FLCL: Fooly Cooly, Vol. 3 [Import]

Please tell me you never expected a NORMAL ending to the weirdest anime in history, "FLCL." What does Fooly Cooly mean anyway?

Anyway, the already-freakish storylines of "FLCL" reach spectacular new heights in the third and final volume, in which we discover the plots of the Medical Mechanica, Haruko's true goals, and the looming threat to all of Earth! It's a bit like watching a sci-fi movie and a kids' cartoon, while ingesting large amounts of acid -- and then some.

After Kamon finds Haruko smooching Naota, he challenges his son to a duel -- resulting in a guerilla-style battle in a grassy field with air guns. In the meantime, Haruko dukes it out with the Department of Interstellar Immigration and Amarao (who seems to have had a prior relationship with her. And when Naota tries to act grown-up and manly around Mamimi, his head suddenly sprouts the largest robot yet -- a giant hand that doubles as a cloaked gunslinger!

Then it's time for the FoolyClimax -- after Haruko goes absent for awhile, Naota decides to escape his boring life and go on the road with her. Amarao is searching for the Terminal Core that will activate the giant hand, and gives Naota some odd advice about the selfish, strange girl he's traveling with. And Mamimi has a new pet -- a robot that she gleefully feeds with her enemies' cell phones and motorcycles.

When the Hand is finally activated, will Medical Mechanica's diabolical plans be fulfilled? What ARE their diabolical plans? Who is the great Space Pirate Atomsk, and what will be the final thing to spring from Naota's head?

It's hard to find an anime that is full of as much unadulterated crackiness and wackiness as "FLCL," and the last two (of six) episodes of the series may actually be the weirdest of this all-too-short series. Not many series could string together aliens, motorbikes, truck-swallowing robot cats and blatant South Park homages in a convoluted coming-of-age tale. All that, and it has crazy alien chicks who dress like Elvis.

The first of these two stories is a sort of slow buildup: we get the origins of the vast hand, and the long-running feud between Haruko and the freaky-browed Amarao. Then the final episode erupts like a volcano of surreal sci-fi, flinging Naota into a maelstrom of giant robots, interstellar conspiracies, and sexual symbolism (lookit that giant robot smashing between Mamami's feet!). And no series can have dialogue half as weird as this ("That's discriminatory language used against undeveloped planets!").

Admittedly it answers a few questions raised before, if you can call stuff about smoothing brain wrinkles an answer. But most of them are left flapping merrily in the breeze, and somehow you don't really care because it was too entertaining.

Despite all the kissing with older girls, Naota really becomes an adolescent here -- he's got the hormones and the intense romantic feelings, but he's also still recognizably a fragile kid. And we finally see why Haruko has been using Naota's head and what her ultimate goal is -- it turns out she's even weirder than we thought. And Amarao seems to have been her admirer in the past ("Where are your eyebrows? Why did you take them off?").

The grand slam finale of "FLCL" is a double dose of bizarre and a quadruple eruption of pure bizarrity -- and the biggest problem with it is that you don't want it to end. Ever. Fooly cooly!

FLCL was surprisingly a good anime. It's name (Fooly Cooly) might throw some off. Just think of the name as the creators way of expressing the uniqueness of this anime. I'll admit that I don't prefer to many animes that have alot of gimicks and comedy. I usually prefer more serious animes such as Serial Experiments Lain, but this FLCL has definately put forth the effort. So why did I only give it a 4 star rating if I have nothing negative to say about it, some may ask. The reason is simple. It's just to damn short.

This show is just like Trigun, Cowboy Bebop, and Rurouni Kenshin; its highly overrated, stupid, and pointless. What is so good about seeing a bunch of random crazy stuff happening without any orchestration or plot? Like I said before, this is basically what you would get if System Of A Down created an anime. This anime should be called "Douchy Floosy!!" Go watch Ninja Scroll or La Blue Girl instead of this garbage.