FLCL - Episode 6

I feel a strange sense of peace and tranquility as I begin this final episode of FLCL. It's the feeling one gets when they resign themselves to an inevitable fate. Having spent five episodes with this show I have a pretty good idea of what awaits me with this final episode. It will undoubtedly be bigger, loud, brasher, and snottier than the five episodes that proceeded it which will send me into an even more furious rage, and I'm perfectly alright with that. LET'S ANIME IT UP DUDES!

What Happens
We begin in an elementary school classroom. Takkun or whatever the heck his name actually is looks all depressed and shit and his teacher attempts to teach her students to use chopsticks with disastrous results. Takkun's classmates Glasses Guy, Guy Whose Mouth Looks Like a Butthole, and Nina Mori have a conversation about sporks and Takkun gets up and walks out of the class. Butthole Mouth and Nina Mori wonder if he's going to get some sporks and Glasses Guy turns into Beavis and/or Butthead and is all like, "Huh huh huh 'get some.'"

As Takkun walks away from school we get some more Wonder Years voiceover shit of Takkun talking about how since the last episode the entire town has been covered with smoke from the Giant Iron Factory. He makes it seem like the smoke somehow keeps everyone trapped in Town and the Petrified Hand is like a judge delivering a verdict or something. Vespa Lady and Conti the Bomber Jacket Wearing Robot Who is Now Also a Space Pirate or Something have apparently vanished to the outside world leaving Takkun all alone.

Meanwhile at Space Command Center Eyebrow Guy is riding an exercise bike and talking about sci-fi plot shit with the Blonde Lady. He hands her his water bottle and while plot dumping is occurring the Blonde Lady takes a sip out of his water bottle and then proceeds to barf because it had been in Eyebrow Guy's mouth or something. It's bad comedy folks!

Back at the river Mamimi is looking for Takkun. I assume she means Takkun the cat, not Takkun the boy since Takkun the boy more or less attempted to do sex crime on her last episode. As she searching a dude on a motorbike drives by and splashes her since I guess it's raining. Takkun and his friends see her as they walk by on a bridge and either Glasses Guy or Butthole Mouth are like, "Hey it's Takkun's wife!" but Takkun just ignores her and walks away.

Mamimi huddles under a bridge and lights up a cigarette when suddenly a chunk of robotics emerges from the water. It looks like a crab. I assume this is a piece of chunk from the giant chunk that got blasted into the river during the last episode, but who knows. She ignores it at first but then creeps up on it and stares at it.

We cut to Takkun walking through a construction site or something drinking canned coffee because HE'S AN ADULT! Eyebrow Guy shows up and is like, "So you drink bitter drinks now because you're an adult huh? Sweet drinks are better. Our brains need glucose!"

Eyebrow Guy then drops a mess of plot dump on Takkun about how Vespa Lady is in love with the Space Pirate and that she's only using Takkun to get the Space Pirate out of the hands of the Giant Iron Factory or something. He then gives Takkun some eyebrows and that's the end of that chapter.

Back at the river, Mamimi is fucking around with her flip phone when the crab robot takes it and looks like it's going to eat it. She screams at the crab robot to stop because the phone has Takkun's brother's phone number in it, but eventually she's like, "Okay, you can eat it, but now you have to take care of me. You have to be Takkun."

Meanwhile at Takkun's house, Takkun is in his bed, halfassedly playing his guitar and wearing his new eyebrows before going downstairs. He goes into the kitchen and discovers that Vespa Lady's back. We get another loud segment that looks like a comic book of people screaming about Fooly Cooly and shit. Pixelated dicks in full effect! Fourth walls broken! Zaniness! Fuck...

Some Fourth Wall Breakin' Bullshit Right Here Yo... 

When this shit's all done we cut to later that night in Takkun's room. He's awake and asks Vespa Lady if she's awake too, but she doesn't answer so he's like, "Who are you? Why did you leave?" Vespa Lady then sticks her head down and mocks him for a minute before climbing down into his bed and having a conversation with him about how he really is just a kid. This makes Takkun cry and be all like, "Why'd you leave without saying goodbye?!" and hug her. She offers to take him with her when she leaves again and he agrees.

They leave the next day I guess on her Vespa while Takkun does more voice over shit about how living in Town every day is like death and you forget that there's a world outside of Town.

Meanwhile at school Takkun's friends are talking about him having run away. Butthole Mouth calls him an idiot and Nina Mori agrees and says that he should stop lying to himself and then talks about how she was honest about how she felt and talked to her parents and cried a lot but her problems got resolved. She then does a high jump that shocks her teacher and the rest of the class.

Elsewhere Mamimi has stolen her classmates cellphones and is feeding them to the new robot Takkun who now kind of looks like a puppy. She has an evil look in her eyes as she feeds them to the robot.

Outside a convenient store Takkun and Vespa Lady are eating ramen. Vespa Lady bought a giant sized one of some off-brand ramen because it was giant and cheap while Takkun bought a name-brand one. The giant ramen apparently sucks and Vespa Lady wants to trade. Takkun's like, "You can't buy the cheap brands just because it comes with more, you have to go for the big name brands," which is a stupid way to live one's life all safe and staid. Takkun's going to grow up to be boring as fuck.

We see Mamimi pulling along her new and improved Takkun who she's been feeding motorcycles and shit to from a list she has of people who have wronged her. Glasses Guy and Butthole Mouth come out of a liquor store and see her and are like, "Hey it's Takkun's ex-wife." This causes the Robot Dog Takkun to attack them and eat their truck as Mamimi shouts, "NO! They aren't even on my revenge list!"

At some point Nina Mori is walking to school and she sees Vespa Lady and Takkun sleeping on a bench under cardboard like hobos. She doesn't say or do anything.

Meanwhile Takkun's teacher goes to Takkun's house to talk to Takkun's dad about the fact that Takkun hasn't been to school in weeks. Takkun's dad doesn't seem to be too concerned that Takkun's missing and tells some story about how when he was a kid he accidentally killed a hamster in his classroom. Shrug.

Eyebrow Guy and Blonde Lady are driving in a car and Eyebrow Guy's being a creepvert and hitting on her badly when suddenly they happen upon the new robot Takkun wrecking house on shit. It's some sort of "terminal core" that they'd discovered to be missing when they pulled a chunk of robot out of the river earlier in the episode. They try to fight it out with Terminal Core Takkun, but Conti's there in a skirt for some reason and he gets assimilated by the Core.

The Terminal Core Takkun destroys Takkun's teacher's VW Bug and then Blonde Lady unloads on it with a pistol. Eyebrow Guy pushes her out of the way before Terminal Core Takkun can crush her and proceeds to get crushed himself.

Over at the hobo bench Vespa Lady wakes up and sees mayhem and thus springs into action and all the main actors wind up on top of the Petrified Hand: Mamimi, Takkun, Vespa Lady, Eyebrow Guy, Conti/Space Pirate/Terminal Core. TIME FOR A FINAL SHOWDOWN!

The Terminal Core won't go into the hand though since it needs some component that's still in Takkun's head or something so Eyebrow Guy attempts to convince Takkun not help Vespa Lady since she's childish and only does things that benefit her. Takkun needs to think of Mamimi and all the jerks down in town and do the mature adult thing. Takkun's like, "Whateves," and walks over to Vespa Lady who brains him with her bass and launches him into the Terminal Core which then proceeds to merge with the Petrified Hand.

The Petrified Hand becomes unpetrified and Eyebrow Guy screams about how this is exactly what the Giant Iron Factory wanted. He dumps some plot about how their goal is to iron out planets across the galaxy so that everything is flat. Vespa Lady gives zero fucks though and says that the people of Earth will just have to learn to think flat. All she cares about is getting the space pirate's powers.

The hand starts descending but is stopped at the last second by Conti who is glowing with Dragon Ball Z POWER™. Takkun crawls out of Conti's face wield two guitars. He too is glowing with Dragon Ball Z POWER™. He proceeds to wreck shit on the giant hand.

Vespa Lady is pissed that Takkun got the space pirate power that she herself has wanted. They have a Dragon Ball Z POWER™ Fast Punchin' Fight that ends with Takkun stopping in front of her, releasing the Dragon Ball Z POWER™ and turning into a toddler looking motherfucker, all cherubic and shit. As the Dragon Ball Z POWER™ hovers over them in a ring he tells Vespa Lady, "I love you," and then kisses her.

HIS POWER LEVEL?! IT'S OVER 9000!!!!

THE POWER OF LOVE!® causes the space pirate to manifest in its true form: some kind of giant dinosaur bird dragon thing. The giant dinosaur bird dragon thing wreck shit on the Giant Iron Factory and the giant hand and then blasts off into space.

Afterwards Vespa Lady is floating on her Vespa and says that the space pirate got away because of Takkun, so she was going to go look for it. She offers to let him come with her, but is like, "Nah, you're still a kid." She seems to be proud of this fact and blasts off to adventure on her scooter, taking Takkun's two guitars with her. Takkun finds her bass in a pile of rubble and picks it up. As he does so Mamimi stands up out of the rubble and takes a picture of Takkun with the bass.

We then get a time jump. Takkun and his classmates are middle school students now and Takkun does Wonder Years voiceover shit about how Mamimi quit school and left town to become a photographer and he never heard from her again.

The End.

Thoughts
That sure was a show. For awhile I thought it was all going to be "THIS IS GROWING UP!" but in episode 6 they seemed to flip the script and be like, "STAY A CHILD FOR AS LONG AS YOU CAN!" so I don't even know.

The overall plot of this was basically nonsense. They never explained who the Giant Iron Factory was or what they wanted to iron out Town for so I really gave zero shits about anything they were doing. I guess in the end the biggest enemy turned out to be the high school girl that molested Takkun.

That being said, I didn't really hate this episode that much and found the ending more or less satisfactory. While they didn't explain why anything that happened over the course of the show happened there was closure for pretty much everyone that was important in the show which is more than you get with some shows/movies/books/etc.

So where do we go from here? Do I carry on with this and watch more cartoons from Japan and complain about them on the internet or do I hang up my anime hat? I think I'm going to try again, because for as bad as this was at least there was a decent Japanese indie rock soundtrack so maybe if I keep watching this stuff I'll find out about other boss bands and maybe come to find love.

Giant Robots: Yup.
Lesbian Subtext: Nope.
Boobs: Nope. Pixelated dick though.
Body Horror: Nope.
Magical Teen Girls: Yup, and according to a wanted poster she's 19 years old.