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Nonsense for the sake of nonsense is the ideal way to describe 80% of FLCL. It truly stands out for its extremities, as the high points are great, and the low points are absolutely miserable, which would be nice if it wasn't mostly low points

good stuff:
The music is great, it does a great job building the emotion the story fails to deliver. The artstyle is great, it's full of personality and provides the only actual humor in the show. Character designs and backgrounds are genuinely top notch, and at least makes the slop shine.

The first 2 episodes are actually really good! Despite ... still holding a lot of the flaws contained in the rest of the show, they stand out in isolation as a very interestingly told story about Samejima and Naoto, who in these episodes are very likable, acting as excellent foils to one another. These 2 episodes nicely cover the ways these 2 characters have grown before we come to meet them, and cover the themes of coming of age through very interesting paths.

bad stuff:
This anime feels pointless. The dialogue amazes me with it's insistance on providing nothing to the viewing experience. Conversations between characters are built entirely of disjointed feeling interactions and irritatingly unfunny and uncomfortable innuendoes that shatter any interesting character dynamics or relationships, alongside defeating any chance of making it's cast feel as though they have depth. On the topic of innuendoes, FLCL is unabashedly horny, which in it's own right is annoying and distracting, but this is elevated by the main character being 12. Watching a 12 year old go through several plot lines that are thinly veiled representations of sexual acts, usually with Haruko, an adult, is outright disgusting, and makes covering the screen the most pleasant way to watch a wide handful of scenes. That's also failing to mention that other minors in the story are sexualized as well, whether that's a 17 year old or another 12 year old. Gross.

Haruko in her own right is utterly abhorrent, and weakens the anime with her presence significantly. The character seems like it's trying to act as comic relief and a plot device in Naoto's arc, but fails spectacularly at both. FLCL is to it's core not funny, trying to grab laughs by dangling the idea of sex in front of the viewers like jingling keys, shown through Haruko more than any other character. Her jokes consist of: grooming Naoto, hitting Naoto, and saying mindless gibberish. Every scene including her became significantly more difficult to watch, as she never said anything that wasn't annoying or creepy, which is a shame since most the scenes have her in them.

The plot also has a way of going nowhere. Things are poorly explained in seemingly an attempt to be deemed deep. Symbolism is handled in a similar way, much of it feeling unrelated to anything else in the story, making any idea of provoking thought to fall through relatively quickly. The 3rd episode is absolutely horrible in every way, from symbolism to the constant sexualization of an elementary schooler. Naoto's dad is also aggressively unfunny and as a result aggressively annoying.