It’s been a whopping 17 years since the short anime series FLCL (pronounced in English as Fooly Cooly) ended. It only consisted of six episodes, but its legacy has lasted this whole time. Perhaps in no small thanks to the strange novelty of a show about a mysterious young woman on a motor scooter named Haruhara Haruko, carrying around a Rickenbacker 4001 bass guitar, who hits a kid named Naota on the head and opens up a portal through which giant robots emerge periodically. A coming-of-age story with robots, rock music, and the fate of the galaxy? It’s certainly a unique premise for a show, that’s for sure. And now, after all this time, FLCL is coming back!
UPDATE, 3/20/18 – We heard back in 2016 that FLCL would be making its way back to television, but it wasn’t until the release of the below new trailer that we got any word about when. In fact, FLCL will rejoin Adult Swim’s Toonami block at two distinct points this year, first in June—with a season being dubbed FLCL Progressive—and then in September, under the moniker FLCL Alternative.
The new trailer, which hit on Tuesday morning, drops us neck-deep into the action, music, biting sense of humor, and inescapable ennui that FLCL fans have come to love over the span of the series’ lifetime. We’re looking forward to seeing more from Kazuya Tsurumaki’s imaginative world this summer and fall!
Production I.G., the company that originally produced the series (and who’ve made a name for themselves with series like Ghost in the Shell, Attack on Titan, and Psycho-Pass), are back to produce the updated FLCL, alongside series creator Kazuya Tsurumaki, who will serve as supervisor with director Katsuyuki Motohiro (Psycho-Pass) and character designer Yoshiyuki Sadamoto (Neon Genesis Evangelion).
The story of the new series will be set some time way in the future, where the war between the evil conglomerate Medical Mechanica and a new entity called Fraternity is raging in outer space. A new young person—a girl named Hidomi—thinks everything in her little town will always be boring and average, until a new teacher comes to town… a teacher named Haruko. Things escalate from there, and mysteries are posed: Why did Haruko come back to Earth? Where’s the Rickenbacker she left with Naota? And what became of ‘Canti’ the human-type robot?
The new series will premiere in Adult Swim’s Toonami block of programming and is planned to be accessible to people who’ve never seen FLCL before as well as satisfying to longtime fans. We shall all find out late next year!
Are you looking forward to the return of Fooly Cooly? Let us know in the comments below!
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Image: Production I.G./Adult Swim
Kyle Anderson is the Weekend Editor and a film and TV critic for Nerdist.com. Follow him on Twitter!f
