Flip Flappers’ twelfth episode opens with Papika in an entirely new setting, trapped in a strange cave with bars over its entrance. Don’t expect any airtight explanation for this situation – we’re visiting the purgatory where she apparently spent time after colliding with Mimi in the past, but that’s about all the justification we’re gonna get for Papika’s age regression and strange current self. Like Yayaka’s nefarious organization, this setting underlines Flip Flappers’ clear lack of passion for narrative connective tissue; unlike Yayaka’s benefactors, Papika’s origin story actually is a pretty key element of this narrative, and so this cavalier handwaving certainly smarts. It essentially feels like a reprise of Penguindrum’s cages, devices the story placed a few of its characters for some nebulous amount of time because damnit, we gotta pull this story together somehow.
The rest of this episode isn’t exactly bulletproof, but it’s fortunately more focused and satisfying than that whole cage scenario. With Yayaka and Papika having resolved their differences, the two of them race together into Pure Illusion, pursuing Mimi and their friend over snowy peaks and vast chasms. Saving its emotional finale for the, well, finale, Flip Flappers instead spends this episode on the visceral chase, as Papika and Yayaka physically fight to regain their friend. This is a boss rush episode, and what a rush it is.
On Cocona’s side, this episode is mostly spent in an incapacitated daze, as she’s gently pampered by her long-lost mother. Though Mimi’s own story has been somewhat circuitous and hastily relayed, what she represents for Cocona speaks to the core of this show’s emotional narrative. Mimi represents a retreat for Cocona, a return to the certain uncertainty of the first episode. Cocona slowly emerged from her shell over the course of this series, but having been betrayed by both Papika and Yayaka, she’s now retreated even more fiercely into her original stasis. And Mimi, or at least this aspect of Mimi, is happy to encourage that retreat, assuring her daughter that “you don’t need to care what people think or come up with your own answers anymore.” Salt’s abandonment of his daughter was inexcusable, but Mimi’s obsessive control is just as terrible in its own way. Parents, huh.
Finally confronting Mimi, Papika presents her answer: she doesn’t want Mimi or Cocona, she wants both. And why not? The two of them clearly represent different things to her, and there’s no need to only have one close relationship. Of course, this fragment of Mimi can only really see personal relationships in terms of possession versus absence, given how both she and her daughter were treated, and so she responds to this confession with the bitter “you want to take her, too?” And so begins Papika and Yayaka’s manic battle through the halls of Pure Illusion.
The rest of this episode is mostly consumed by actual fight scenes across the various worlds we’ve already visited, a fun but not terribly critique-friendly validation of the burgeoning trust between Papika and Yayaka. Robbed of their initial emotional context, these worlds now basically just act as battle venues, while all the rest of Flip Flappers’ side characters just sort of muddle through Mimi’s apocalypse. The twins continue to care for each other far more than they care for their mission, Hisoka and Bu have a very short-lived moment of triumph, and Nyunyu has a generally wonderful time with her new friends. It’s all oddly unfocused stuff for a penultimate episode, once again demonstrating how giving up on narrative connective tissue is a valid choice, but not necessarily the most graceful one.
As always, the true power and solidity of Flip Flappers comes down to its characters and their emotional arcs. Nearly defeated on the sands that once echoed Papika’s repression, Yayaka finds herself forced to make that same confession, and acknowledge what she actually wants. And Yayaka, darling daughter that she is, admits she just wants to see Cocona again. Her benefactors once ordered her to stay next to Cocona or risk losing her home – now, she realizes that as long as she can stand beside Cocona, she is already home.
Empowered by her own emotional honesty, Yayaka finally earns her own flip flapping transformation, and is furthermore blessed with some of the most impactful cuts of action animation Flip Flappers can muster. I loved the fluidity of her motions in this sand battle, where her sliding posture almost makes her look like a figure skater dancing against their own momentum. Later, in Hidaka’s techno world, her speed is flavorfully represented through having her whole figure dissolve into her character color palette, a cheeky visual distillation of her “essence” into its component parts. And ultimately, their battle leads them back to the lake shore, where this multigenerational conflict was first set in motion.
It’s clear even before we see Mimi’s “lost self” that she’s not necessarily happy about the villain she’s become. Like Cocona, she feels backed into a corner. She clearly loves her daughter, and her daughter genuinely has experienced terrible hardship at the hands of the people pursuing her. And in her own life, her only conception of family has been ownership – the Flip Flap organization possesses her, and can do with her what it wishes. Mimi’s response to the tragedy of her own life seemed to be to partition all certainty she possessed, and let it bear the suffering of her continued existence. Now that certainty can only inflict on Cocona the oppression that was inflicted on her, and though even this persona understands her actions are wrong, it falls to the abandoned, compassionate fragments of Mimi’s self to set her daughter free.
This lost Mimi reaches out to Cocona with exactly the words she needs to hear. After her daughter admits to the anxieties that opened this entire series, Mimi acknowledges the validity of those anxieties, and states they are nothing unusual. “You were just a tiny bit afraid of failure. But you know, that’s nothing out of the ordinary. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Everybody’s like that.” At the climax of a series whose wild worlds constantly underline the emotional complexity and uniqueness of every single thinking being, Cocona’s redemption comes from hearing that ultimately, we all still share many of the same hopes and fears. We want to succeed, we want to be loved, we want to not be mocked for the things that inspire us. Pure Illusion has continuously demonstrated that there is beauty in all of us, that even our hardships can ultimately inspire us, and that everyone possesses a personal wilderness well worth exploring. Reaching out to her beloved friend, Cocona at last seems ready to share her own beauty with the world.
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