A short series of only 6 episodes, and shown on late-night TV multiple times, you may have heard of this one. Maybe you even tried to watch i8t, but had a really hard time following the wacky, wacky action. Don’t feel bad, it took me more than a few views to grasp what was going on.
Basically, the whole series is one big metaphor for puberty. The strange “changes” our protagonist goes through, the confusion with dealing with the opposite sex, etc.
In the series, the main character is a young man going through puberty. His older brother has gone to America, leaving behind his flamboyant girlfriend. He has developed an attraction to our hero, because he is the only friend he has. Enter the strange older girl. The main source of action in the series. An alien, no less. Top that off with a girl his own age who has a crush on him, and you have most guys saying “why didn’t things like that happen to me?”
So our hero finds himself going through many awakenings and changes, while life seems to spiral out of his control. So, things were so simple when we were kids; almost overnight it seems that things changed. Nothing was easy anymore. The alien was causing trouble, the old friend started causing mixed feelings, and suddenly the girls were lice-free.
Fooly Cooly, or FLCL, has a lot of subtle humor and metaphors that you have to keep in mind to capture the true elegance of the series. If you don’t want to think so much, just watch it and relax with the madness and amazing melodies of The Pillows.