Episode 1: RE:Start
I remember where I was when I saw season 2. I was actually taken in by someone for a weekend after I was having a hard time and took a bit of a weekend vacation for myself and I was on pins and needles to watch the premiere of season 2 of FLCL! It took me a minute to get it working on my crappy laptop because the one I have has been pretty jacked up for a while, and even when I got it on the adultswim website the quality was actually really bad because I had these weird black lines that would blur the full screen…after refreshing it and reloading it a few times I was able to get a clear picture, and I was treated with this…
(1)Thank You, My Twilight (Fool on Cool)-
The second you fire up season 2 episode 1 you are treated with probably the best scene in all of season 2, one that rivals the intensity and artistic precision of the musical exploits of season 1. Hearing the electric beeping in the background complements the destitute, greyscale world of Hidomi’s badass dream sequence before the buzzing electric guitar takes you to a zoomed-out shot of Hidomi walking through an ashen wasteland as her body slowly breaks down like pieces of putrefied flesh fall off of her.
What else adds to the beautiful, painful irony is how the lyrics contrast with the bleak scene and narration ahead of you:
Life, life is beautiful.
My roulette keeps spinning.
She, she is wonderful.
I want to see the present in those eyes.
Immediately I seized that feeling.
This directly contrasts with Hidomi’s narration because her inner thoughts express how much she hates the world, that it needs to be destroyed before it can be remade anew, and that this corpse of concrete where zombies roam the streets reflects her true desires.
When you hear the lyric “she is wonderful” in the brief pause in her narration, I took it to mean that the song is trying to cement that Hidomi is now the main character of this story and that she has some sort of latent power that is supposed to carry some sort of significance. In some ways the lyric’s promise is delivered and in some ways it is not.
I also think this lyric means a lot considering what you will later learn about Hidomi:
It’s as if I’m waiting for someone
If you appear, it won’t be a mistake
I was waiting for you.
In some way, the lyric helps amplify the plot point that was cast with such subtlety through the dialogue; apparently Hidomi’s father is the person who gave her those special headphones, and that he left to work in the Medical Mechanica plant but hasn’t come home in years. Hidomi and her mother are both holding out hope that he will return, soon, but it looks bleak and Hidomi seems to be holding on stronger, saying that she knows in her heart that her father will come back.
The song itself is very rushed and you get to hear the chorus a few times before rushing to the ending instrumental which repeats the electronic beeps you hear in the beginning in order to coincide with the sound of Hidomi’s alarm clock before finishing on the title card of the episode.
(2) Non-Fiction (Instrumental)
The next song you get to hear, I actually have not heard the full version. I colloquially called this song “Ide’s theme” even though you only hear it once. It strikes on the rather lackluster introduction of Ide, Marco, and Mori. Ide will have the most character significance since he plays the role opposite Hidomi as both her primary love interest and the new target in Haruko’s schemes.
“Non-Fiction” has a very “Rock Stock” feel to it…And by that I refer to the album “Rock Stock & Too Smoking,” one of my favorite The Pillows albums. It alters a few songs and has a very silly, campy feel to it, it sort of helps illustrate how stupid these guys are and by proxy, how stupid Hidomi thinks everyone else is, considering that she consciously tries to tune out everyone and everything around her.
(3) Little Busters (Fool on Cool)-
Almost like season 1, the episode nears its conclusion after the action with “Little Busters” playing. The chorus doesn’t deliver the same effect as season 1 and you only hear it for about 20 seconds before the final 2 minutes of the first episode. It’s really lackluster so I won’t attempt to spill any sweat over it anymore.
ED Theme: Spiky Seeds
I don’t know how I feel about “Spiky Seeds.” I think it’s a decent song, but it’s too short and doesn’t capitalize on its strengths enough for me to really get enough enjoyment out of it. However, as an ending theme I think it’s awesome! I honestly like better than “Ride on Shooting Star” as an Ending Theme, and what I really enjoy about it is the video because it appears to tell us so much pivotal info about the bridge between season 1 and season 2.
Apparently after the end of season 1, Haruko successfully manages to track down Atomsk and take his power. Unfortunately, the power of Atomsk causes her to split into 2 different beings, a younger, 16-year-old, orange-haired rendition of Haruko, who is often called Raharu, which was Haruko’s real name in season 1. The other being is an older, fair-skinned, white-haired woman named Julia Jinyu. I personally like Jinyu’s design and I wish we saw a lot more of her, but alas, her screen time is limited. Jinyu acts as Haruko’s conscience, constantly reminding Raharu of her origin and pleads with her to stop chasing Atomsk because it won’t work. The brief scene where you see them split apart actually has Haruko drawn in the style of the FLCL manga by Hajime Ueda and produced by GAINAX, I just thought that was a fun Easter Egg.
I wish I could have seen the creditless version of the ED theme because I am certain that you get to see a quick snapshot of Sameji and Naota on a couple of frames before you hear the chorus swing and get to see an animatic of Raharu and Jinyu driving towards the left side of the screen with a sketch art of the main characters of seasons 2, season 1, and season 3, left-to-right, in that order. It’s a little confusing. I also thought that maybe the weird duality of those positions would indicate that FLCL season 2 takes place in either an alternate universe or in the past before season 1, but it’s definitely hard to justify that considering season 1 showed a lot of technology from the ‘90s to include rotary phones, handheld liquid screen games, and classic handheld phones while seasons 2 and 3 were modernized for 2018 with iPhones and internet.
