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So I've been listening to a lot of music from my childhood recently, and that inevitably lead me to listening to The Pillows, a great Japanese Alt Rock Band that was pretty big in the late 90s, early 2000s (iirc.) They produced most of, if not the entire OST of cult classic anime FOOLY COOLY or FLCL.

FLCL is, in my opinion, an anime everyone should watch at least once, and imo it's a very good litmus test for whether or not a person has any kind of media literacy and is able to pick out themes and stuff.

I say all this as basically the long way of saying I listened to a song I really liked when I was younger that was also part of the OST of an Anime I really liked when I was younger and so I watched it all over again today, and now I'm gonna make it your problem.

So anyone with any kind of media literacy can tell you that the major theme of FLCL is growing up, and anyone with decent media literacy can tell you that on the flipside the actual theme of FLCL is "The most immature thing you can do is grow up too fast." With a secondary theme being "Adults will use maturity to manipulate you."

But what if I told you there's a secret, third theme, and it actually changes who the main character of the show is, and it's stated in the opening scene of the first episode, with the REAL main character?

So the show opens on Naota and Samemija Mamimi, immediately establishing Naota and Mamimi's very codependent relationship, with Naota using Mamimi to feel more mature than he actually is, and Mamimi using Naota as a rebound and stand in for his older brother Tasuku, who moved to America to pursue a career in Baseball, which has burned both Naota and Mamimi in different ways.

This is also the establishing shot for the actual theme of the show. In a voice over, Naota explains that nothing amazing ever happens in the town of Mabase, directly after Mamimi explains to him that if she were ever to "Overflow" something amazing would probably happen.

Naota's claims of nothing amazing ever happening in Mabase are, of course, undercut by the antics of the entirety of FLCL, but, as an itty bitty Egg living in a small, nowhere town in Kansas USA, and even later, as a Trans Woman, in a different, but still very much the same Small, Nowhere Town in Kansas USA, the specific type of Ennui Naota feels is well known to those who live in Small, Nowhere towns across the globe.

It's the kind of apathy that lives and thrives in small communities that revile change. It is, in its truest form, Stagnation, and it is what FLCL is really about. Stagnation is the Enemy of Maturity. And that is why Mamimi is the true protagonist of FLCL.

Mamimi has the most to gain from holding onto the past, the most to gain from nothing ever changing. And she fights against it with all her strength, to the point that she'd rather die (or have the world destroyed) than have them change. When Naota manages to "Swing The Bat" and stop the bomb heading for Mabase, she's disappointed, showing that she's tired of the life she's got, but not so much yet that she's willing to take her life herself.

Mamimi yearns for Stagnation. Yearns for the past, when things were better. We never see what Mamimi's home life is like, to the point that there is no credible evidence as to whether or not she's homeless. What we do know is that she's incredibly poor, bullied, and alone, and for at least some of that, it didn't used to be that way. She used to have Tasuku, or Ta-kun, she used to not be bullied, she may have even had a good relationship with her parents, or a home to go to.

But things keep changing. Tasuku left, people look down on her, Naota is maturing, meanwhile she's stuck in the past, and is fighting to stay there...until she can't anymore. Naota is no longer satisfied with being a stand-in for his older brother, she's going to need a job to support herself, and Tasuku isn't coming back.

Through out all of this, there is a theme of Mamimi taking pictures, hinting that even she, in fact, has dreams of the future. Which does culminate in the ending, of Mamimi leaving Mabase to become a Photographer, her picture of Naota holding Haruko's Rickenbacker 4001 is even seen in the magazine the anime is named after, Fooly Coolly.

Mamimi is the secret protagonist of FLCL because she embodies the secret theme of the show, that Stagnation, never growing beyond the fence posts of your backyard, is truly the enemy of Maturity. Throughout the show, all the children spend their time trying to be more mature than they are, while Mamimi is seen as having never matured despite actually, secretly, being more mature than all of them, but wishing she didn't have to be. Throughout the show, she is abandoned, belittled, and bullied, and it isn't until the very end of the show that she breaks, feeding the technology of all the people who wronged her to Core Ta-kun. Even trying to stop Core Ta-kun from eating the truck of the Friend Trio because they didn't do anything to her. Then she escapes. She breaks the confines of Mabase, and goes on to become a Photographer. Was she successful? Was she happy? We'll likely never know, but that doesn't matter. All that matters is she broke free.

#FLCL #Fooly Cooly #Anime #Samejima Mamimi #Mamimi Samejima #Naota Nandaba

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