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PLEASE NOTE: Michael D's is currently in READ ONLY MODE. Anything submitted will simply not be written to the database.
Lots of stuff is still broken, but at least reviews can now be looked up and read.
Fooly Cooly (FLCL)-Volume 1 (2000)

Fooly Cooly (FLCL)-Volume 1 (2000)

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Released 12-Mar-2003

Cover Art

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Details At A Glance

General Extras
Category Anime Menu Animation & Audio
Audio Commentary-director
Featurette-The Pillows
Gallery-Character Sketches
Trailer-Japanese Promo
Alternate Ending-Japanese Closing
Biographies-Character
Trailer-Arjuna; Excel Saga; .hack//SIGN; Niea under 7
Trailer-Real Bout High School; Spirited Away; Steel Angel Kurumi
Trailer-Tenchi Muyo!; Transformers-The Movie; Trigun
Trailer-Dragonball Z-Super Android 13!
Booklet-24 pages
Reversible Cover
Rating Rated PG
Year Of Production 2000
Running Time 48:07 (Case: 60)
RSDL / Flipper No/No Cast & Crew
Start Up Menu
Region Coding 4 Directed By Kazuya Tsurumaki
Studio
Distributor
Production IG
Madman Entertainment
Starring Jun Mizuki
Barbara Goodson
Mayuni Shintani
Kari Wahlgren
Izumi Kasagi
Jennifer Sekiguchi
Suzuki Matsuo
Joe Martin
Hiroshi Ito
Steve Kramer
Case Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI $29.95 Music Abbuyoshi Mitsumune
the pillows


Video Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame Full Frame English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Japanese Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s)
Japanese Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Isolated Score & Effects Dolby Digital 2.0 (224Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio None
16x9 Enhancement No
Video Format 576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio 1.33:1 Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures Yes
Subtitles English Titling
English
English Audio Commentary
Smoking Yes
Annoying Product Placement No
Action In or After Credits Yes, next episode teaser

NOTE: The Profanity Filter is ON. Turn it off here.

Plot Synopsis

    FLCL, also known as Fooly Cooly, is a short, but very strange series. I feel obliged to tell you something about it, but I don't want to spoil it for you. So let me put it this way: if you want to enjoy the surprises of an anime series significantly stranger than anything you've seen, then you'll want to do this — skip directly to the Transfer section, and read about how beautiful it looks.

    OK, so you want to know something about it. Well, it's about a 12 year old boy called Naota who lives with his father and grandfather in their bakery shop. Naota's brother went over to America to play baseball, and ever since, his brother's girlfriend, Mamimi, has been hanging around with Naota. One day, when they're talking, a strange woman called Haruko appears and runs over Naota with her Vespa scooter, then belts him over the head with a bass guitar. Lost yet? No? Well, shortly after being hit, Naota finds things coming out of his head — at first they look like horns, but soon they erupt as robots. A check by Haruko proves that his brain has vanished. Don't worry if you get a little confused — just go with the flow.

    It will help you understand this show if you have a knowledge of some of the highlights of earlier anime, such as Neon Genesis Evangelion and Gundam Wing.

    This is strange stuff. However, it's absolutely beautifully drawn and presented. The detail in the backgrounds is exquisite, and the drawing very stylish. Every so often a scene will be presented in an unusual way — perhaps the most unusual I've seen so far is the manga scene, where the entire scene is presented as pages from a manga (comic book) with the camera moving as the eye might in reading it. The images on the page aren't all static, though — there are elements moving within the page (apparently this scene cost a lot to make because of the intricacy of the work — the director mentions that he was told it would be impossible, but he insisted...). High coolness factor.

    This isn't a long series, which is understandable — it probably cost a considerable amount to make. That's probably also the reason why there are only two episodes per disc — I guess they are recouping their expenses. That's OK — two episodes is a fairly filling dose of this stuff, because you'll want to sit back and try to make some sense out of it.

    The episodes on this disc are:

  1. FLCL / Fooly Cooly (24:39) — we meet our main characters, and Naota's life changes irrevocably
  2. FiSta / Fire Starter (23:28) — someone is starting fires; is it Mamimi with her pocket game?

    There is some sexual innuendo, and the occasional vulgarity, but they shouldn't offend an M-rated audience (I'm a bit surprised the disc got a PG rating). Do make sure to keep it away from prudes. I was put off by some of the things I read about this series before it was released, but I'm glad I decided to give it a chance — it's really rather entertaining.

Don't wish to see plot synopses in the future? Change your configuration.

Transfer Quality

Video

    This DVD transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. It is not 16x9 enhanced. That is the original aspect ratio, and that's what we want.

    The image is absolutely gorgeous. The black lines outlining the characters and things are fairly fine, leaving more scope for delicate colouring. The picture is awesomely sharp and clear. There's no film grain and there's no low-level noise.

    Colour is used superbly — colours have been chosen from a huge palette, with some bright primary colours, and vast range of more subtle shades. There are no colour-related artefacts. The backgrounds show exquisite attention to detail with delicate shading. Foreground characters are more simply coloured, but the colours are still drawn from a huge palette.

    There are no film artefacts. Some of the imagery was generated digitally, and it's possible this show was transferred digitally, which would explain the lack of film artefacts.

    There is a fair bit of light aliasing on the fine black lines bordering characters, but I never found it troubling. There's no moiré, and no MPEG artefacts.

    There are three subtitle tracks, all in English. The first subtitles only signs. The second provides full subtitles of the dialogue. The third subtitles the commentary. I watched all three. All the subtitles seem well-timed, accurate, and easy to read. Funnily enough, the subtitles are easier to read than the closing credits, which alias and don't show up all that well against the backgrounds.

    The disc is single-sided and single-layered. With just over 48 minutes of episodes, and fairly short extras, it fits more than comfortably onto the single layer.

Video Ratings Summary
Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There are four soundtracks on this disc. The dialogue is provided in English and Japanese, there's a director's commentary in Japanese, and an isolated non-dialogue track (music and sound effects — I guess it's handy with subtitles). The English dialogue track is Dolby Digital 2.0 surround-encoded, while the Japanese dialogue and the commentary are Dolby Digital 2.0 not surround-encoded. The non-dialogue track is Dolby Digital 2.0, not surround-encoded — note that there's no menu item to select this track (and no acknowledgment on the cover that it exists, either).

    The English dialogue is clear. The Japanese dialogue and commentary both sound clear, but I cannot assess comprehensibility.

    The score, credited to Abbuyoshi Mitsumune, is a mixture of styles, but it's mostly contemporary music. Quite a lot of the music is songs from a Japanese group called the pillows. The music is one of the things that makes the show a coherent whole. Nice stuff.

    The surrounds don't get anything significant to do from the English soundtrack, despite its surround-encoding, and they get nothing at all from the Japanese tracks — both dialogue tracks are definitely stereo with some nice spread of sound across the front soundstage, but that's all. The subwoofer isn't directly addressed by any of the tracks, but your amp's bass management may route some of the bass into it.

Audio Ratings Summary
Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Extras

Menu

    The menu is animated with music. It's as nicely constructed as the series.

Commentary: Kazuya Tsurumaki (director)

    This isn't in the extras menu — you'll find it in the setup menu. It's an interesting commentary, filled with anecdotes about the making of the show, and the revelation that the Vespa shown in the closing sequence belongs to the director. Well worth a listen / read — the audio version is in Japanese, but it's subtitled in English. One interesting idea is to have the commentary subtitles on while you listen to the English dialogue — you have to use your remote to select the third subtitle track and first audio track to do this.

Booklet

    Most "booklets" included in DVD cases are a single piece of folded paper. This one is 24 pages long, with two front covers and no back one (kinda appropriate for a show like this one!). If you read it from the left end, you find a heap of notes about the show. If you read it from the right end you find a rendering in manga form of the manga scene from episode 1 (appropriate, given that manga should be read right to left). I strongly recommend reading this booklet — it may not help you understand the show, but it may mean your head will hurt less trying to...

Reversible Cover

    To be honest, I'm not sure you'd want to reverse it, but you have the option — the non-default version bears the show's title in Japanese, and a different version of the episode descriptions (in English).

Music Video: the pillows

    The theme song done as a slightly odd-ball music video by the group. Note that this is not the last time we'll hear this song...

Gallery: Character Sketches

    Nineteen sketches of characters and objects.

Trailer: Japanese Promo (2:46)

    Another opportunity to hear the theme song...

Japanese Closing (2:22)

    The normal closing animation, but with Japanese credits instead of English. And yet another opportunity to hear the theme song!

Cast Profiles

    A quick intro to Naota and Haruko this time.

Trailers: Madman Propaganda

    Rather more trailers than usual in this section — I think the shortness of the main feature encouraged them to go nuts here..

    Note that something peculiar happened on my Pioneer player after I played the .hack//SIGN trailer — rather than advancing normally to the next trailer it raced through them all, then started playing the introduction to the disc again. If this happens to you, eject the disc, reinsert it, and then skip past the .hack//SIGN trailer to play the rest. This didn't happen on a Sony player, so it looks like a Pioneer-specific quirk.

DVD Credits

    A credits panel showing the Australian DVD authors.

R4 vs R1

NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.

    The Region 1 disc was released in 2002. As far as I can tell, the discs are pretty much the same, except that we get more in the way of extras (choke! gasp!): the R1 disc doesn't have the music video, the long list of Madman propaganda, the Japanese promo, or the cast profiles. They do get the critical extras: the commentary and the booklet, plus the reversible cover and a gallery (although theirs is reportedly only six images long, unlike ours). Reportedly, their transfer is as good as ours.

    With the R4 getting rather more extras, a superb transfer, and costing less, I'm not going to recommend the R1, now am I?

Summary

    The first third of a very strange, but highly enjoyable, series, presented beautifully on DVD. It's really short, but that's just as well (too much of this would be dangerous!).

    The video quality is very good, with aliasing the only concern.

    The audio quality is excellent.

    The extras are quite good value, especially the commentary and booklet (at last a booklet that's worthy of the name!).

Ratings (out of 5)

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Tony Rogers (bio-degrading: making a fool of oneself in a bio...)
Sunday, June 08, 2003
Review Equipment
DVDPioneer DV-S733A, using Component output
DisplaySony VPH-G70 CRT Projector, QuadScan Elite scaler (Tripler), ScreenTechnics 110. Calibrated with Video Essentials. This display device is 16x9 capable.
Audio DecoderBuilt in to amplifier/receiver. Calibrated with Video Essentials.
AmplificationDenon AVC-A1SE
SpeakersFront Left, Centre, Right: Krix Euphonix; Rears: Krix KDX-M; Subwoofer: Krix Seismix 5

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