Forum - View topicShelf Life - Miracle
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pparker
 Posts: 1185 Location: Florida |
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LOL. Classic signature material. This is one of the funniest lines I've read in a long time, and I'm a guy.
But this... I think we watched two different shows. FLCL is masterfully constructed. Excel Saga is fun once or maybe twice if you can stand to listen to either of the VAs doing Excel, but wears out fairly quickly. |
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CCSYueh
 Posts: 2707 Location: San Diego, CA |
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See, that's what I was saying. There are some who like both, but it seems for the most part one is either a fan of FLCL or a fan of Excel. I love the satire of Excel. Even though one of the things that drives me crazy about Sailor Moon is all the Japanese VA's (female) going on & on & it sounds rather irritatingly screechy, I can stand Kotono Mitsuishi as Excel. Bobobo works for me because even though it is surreal, it's also satire. FLCL is pretty much all surreal which is why it feels like empty meanderings to me--as though the staff said "How about THIS!" & threw it in. All that stuff about FLCL & what it means when it means nothing, robots coming out of his head, etc. Excel we have the characters killing their artist. We get the horror spoof. The sci-fi spoof. The animal show spoof, etc. Black Jack, the intelligent dog, the loli perv, the cool bishonen who isn't always cool (does better in the manga), government officials with ulterior motives, (cyborgs in the manga), a girl who dies all the time which her cohorts accept. |
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Top Gun
 Posts: 4575 |
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Except most of FLCL does mean something. At its heart, it's essentially a story about a boy dealing with the changes that accompany puberty and the consequences of growing up, and many of the more surreal aspects of the show comment on that. (A good portion of the rest are homages to or parodies of various other series and pop-culture elements, including such wonderfully diverse sources as South Park, John Woo films, Lupin the 3rd, and Gainax's other works.) I know that a great deal of FLCL retains a "wtf factor," especially the first time you watch it, but when you really sit down and look at the elements it presents, there isn't much that's thrown in there just for the hell of it. "Swinging the bat," the sour drinks, the eyebrows, the shots of the jet taking off, the spicy curry, hell, even the robots-from-heads all tie into something concrete. |
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CCSYueh
Posts: 2707 Location: San Diego, CA |
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I'm sorry for the unfortunate phrasing. I meant how the characters say FLCL as if it is a sexual term & various fans argue up & down on that point. I did not mean to imply the title means nothing. I've been seriously collecting anime since my husband died in 2001 & in that time I have not seen 2 fan bases as divided within a genre as FLCL & Excel. It's not like fans of Gundam hate Eva & vice versa. Fans of Bleach do not hate DBZ & vice versa. THe split between fans of FLCL & fans of Excel is not dissimilar to fans of the Oakland Raiders & fans of other teams they allegedly have a special rivalry with (isn't it all the other football team?) Locally one is supposed to love the Chargers & hate the Raiders. THis is pretty much how FLCL & Excel fans seem to be. Yeah, there are some (just like I could give a rat's rear about football) who could care less out of disinterest & there are those who don't care if the Raiders win as long as they're not playing their team (no special animosity). I mean-Excel has a plot. There is even a point to Hyatt dying all the time (faulty reproduction). Just got vol 20 of the manga in the mail (FLCL was what-2 manga volumes based on 6 episodes of anime?). Kabapu (who's actually been around for centuries) is still continuing his campaign against Il Palazzo (He really doesn't like Il Palazzo. he's placed himself in cryogenic sleep, defrosting from time to time to try to defeat Il Palazzo as I recall from the revelation a few volumes back). It's not just parody & satire, but it IS reality based which FLCL isn't. The metaphors-whatever. The issue is robots sprouting from someone's head is surreal. Bobobo is surreal, but it also more parody surreal so the show comes off as more parody than surreal. The iron-shaped bldg, the robots, etc in FLCL are surreal. That doesn't make FLCL bad. In a way it makes it more unique since there is way more parody & satire out there than surrealism. But I have noticed a decided split in the fan bases & I don't doubt it boils down to the artistic differences in the way these 2 shows unfold & thus how the fans react. I have issues with original anime projects/anime by committee so I tend to dislike them because I feel too many cooks spoiling the broth vs a single vision. Not to say we haven't seen anime projects totally destroy a perfectly good manga plot, but when it's done well, I prefer manga-based anime |
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