And unsurprisingly, here’s my overall streaming review for the flip flaps. Flip Flappers was a standout show that I’d really love to see get more recognition, and the review monster is a hungry beast, so this was basically inevitable. Hopefully 2017 will bring us a few more gems of this level!
You can check out my full review over at ANN.
I’ve made a note to myself to try and come back and re-watch FF in a year or so… I think it’ll take that long to digest all the critique and watch it with enlightened eyes.
Seems like an awesome show. I was waiting to see if it sticks the landing, but now that it has, I’ll have to check it out shortly. It reminds me of 2013’s Kyousougiga, which is one of my all-time favorite anime.
Btw, did you hear the rumor that the Flip Flappers director and Masaaki Yuasa are teaming up for an animated series? I’ve heard the announcement will take place in March. It’s also been mentioned that the series might be fairly sexual in nature, which could be worrisome or inspiring depending on which direction they take it. Either way, I’m it will be brilliant (assuming the rumors are true.)
(If you’re wondering, the rumors came from some Japanese tweets following a panel with Osamu Kobayashi, the director of BECK and a buddy of Yuasa’s. The panel also supposedly mentioned the two upcoming Yuasa movies, and an upcoming Kobayashi project, though I can’t confirm any of this.)
Ironically, my own experience of Flip Flappers was pretty much exactly the same as I recall Bobduh describing his experience of Re:Zero being. I made it two episodes in, but found one of the main characters to be so utterly, tooth-grindingly annoying that I quickly tossed the show.
Since then, I’ve heard a lot of people rave about it, and toyed with the idea of picking it back up again, but none of the raves have quite overpowered my reluctance based on my actual experience of it.
(The parts of the first episode that pretty heavily implied that the previous girls that Papika tried–and failed–to partner with didn’t survive the process didn’t help either, with Papika not even showing much remorse about it. So she didn’t come across to me as merely an incredibly annoying character, but rather an incredibly annoying serial child murderer. And I’m like… “um, ok, seriously Flip Flappers, you’re seriously expecting me to feel the slightest kind of affection for this character… why, exactly?”)
Except that all these failed experiments are just our speculation. The show never cared to explain that aspect so it might as well just in our heads.
The unmoving body of the girl we see lying on the ground in episode one certainly wasn’t just in our heads. Nor is it speculation that after it worked with Cocona, Papika was very specifically elated about the fact that Cocona was “alive!”
I mean, why on earth would Papika be so downright ecstatic specifically about Cocona being “alive” if it was a process that didn’t kill even those that failed it?
The writers are pretty blatantly bashing us over the head with what the fate was of all those pre-Cocona children that Papika went after, including the girl whose sprawled-out body we see with our own eyes, that Papika writes off as “another bust”.
“Nor is it speculation that after it worked with Cocona, Papika was very specifically elated about the fact that Cocona was “alive!”
I mean, why on earth would Papika be so downright ecstatic specifically about Cocona being “alive” if it was a process that didn’t kill even those that failed it?”
I would go as far as arguing that that was a mistranslation of the original line (生きてた！) in the subs. A more accurate translation would be “You were alive!” or “You’ve been alive!” It’s hard to explain why that’s an important distinction without entering spoiler territory, but suffice it to say that it’s not necessarily referring to Cocona surviving the transition into Pure Illusion.
As for the girl who was “another bust”, yeah, like Tombeet said, that bit is never adequately explained. In fact I had forgotten about it entirely by the end of the series, and my impression is that so did the show’s (remaining) creators.
Huh, interesting. Well, thank you for that information; I’m glad to hear that it’s possible that it wasn’t as dark as it seemed, if it was indeed a mistranslation.
Still wish they’d alluded to or explained it somehow, if it actually was supposed to be the case that the “bust” girls actually recovered. But even so, at least it might not have been as nasty a business as it seemed going by the official subs. Thanks.