FLCL | Manga - Reviews - MyAnimeList.net

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Synonyms: Fooly Cooly, Furi Kuri

Japanese: フリクリ

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Type: Manga

Volumes: 2

Chapters: 15

Status: Finished

Published: Dec 25, 1999 to Mar 26, 2001

Genres: Comedy, Sci-Fi

Demographic: Seinen

Serialization: Magazine-Z

Authors: Ueda, Hajime (Art)

Statistics

Score: 7.25¹ (scored by 12,549 users)

¹ indicates a weighted score.

Ranked: #5546²

² based on the top manga page. Please note that 'R18+' titles are excluded.

Popularity: #702

Members: 25,905

Favorites: 727

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Filter Preliminary Spoiler

Jul 19, 2007

kickass331

Recommended

Preliminary (4/15 chp)

FLCL, not much I can say about this other than it is my life, my bible, my faith, my passion, it is everything to me... I would sell my house before I would sell this manga...

The Anime is better, but the Manga brings me so many memories, and influenced me much like the Anime did, that the past few years, basically everything I\'ve done in my life revolves around Anime, FLCL was the first series I completed, and opened a whole new world...

The Manga is nothing like the Anime, but each houses a unique and excellent style filled with perversion that taught me a lot ...

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Nov 8, 2013

angelsreview

Mixed Feelings

Surprisingly, I actually like the anime better then the manga. The manga tries a bit too hard to be serious and in some areas, it does it well but in others it feels like it’s a little forced. The anime made things a lot more fun and comical even if it was pretty random. The manga on the other hand, the idea of these characters being so serious when the world around them is going crazy just feels like they are becoming rather bland characters.

The manga though does make Naoto out to be more of a boy his own age who just has had ... a bad run in his life with people he kind of doesn’t really care much about. His father and grandfather are crazy, his father always getting into other peoples business and his grandfather wanting him to become a good baseball player. His mother is no where to be found although I could never tell if she just died or ran off somewhere. He has a teacher who tries to protect her students from the world and acts as though they are much more innocent then they are. Even a lot of the friends he has seem to outcast him or tease him. The only person he really seems to care about is his brother’s ex- girlfriend and yet she always seems to see him as his brother. I would understand why a boy like that would be in depression if the world around him was like that.

You could almost look at his world as the same with a video game called Mother (Earth Bound to some). In Mother, a young boy ends up with a strange power and goes on a quest to learn about the outside world, only to stop an evil alien that wants to destroy the world. In FLCL, Naoto is a normal boy who has strange things coming out of his head and ends up having to deal with aliens all while learning about growing up. I can’t say its exact, hell I could never say it was exactly the same type of story but for those of you that know Mother, the idea is very similar.

When we get near the end, though both the manga and the anime have different endings to one another, I still liked each of them for what they were. They just had a very different effect to the story and seemed like it was trying to say something different then the other. The Anime was much easier to interrupt then the manga and I felt like I was getting lost a bit more then I should but still, for the two volumes it was, it was pretty interesting to see the difference.

The artwork is all over the place from rather thick lines to small thin lines that look rather like sketches. There is a lot of negative or white space around the characters and when there is a background, it looks very much like a dream with almost a hazy look. Many of the lines feel like they were actually done with ball point pen or a paint brush and only some of the pages have a rather soft or smooth look to it.

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Aug 1, 2016

FieryPotatoe

Recommended

"Nothing cool ever happens here."

This line of dialogue is the single largest lie in media history, regardless of medium. However much you may or may not have heard of FLCL, you probably have at least heard one thing; the story of this series is very....eccentric. It brings strange and interesting characters together to go through some of the most ridiculous events imaginable. One of the main characters fights robots with a ukulele for God's sake! Anyway, this review is specifically about the manga obviously so lets talk about that.

Art:
Honestly FLCL has some of the best and art of any manga series I have ...

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Aug 10, 2020

ooo_Gargamel_ooo

Not Recommended

One of those rare instances where the anime adaptation is actually MUCH better than the manga. The manga is basically unreadable. It's incredibly hard to follow, and makes no sense. It erratically jumps around... It's just a very hard read, to say the least. I would go back and forth between the same few pages trying to figure out what was going on before eventually giving up. On a positive note, the art is pretty good. It's not ground-breaking by any means, but is rather nice.

Watch the anime first! The manga will make you not want to watch the anime, and you will be missing ...

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Jun 23, 2022

spud-

Mixed Feelings

First off, i’d like to say that the manga came AFTER the anime and they are two completely different stories.

With this manga, i couldnt understand absolutely anything that was happening, and i dont mean that in a good way. The manga is extremely hard to follow. I dont know anyone who’s read this who could understand jackshit.

The manga isnt bad, but whats bad is how hard to follow.

(Excuse me for the errors and not writing this well its 3am)

It doesnt feel like FLCL because in FLCL it was random and nonsense was happening everywhere but you could follow it. This felt like a clusterfuck of ...

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May 27, 2021

Zonyboi

Mixed Feelings

This is the only show/book I won't be giving a score to, and with a good reason.

This manga is basically unreadable; the plot is an absolute clusterfuck, and sadly not in a good way. I've really tried to follow this manga, but there were just too many things happening at once, and it suffers trying to explain itself. I've managed to complete this manga, but I'm relieved to say I'm not the only one who thought this was a complete non-sense of a book.
Don't get me wrong; I don't consider this a bad manga, but this shit is Evangelion-tier or even worse. Hell, much ...

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Aug 3, 2021

FoxyGramp_

Recommended

The FLCL manga and anime is the quintessential "you just don't get it" duo.

This is a super odd manga read. It's FLCL targeted at only those who really enjoyed the anime (so people like me).

It's story is a complete clusterfuck to an even greater extent than the anime. There's constant time skips back and fourth between different scenes making it really hard to comprehend if your only casually reading it. Stuff that had some explanation in the anime now goes unexplained and seems to occur at random. However, many things that were left ambiguous in the manga are now out right stated so it sorta ... works both ways. A lot of the plot has been changed, pretty much to the point wheres it's straight up a different story which only follows the same basic beats as the anime. It's also full of all sorts of fanservice (even the horny type, for better or for worse) like *SPOILERS* the bunny costume appearing right at the end, Haruko actually admitting to falling in love with Naota eventually (although this is skeptical) and a really out of place implied sex between characters which was super weird

The characters have also been changed quite significantly. Naota and Mamimi are similar to the anime (however, Mamimi's mental state is shown to be much worse and is explored to a much greater extent) but the biggest change is to Haruko who is less of an ambiguous space agent and more a sadistic god in the manga. She has no qualms with ending a person's life to further her own goals and even goes to the extent of almost executing Mamimi with a rifle for posing a threat to her plans. Amarao has a very insignificant role in the manga, only appearing for one panel. Eri also plays a much bigger role in the manga and has an extremely obvious crush on Naota unlike in the anime where it's more hinted that she has a liking for Naota. The biggest inclusion though is Naota's brother actually being given a face and personality, appearing in a few flashback pages to flesh out Mamimi's past.

The art is this manga's biggest strength. It's sketchy, hyper-stylized and looks purposefully unfinished, which isn't to everyone's taste, but perfectly captures the zany and creative nature of FLCL. The only problem with the art being the puzzling panel layout which paired with the mess of a story, makes this manga a confusing read.

Unfortunately, there are a few inherent drawback of adapting FLCL into a manga. Firstly is that you (obviously) can't have music which was one of FLCL's major selling points and is where a lot of the praise for the anime is directed at; many scenes that were lifted from the anime don't have the same impact in the manga due to losing such an integral element. Secondly, FLCL was a display of GAINAX's raw animating prowess after Evangelion. Adapting some of the manic scenes in the anime to fit onto paper is a neigh impossible task. What they do here is close enough but doesn't create nearly the same buzz as it's anime counterpart does.

This manga doesn't reach the heights of it's anime brethren but is a good supplemental read for those who enjoy and understand the insanity that is FLCL. It's a different interpretation which strips back some fluff to tell a more focused, character based story. If you want a slightly darker, more cruel FLCL as reprieve for the god awful FLCL sequels than this manga is probably for you.

Plus, FLCL Omnibus (a full collection of every volume) is a extremely cheap buy on amazon so it's pretty much a no brainer for anyone who really enjoyed FLCL.

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