly important at all aside from kind of developing Mori and Marco’s friendship. Though frankly, like pretty much all anime beach episodes, there really was no reason to have this take place on a beach besides fanservice, and as a hot-blooded hetero male, if I need that, I have an internet connection. Though at least the title managed to have some, if little, significance to the story, and skipping stones is usually considered a youthful adolescent thing to do.

The main focus seemed to be more on Haruko and Jinyu’s relationship and animosity towards each other now that we know they’re two halves of the same whole, and partly on Hidomi and Ide’s endearing but questionable budding romance. Apparently nothing of significance happened in three months between episodes, but it’s hard to tell Jinyu’s goals for Haruko if she’s been keeping her distance from her all this time. And what’s going on with those brainwashed kids? Are we just going to drop that or let it slide? Say what you will about the original Haruko’s methods for provoking Naota’s powers, but at least we knew that, even when it was obvious she was the culprit of something bad, everyone was either too stupid or in love with her to do anything about it. What’s Jinyu’s excuse? Hell, what is Haruko’s goal if simply “busting in” was always an option? I have confidence that things can come back from this low point, but for now, I have to be honest with the score. Next week at least seems like it’ll be diving into something never touched on in the first season: going IN the head portal instead of out.