FLCL

Gonna try and keep this short and simple since im not a master reviewer.

I think the manga adaption of FLCL is pretty good. Its not better than the anime ,but its still worth a read. The story, and characters take a backseat in exchange we get more creative and awesome art that you probably wouldn't expect FLCL to have. The art is probably the best part of the manga. I've never quite seen a manga as well illustrated and unique looking as this.

Overall, its a pretty faithful to the anime. The story doesn't seem as important but what they do with the art, and style makes up for it. It doesn't absolutely need to be read, but if you have some spare time, and find yourself interested, its a good read!

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.

I just read the FLCL manga and I thought it was great. Instead of a new story, it's simply a retelling of the first anime. But, I feel like it uses the fact that it is a manga to its full potential. The layout of the panels changes a lot which offers for a ton of weirdness and the artwork is sloppy enough to work and changes enough to be flcl. I guess it could be seen as a problem that the fights are usually only a few panels long, which if a bit weird. That's probably one of the few reasons I prefer the anime, but with the manga, I was a lot less confused. Maybe it's just because you have to really focus while reading, but I certainly felt more invested.

Maybe I dont recommend it for those who aren't familiar with flcl, but for the fans, it's a must read.

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 out.

"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 read to date. Not necessarily because it is so visually pleasing to me, but just because it is so appropriate for the story itself. As mentioned earlier, the story for FLCL is very unique and eccentric and the art matches it so well with its goofy and cartoony look. However there are times that panels can be rather hard to interpret and may irritate you. However these panels are far and few between as well as usually being just small action sequence panels.

Characters:
The characters of FLCL are all fun and interesting and each are noteworthy in their own way whether you are talking about the eccentric and violent Haruko or the impatient and short-tempered Takkun. Without the colorful cast, FLCL would not be nearly as fun as it is and would not be as memorable.

Story:
The story of FLCL, for me, is where the series is weakest. Not to say that it is bad by any means, rather quite the opposite, nonetheless it is its weakest point. The manga especially may confuse its readers at times with its plot. Even though I have always been a very comprehensive reader, it did take me two readings to fully understand what was going on. Because of this I would recommend watching the anime first rather than reading the manga like myself, as it is easy to get lost at times in the manga, where the anime seems to do a better job of explaining the situations the story puts you in. Though you should also keep in mind that the two stories in the FLCL anime and the FLCL manga are NOT the same. There are many tie-ins, but they are unique stories.

Overall:
I greatly enjoyed the manga (especially on my second read through after completing the anime), and would recommend it to anyone wishing to experience a similar, but significantly different version of the FLCL they know.

nothing about this manga makes any sense. if you were looking for a true adaptation of the series you'll be pretty disappointed, and if you're looking for more clarity on the story, you'll also be pretty disappointed, but if you just want more of the series's absurdity, this is perfect.

so essentially: yes, the story is pretty poorly explained, like there'll be times where you have literally no idea what is happening (or if you're like me, that will be the whole time you're reading it) and the characters aren't nearly as fleshed out as they are in the series (plus no badass music), but this manga, in my opinion, just goes to show that anime and manga doesn't have to stick to the same cookie cutter layout, it can be weird, and at the same time still be a joy to read.

even though most of this review was negative, i still give this series a 9, the anime i give a 10, but for a whole new story and ending, i think it did a pretty good job. if you are gonna read it though, i recommend watching the series first, explains a lot more about pretty much everything.

tl;dr: this is an add-on to an already perfect anime, making the book pretty much perfect itself. you don't need to 𝘨𝘦𝘵 this series really, as long as you enjoy it and embrace it for its weirdness, it's done its job.

overall

story: 6
art: 9
character: 9
enjoyment: 10
overall: 9

(also im sorry this is more of a ramble than a review, i just wanted my opinions of this book somewhere)

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 while growing up...

This is the best Anime ever made, and I give it a perfect score, because anything less would be an insult to this masterpiece...


Sorry about being biased... I just have to be when one series changes several years of my life so much... It gets me emotional in ways...

This series is massively overrated. FLCL is basically a series that follows that Seinfeld motto of being "a show about nothing", because there isn't really a plot here, and while yes, the Atomsk name is brought up a lot, it ends up being irrelevant to the overall narrative as he's basically only there to be a massive Deus ex Machina. The only other characters I could bother remembering their names were Naota and Haruko, since every other character is extremely uninteresting or just plain annoying like that girl that sexually harasses our 12 years old main character (which he likes, mind you). Every single volume is divided in two halves, each adapting an episode of the anime, but without the fluid animation and great soundtrack (which were the only saving graces of the anime imo), the series just ends up a plain bunch of nothing with no explanations and whose "plots" are basically just "weird things happen to Naota and Haruko acts like crazy" repeated over and over again. I honestly read the novels expecting to get more hindsight of the anime, but ended up liking the anime more because these novels pretty much don't add anything and in fact lack the good things of the anime (the only actual addition of the novels is a better explanation via monologue of Haruko's feelings towards Naota). Overall, unless you really, really liked the anime and want more of the same (but lacking the animation and soundtrack), I don't really see much reason to read this novel over any other sci-fi one.