Flip Flappers

Episode 7

Not to be outdone by Yuri!!! on Ice this week, Flip Flappers's 7th episode also took its audience's lingering suspicion that this story might be about a romantic relationship between its two same-sex leads and finally answered with a resounding "YUP." Of course, there's not much point in comparing these two shows (and not just because one's about two gay boys while the other is about two gay girls). While Yuri!!! on Ice paints its character relationships and conflicts in concrete terms, Flip Flappers has been colorfully abstract from the start, forcing viewers to interpret what they're seeing in more roundabout ways, as well as generating an emotional obliqueness that might limit its audience. (If Flip Flappers didn't already have a fair amount in common with Kunihiko Ikuhara's body of work before, it definitely does now!)

But before we get into the mushy stuff, Cocona and Papika are forced to recognize that their good deed from last episode has potentially irreversible consequences. The newer, happier Iroha hasn't stopped painting completely, but she would rather spend time with her fellow classmates than with our heroines, and she has also decided to throw out a few of her extra paintings in the interest of keeping the art room tidy. At first, I was worried that Flip Flappers was asserting an uncomfortable cliché, that adversity is what makes good artists and people who live happy lives aren't driven to make compelling art. Therefore, therapy just serves to diminish the latent genius in talented creators. (Yes, it sounds ridiculous, but there are many people in the art world who seriously believe this. It's definitely an argument for a whole other article that I don't have space for here.)

Fortunately, the truth turns out to be much more complex, meant to reflect more on Cocona and Papika's feelings than Iroha's. This change in their senpai isn't necessarily good or bad; it's just different. In one life, Iroha is lonely, but she's also a more prolific artist with the capacity to inspire others beyond her reach and give solace to other lonely weirdos. In the other, Iroha is more confident and surrounded by friends her own age, even if the butterfly effect "what-ifs" of her talent to inspire are more diminished in the process. Just like in real life, we don't have the option of putting the two Irohas together and asking them which one they would rather be. (That's assuming they can even arrive at one answer! Psychologically speaking, both would probably argue fervently for their own existence because it's the only one they've ever known.) We can only deal with the choices we've made (or the choices others have made for us in this case) and the person they've made us into, and there's no going back. Iroha hasn't been hurt by this change, but our heroines have, because change by its very nature is frightening.

This change Pure Illusion has forced on their real world scares the girls, so they demand an explanation from Dr. Hidaka. He basically tells us what we already knew with just a little extra detail: Pure Illusion is a world of dreams and untapped possibilities that lies parallel to our own, but it isn't anything so simple as jumping into one dream that one person is having at a time. Instead, Pure Illusion is a conglomeration of experiences from various dreamers at once, humans and animals and robots and ghosts and god-knows-what-else, all dreaming together in a big colorful mess! So was the world of Iroha's paintings we saw last episode Iroha's dream, or was it Cocona and Papika's thoughts of Iroha that constructed their own dream of her paintings, connected to her mind through the memory gateway? The truth is probably some bizarre combination of factors, which may explain why Uxekull transformed into a heroic version of Dr. Salt in the rabbit world: Uxekull was dreaming of being a hero, and Cocona was dreaming of a strong adult to save her.

Like Flip Flappers as an anime itself, these details behind Pure Illusion are intentionally impenetrable, more about in-the-moment emotional experience than any concrete facts behind the veil, but now that Cocona and Papika know how this alternate dimension works, their next journey to Pure Illusion becomes more like a lucid dream, where they find themselves in greater control with a better understanding of what everything means. After Hidaka and Bu-chan give them the big boot back into Pure Illusion against their wishes, the girls find themselves in the same dream on opposite sides. We never see Papika's version of the dream (probably because it would reveal too many spoilers), but Cocona's betrays her own fear of change as she plays with and rejects a series of not-Papikas, searching for the "real one" she already knows. Then again, is the Papika she knows any more "real" than the Iroha she lost? Could there be more than one version of Papika in her life, in their years of more adventuring on the horizon together?

The gradual shift in these not-Papikas make clear what many viewers have long suspected: Cocona is falling in love with her friend, and that unstoppable change terrifies her. One by one, she cycles through a series of adorable alternate companions to the Papika she knows: there's a sweet little sister, friendly classmate boy, creepy Sadako girl, sadistic ojou-sama, grumpy delinquent boy, trendy classmate girl, sporty bishounen, and finally, a seductive succubus. The trend becomes more and more obvious as time passes; Papika transforms from the innocent moe creature Cocona hung around simply to protect from harm into a playmate, a curiosity, an admirer, an inspiration, and gradually, an object of desire. At first, Cocona tries to mitigate these feelings by making Papika into a boy, but by the end, Papika is lying in bed next to Cocona as another girl who wants to be intimate with her. Cocona still refuses to address these feelings for what they are, insisting that she wants the "real" Papika back, but several hints sprinkled throughout the dream make it clear that there's no going back when the emotions of adolescence begin to change your heart.

As it turns out, Yuri!!! on Ice isn't the only anime Flip Flappers has an odd harmony with this week. Anyone watching JoJo's Bizarre Adventure this season will probably have an easier time recognizing the meaning behind the fingernail clippers Cocona finds in a dark drawer at the back of her imagination. Fingernails are still on Cocona's mind as a result of the change in Iroha (from a girl who "can't" wear nail polish to a girl who loves it) so Sadako-Papika uses her creepy charms to show Cocona the nail clippers she's hidden in her own mind. Of course, if Cocona isn't going to address the emotions behind imagining Papika in a negligee, she's definitely not going to think about an innocuous pair of clippers, but the audience (especially Jojo's fans) are bound to recognize their symbolism immediately. Fingernail clippers are a tool for trying to reverse a slow but unstoppable change. (They can also be used as a symbol for trust and intimacy just like ear-cleaning, but nobody actually clips their nails in this episode, so I guess we'll hold onto that for later.) Cocona has always been scared of moving forward in life, and now that she knows her future means holding back a floodgate of feelings for Papika, she's more desperate than ever to stop time from moving forward. Of course, she can't do this any more than she can stop her nails from growing, so what now?

Well, this episode doesn't quite get there, since the "real" Papika finds Cocona and rescues her before she's forced to confront the ultimatum of a life without Papika vs. a life where Papika might change (or change her). Showing up in a rocketship of all things, Papika's words suggest that she was experiencing the same dream in the opposite way, which begs the question of what her different Coconas must have looked like. We get an alarming hint in the episode's final moments, when the activation of Papika's own amorphous fragment (it's in her ankle) causes her to flash back to a forgotten life. In some other world or time, Papika was crying alongside Dr. Salt at the loss of a woman named Mimi, who happens to look a lot like Cocona as she disappears in a flash of light holding a baby. Was that version of "Cocona" actually Cocona's now-grandmother? Is Dr. Salt trying to get his lover back by futzing around with Pure Illusion, creating a world with several different possible Coconas? All we know right now is that unlike Yayaka's cult, FLIP-FLAP isn't interested in creating a world without conflict. Dr. Salt seems to think that conflict and change are necessary to life, so why does he want to "liberate" Pure Illusion, and what does that really mean?

Even in its most thematically straightforward episode, Flip Flappers offers viewers way more questions than answers. It also packs in another heap of visual references, from Shinji's sunset train car of introspection from Evangelion to Sophie's dream-ending black maw from Howl's Moving Castle. At this point, I think it's safe to say that Flip Flappers's thematic substance is ancillary to its desire for artistic playtime. There's a lot going on here, but the show is not particularly economical about integrating its ideas with its imagery. While I'm positive now that the show is exploring a budding romantic relationship between Cocona and Papika, with the emotions and fears that grow out of this change, I still don't actually know much about these two as characters beyond their symbology in a gorgeous yet simple tale of adolescent coming-of-age.

I love Flip Flappers, and I'm eager to see where it wants to take us in the end, but a couple redrafts of those earlier episodes could have made the thematic impact of these twilight twists stronger. Even if its rocky attempts at emotional depth have kept it from being a great series so far, I'm happy that it's trying to do great things with its artistry instead of trotting out the same old story beats. Let's hope it really blows the lid off all this potential in its final five.

Rating: A-

Flip Flappers is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Jacob wasn't prepared for this much gay in one week, but he's not complaining. You can follow Jake here on Twitter.