FLCL

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FLCL revolves around Naota. His life is interrupted by the arrival of Haruko Haruhara, who bursts on the scene by running Naota over with her Vespa scooter, then giving him CPR and hitting him on the head with a blue vintage Rickenbacker 4001 left-handed reverse strung electric bass guitar.Later, Naota is shocked to find Haruko working in his house as a live-in maid.

Since then Giant Robots from Medical Meccanica have been coming out of his head and cause more problems for Naota and Haruko. Haruko is using Naota for her search for the Pirate King, Atomsk, which puts her at odds with Medical Mechanica, the monolithic industrial corporation. At the same time, Naota is being watched by Commander Amarao. The Commander believes Haruko is in love with Atomsk and that Medical Meccanica is out to conquer the galaxy. The combination of circumstances gets Naota involved in a three-way battle between Haruko, Amarao and Medical Mechanica.



FLCL is directed by Kazuya Tsurumaki and produced by the FLCL Production Committee, which included Gainax, Production I.G, and Starchild Records.

Six pieces of theme music are used for the episodes; five opening themes and one closing theme. All the theme songs are by The Pillows, a Japanese rock band. The battle themes are "Advice" and "Little Busters". The opening themes are: "One Life", used in episode one, "Instant Music" in episode two and three, "Happy Bivouac" for episode four, "Runners High", utilized in episode five, and "Carnival" in episode six. The closing theme is "Ride on Shooting Star", used for all of the episodes. Geneon Entertainment has released three original soundtracks encompassing the aforementioned songs, with the soundtracks titled Addict, released on January 20, 2004, King of Pirates, released on September 7, 2004, and FLCL No. 3, released on June 7, 2005.

Language

There are some places where dialogue of the English translation is different from the Japanese version, an attempt to make the dialogue easier to understand in the English translation. (Example: Haruko uses the term "mouth to mouth" repeatedly throughout the series, though the "-th" sound does not exist in Japanese, making it sound like "mouse to mouse". This is used in a pun in "Full Swing," when she crawls out of the Kamon puppet's mouth wearing a mouse suit.).

Further comments in the booklets discuss the severe loss in translation of the plays made in Japanese via homonyms, synonyms, and so on. One example of trying to preserve this in English is the "empty", "MTV" and various homonyms in English during the Kamon/Haruko manga sequence.



Manga

The manga interprets the series with all of the key elements intact, but loses some details and changes the dialogue. It is a much darker and more graphic take on the story, highlighting the sex and violence (Naota intentionally kills his father with the baseball bat in a rather grisly scene because he thought Haruko and his father were sleeping together; Shigekuni and an unnamed war buddy later suicide-bomb the Medical Mechanica building).

The manga is stylistically unique due to its use of ink to roughly outline objects and shade areas. Volume 1 is more like the first two episodes while Volume 2 is more like episodes 3 through 6. One major change to a character is Ninamori, as her robot becomes an ally and is not destroyed. Its design is also different, being a large octopus-like robot attached to her head that enables her to fly. The ending is also quite different from the anime.

The English language edition of the manga was released by TOKYOPOP in two volumes (ISBN 978-1-59182-396-4 and ISBN 978-1-59182-397-1).

Novels
The first of the three novels was released in America on March 11, 2008, the second on September 9, 2008, and the final on March 10, 2009. All were released in Japan starting in 2000, and in 2008 in the United States.



Six DVD compilations, each containing one episode, have been released in Japan by Gainax. In addition, a DVD collection box, containing all six DVD compilations, was released in Japan on August 13, 2005. Three DVD compilations were released by Synch-Point in North America. A DVD collection box, containing all the DVD compilations of the English episodes, was released on January 23, 2007, but have since gone out of print. In January 2010, Funimation Entertainment announced that they had acquired the license for the series and would be releasing it on DVD and Blu-ray Disc. The series is also often aired on TV in America on Adult Swim.



The American reception for the series, although not widespread, has been enthusiastic following its release on Adult Swim in the summer of 2003. Anime.com also gave the series an enthusiastic review in October of that year, although there was also a minor reference to it in the September "issue". In 2003, it also went on to win third place for Best Animation Film at the Fantasia Festival.

FLCL has garnered mostly positive reception among reviewers, Adult Swim occasionally refers to FLCL as "The greatest show we have ever aired." [citation needed] Christopher McDonald of Anime News Network called it "downright hilarious" and "visually superb" with great music, citing the packaging of 2 episodes per DVD as the only weakness of Synch-Point's original release.

It was also a success from a corporate standpoint. A Time Warner press release from August 12, 2003 lauds the success of Cartoon Network, and mentions FLCL:

Animé [sic] series FLCL (Monday-Thursday, 12 a.m.) premiered with impressive numbers. The Monday, Aug. 4 telecast of FLCL ranked #42 among all shows on ad-supported cable among adults 18-34.
On February 24, 2007, FLCL was nominated for "Best Cast", and won "Best Comedy Series" and "Best Short Series" at the first American Anime Awards show.

In the November 2007 issue of Anime Insider, FLCL was ranked 4th in their list of the best English-licensed anime of all time.

The directors of Avatar: The Last Airbender, an American animated television series, claim inspiration from FLCL. Avatar director Giancarlo Volpe says the staff "were all ordered to buy FLCL and watch every single episode of it."

[Please refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLCL on Wikipedia for more information and references]