Posted in: Anime, TV | Tagged: flcl, flcl reanimated

FLCL Reanimated: 300+ Fan/Animators Bring New Life to Anime's Best Ep

FLCL Reanimated is a fan project involving over 300 animators who recreated the best episode of the classic anime with some amazing styles.

FLCL is possibly the greatest anime cult classic of the millennium. Released as a single six-episode season in 2000, it was like an injection of punk rock adrenaline-fueled mashup of Japanese indie guitar punk rock, multiple cut-up schizophrenic anime and art styles, coupled with the confusion of teenage hormones and anime tropes. For many teen anime fans, it became their anthem, their totem, the beloved pop artefact that got them through adolescence. The sequel series that emerged in the late 2010s and early 2020s didn't capture that original mystery or gleeful manic insanity. Now over 300 fans across the world have finished and premiered FLCL Reanimated, a four-year project that's a labour of love that sets out to capture that manic, schizo, gonzo energy of the original series by remaking arguably the best episode, "Brittle Bullet".

"Brittle Bullet" encompassed everything FLCL contained and represented: geeks, borderline-problematic horniness, Science Fiction, a secret organisation fighting against aliens, giant mechs, really cool punk rock music, a spoof of action movies particularly John Woo-style shootouts, adolescent angst and most of all, a kid hitting puberty and confused about two older girls he's attracted to, both of whom tease and manipulate him, and one of them a sociopathic femme fatale from outer space who rides a cool Vespa scooter. FLCL Reanimated creator Kobe Kendall, aka "shleptboi," posted randomly on his FLCL fan Twitter account four years ago, musing that it would be cool to reanimate the show, and got so many responses that he decided to go ahead with it.

He launched the FLCL Reanimated account to accept volunteers who wanted to get involved, and their number ballooned to over 300. They started working bit by bit four years ago. Now the project is complete. The result is a 26-minute hallucinatory mashup that's even more manic and disjointed than the original episode of FLCL, which feels like mainlining twenty-four hours of Adult Swim and recaptures the spirit and vibe of the original anime episode. Imagine a living, breathing love letter created in the style of a William Burroughs cut-up but with sound and vision on top of text. Several of the animators have since entered or even graduated from animation school. Polygon deserves credit for its interview with the creators of the project.

The creators released test shots for the project and loads of freebies, including the teaser trailer, a flipbook, and a promotional PDF. They even released a huge soundtrack and tie-in album, FLCL REANIMATED PRESENTS: MUSICAL MECHANICA, comprising more than 40 bands and over 2 hours of music, all for free. All this is for a fan project and not for profit; thus, it is all free. They've created a fan version of an anime franchise merch ecosystem here. It's quite impressive.

The original first season of FLCL is streaming on Hulu, MAX, and Crunchyroll in Japanese and English dubs. FLCL Reanimated is streaming on YouTube (also linked above) and Newgrounds. This project expresses unbridled joy, and how fan devotion inspires creativity and even future careers.

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