FLCL

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FLCL, not much I can say about this other than it is my life, my bible, my faith, my passion, it is everything to me... I would sell my house before I would sell this manga...

The Anime is better, but the Manga brings me so many memories, and influenced me much like the Anime did, that the past few years, basically everything I\'ve done in my life revolves around Anime, FLCL was the first series I completed, and opened a whole new world...

The Manga is nothing like the Anime, but each houses a unique and excellent style filled with perversion that taught me a lot ... while growing up...

This is the best Anime ever made, and I give it a perfect score, because anything less would be an insult to this masterpiece...


Sorry about being biased... I just have to be when one series changes several years of my life so much... It gets me emotional in ways...

Surprisingly, I actually like the anime better then the manga. The manga tries a bit too hard to be serious and in some areas, it does it well but in others it feels like it’s a little forced. The anime made things a lot more fun and comical even if it was pretty random. The manga on the other hand, the idea of these characters being so serious when the world around them is going crazy just feels like they are becoming rather bland characters.

The manga though does make Naoto out to be more of a boy his own age who just has had ... a bad run in his life with people he kind of doesn’t really care much about. His father and grandfather are crazy, his father always getting into other peoples business and his grandfather wanting him to become a good baseball player. His mother is no where to be found although I could never tell if she just died or ran off somewhere. He has a teacher who tries to protect her students from the world and acts as though they are much more innocent then they are. Even a lot of the friends he has seem to outcast him or tease him. The only person he really seems to care about is his brother’s ex- girlfriend and yet she always seems to see him as his brother. I would understand why a boy like that would be in depression if the world around him was like that.

You could almost look at his world as the same with a video game called Mother (Earth Bound to some). In Mother, a young boy ends up with a strange power and goes on a quest to learn about the outside world, only to stop an evil alien that wants to destroy the world. In FLCL, Naoto is a normal boy who has strange things coming out of his head and ends up having to deal with aliens all while learning about growing up. I can’t say its exact, hell I could never say it was exactly the same type of story but for those of you that know Mother, the idea is very similar.

When we get near the end, though both the manga and the anime have different endings to one another, I still liked each of them for what they were. They just had a very different effect to the story and seemed like it was trying to say something different then the other. The Anime was much easier to interrupt then the manga and I felt like I was getting lost a bit more then I should but still, for the two volumes it was, it was pretty interesting to see the difference.

The artwork is all over the place from rather thick lines to small thin lines that look rather like sketches. There is a lot of negative or white space around the characters and when there is a background, it looks very much like a dream with almost a hazy look. Many of the lines feel like they were actually done with ball point pen or a paint brush and only some of the pages have a rather soft or smooth look to it.

"Nothing cool ever happens here."

This line of dialogue is the single largest lie in media history, regardless of medium. However much you may or may not have heard of FLCL, you probably have at least heard one thing; the story of this series is very....eccentric. It brings strange and interesting characters together to go through some of the most ridiculous events imaginable. One of the main characters fights robots with a ukulele for God's sake! Anyway, this review is specifically about the manga obviously so lets talk about that.

Art:
Honestly FLCL has some of the best and art of any manga series I have ... read to date. Not necessarily because it is so visually pleasing to me, but just because it is so appropriate for the story itself. As mentioned earlier, the story for FLCL is very unique and eccentric and the art matches it so well with its goofy and cartoony look. However there are times that panels can be rather hard to interpret and may irritate you. However these panels are far and few between as well as usually being just small action sequence panels.

Characters:
The characters of FLCL are all fun and interesting and each are noteworthy in their own way whether you are talking about the eccentric and violent Haruko or the impatient and short-tempered Takkun. Without the colorful cast, FLCL would not be nearly as fun as it is and would not be as memorable.

Story:
The story of FLCL, for me, is where the series is weakest. Not to say that it is bad by any means, rather quite the opposite, nonetheless it is its weakest point. The manga especially may confuse its readers at times with its plot. Even though I have always been a very comprehensive reader, it did take me two readings to fully understand what was going on. Because of this I would recommend watching the anime first rather than reading the manga like myself, as it is easy to get lost at times in the manga, where the anime seems to do a better job of explaining the situations the story puts you in. Though you should also keep in mind that the two stories in the FLCL anime and the FLCL manga are NOT the same. There are many tie-ins, but they are unique stories.

Overall:
I greatly enjoyed the manga (especially on my second read through after completing the anime), and would recommend it to anyone wishing to experience a similar, but significantly different version of the FLCL they know.

One of those rare instances where the anime adaptation is actually MUCH better than the manga. The manga is basically unreadable. It's incredibly hard to follow, and makes no sense. It erratically jumps around... It's just a very hard read, to say the least. I would go back and forth between the same few pages trying to figure out what was going on before eventually giving up. On a positive note, the art is pretty good. It's not ground-breaking by any means, but is rather nice.

Watch the anime first! The manga will make you not want to watch the anime, and you will be missing ... out.

First off, i’d like to say that the manga came AFTER the anime and they are two completely different stories.

With this manga, i couldnt understand absolutely anything that was happening, and i dont mean that in a good way. The manga is extremely hard to follow. I dont know anyone who’s read this who could understand jackshit.

The manga isnt bad, but whats bad is how hard to follow.

(Excuse me for the errors and not writing this well its 3am)

It doesnt feel like FLCL because in FLCL it was random and nonsense was happening everywhere but you could follow it. This felt like a clusterfuck of ... random ideas put together in what supposedly is FLCL. They just took characters from flcl and made it into this.

Im guessing it would be more enjoyable if you could understand it but i certainly didnt.

Overall: 6.

Edit: now, flcl was also hard to follow and had lots of themes that were hard to understand but the creator said “its okay to be stupid” while in this i couldnt understand jackshit.

This is the only show/book I won't be giving a score to, and with a good reason.

This manga is basically unreadable; the plot is an absolute clusterfuck, and sadly not in a good way. I've really tried to follow this manga, but there were just too many things happening at once, and it suffers trying to explain itself. I've managed to complete this manga, but I'm relieved to say I'm not the only one who thought this was a complete non-sense of a book.
Don't get me wrong; I don't consider this a bad manga, but this shit is Evangelion-tier or even worse. Hell, much ... worse. Unless you have a iq of 500, don't expect to get what's going on past chapter 5.

I don't think it's a hot take to say that the anime is WAY better than the manga in this case. The FLCL manga is VERY hard to follow and figure out what's going on, not just from a plot and story standpoint, but the paneling and art itself. If I hadn't watched the show beforehand, I would've been completely lost reading this (not that I wasn't confused regardless), so I pity the wretch that goes into this manga blind. Even if you are a fan of the FLCL anime, I can only recommend this manga to the utmost fans of the show. The manga ... is basically just a worse retelling of the events of the show, with a few interesting, yet minor, changes; at the end of the day this only serves as a novelty or a footnote for the series as a whole. Cool to check out, but doesn't have much value.

Art: some people say it's bad. But it's a very abstract and surreal style that perfectly complements the abstract and surreal story. This style would have been much more well received if it had been colored too. I read the omnibus that had some color parts which were just overall more pleasing to my eye.

Plot: let's start off by saying that I won't rate it by a number because it deserves somewhere between a 6 and an 8 which depends on your admiration for the FLCL franchise. Unfortunately for me I saw (and loved) the original anime first (from which this manga is based) so ... throughout my reading I found myself constantly trying to compare and create connections between the two, of which there are none. I honestly just couldn't follow the story there is not really much else to say.

Quality: again, I read the omnibus so from that standpoint for a omnibus it was really nice. Thick covers and decent pages. The inks were nice and dark as well. The spine held up well and so far nothing has come apart.

Well that's my review. Just wanted to put my two cents in the jar. If this review has left you feeling confused and unsure then you are primed to start reading it! Enjoy!

The FLCL manga and anime is the quintessential "you just don't get it" duo.

This is a super odd manga read. It's FLCL targeted at only those who really enjoyed the anime (so people like me).

It's story is a complete clusterfuck to an even greater extent than the anime. There's constant time skips back and fourth between different scenes making it really hard to comprehend if your only casually reading it. Stuff that had some explanation in the anime now goes unexplained and seems to occur at random. However, many things that were left ambiguous in the manga are now out right stated so it sorta ... works both ways. A lot of the plot has been changed, pretty much to the point wheres it's straight up a different story which only follows the same basic beats as the anime. It's also full of all sorts of fanservice (even the horny type, for better or for worse) like *SPOILERS* the bunny costume appearing right at the end, Haruko actually admitting to falling in love with Naota eventually (although this is skeptical) and a really out of place implied sex between characters which was super weird

The characters have also been changed quite significantly. Naota and Mamimi are similar to the anime (however, Mamimi's mental state is shown to be much worse and is explored to a much greater extent) but the biggest change is to Haruko who is less of an ambiguous space agent and more a sadistic god in the manga. She has no qualms with ending a person's life to further her own goals and even goes to the extent of almost executing Mamimi with a rifle for posing a threat to her plans. Amarao has a very insignificant role in the manga, only appearing for one panel. Eri also plays a much bigger role in the manga and has an extremely obvious crush on Naota unlike in the anime where it's more hinted that she has a liking for Naota. The biggest inclusion though is Naota's brother actually being given a face and personality, appearing in a few flashback pages to flesh out Mamimi's past.

The art is this manga's biggest strength. It's sketchy, hyper-stylized and looks purposefully unfinished, which isn't to everyone's taste, but perfectly captures the zany and creative nature of FLCL. The only problem with the art being the puzzling panel layout which paired with the mess of a story, makes this manga a confusing read.

Unfortunately, there are a few inherent drawback of adapting FLCL into a manga. Firstly is that you (obviously) can't have music which was one of FLCL's major selling points and is where a lot of the praise for the anime is directed at; many scenes that were lifted from the anime don't have the same impact in the manga due to losing such an integral element. Secondly, FLCL was a display of GAINAX's raw animating prowess after Evangelion. Adapting some of the manic scenes in the anime to fit onto paper is a neigh impossible task. What they do here is close enough but doesn't create nearly the same buzz as it's anime counterpart does.

This manga doesn't reach the heights of it's anime brethren but is a good supplemental read for those who enjoy and understand the insanity that is FLCL. It's a different interpretation which strips back some fluff to tell a more focused, character based story. If you want a slightly darker, more cruel FLCL as reprieve for the god awful FLCL sequels than this manga is probably for you.

Plus, FLCL Omnibus (a full collection of every volume) is a extremely cheap buy on amazon so it's pretty much a no brainer for anyone who really enjoyed FLCL.