Fooly Cooly (FLCL)-Volume 3 (2000)

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General		Extras
Category	Anime	Menu Animation & Audio Audio Commentary-director Kazuya Tsurumaki Reversible Cover Gallery-Poster-6 Biographies-Character-3 Credits-textless ending Trailer-Australian trailer Trailer-Madman Propaganda (8) Booklet DVD Credits
Rating
Year Of Production	2000
Running Time	54:31 (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 Mayumi Shintani Kari Wahlgren Izumi Kasagi Jennifer Sekiguchi Kouji Ookura Dave Mallow Chiemi Chiba L Villa Mika Ito Heather Lee Joelson
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$29.95	Music	Nobuyoshi 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, Mamimi only
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	Yes, next episode preview

    And so we reach the end of FLCL, which is a mixed blessing — I'm sure that continued exposure to this series could be really dangerous to one's sanity.

    If you haven't seen the first volume, then I suggest you at least read my review of FLCL Volume 1 before proceeding. To be thorough, you should also read about FLCL Volume 2. I make no promises that reading those reviews will help you understand the show — I'm not sure that anything short of a couple of years of total immersion in Japanese culture can do that. But that's cool — not understanding the show is a big part of the attraction.

    The episodes on this disc are:

5. Bura Bure / Brittle Bullet (23:36) — guns, guns, and more guns!
6. Furi Kura / FLCLimax (30:55) — the big revelation of who Haruko is, and what she wants

    In the fifth episode there is plenty of gunplay, with people shooting all manner of guns at one another. (Most of) the guns in question are supposed to be Airsoft guns (according to the commentary), which fire small round plastic pellets. Don't worry if you haven't seen them — they aren't legal in Australia, for example, but they are popular in Japan. However, Airsoft guns do not produce showers of shell casings, so I think we'll have to classify this as another oddness.

    There's a sequence in episode 5 that is made in the style of South Park, and episode 6 revisits the manga-style sequence (the director was told not to do that again, so he was obliged to, of course).

    We get confirmation that Amarao's seaweed eyebrows aren't natural, and that they have a reason, which is reassuring (or disturbing). There's also a marvellous image of Haruko, dressed as a Playboy bunny, surfing her guitar through the air. What more could you ask for?

    I'm not going to even try to describe what happens — just trust me that if you liked the first two volumes, you'll like this one, too.

Video

    This DVD transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. It is not 16x9 enhanced. This show was made for that aspect ratio, so that's cool..

    The image is sharp and clear. There's no film grain and there's no low-level noise. All goodness!

    Colour is a big feature of this show (even in the black-and-white sequences). There are no colour-related artefacts. Backgrounds are exquisite, often drawn or painted painstakingly. Foregrounds are simpler, but still beautiful, and coloured from a wide palette of colours. There is just one instance of false colouration (the infamous "rainbows"), on guitar strings.

    There are no film artefacts. Some of the imagery was generated digitally (particularly the revolver — you'll see), and it's possible this show was transferred digitally, which would explain the lack of film artefacts.

    There is some aliasing, but it's restricted to just a few objects. By normal anime standards, it's rare and quite minor. 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.

    The disc is single-sided and single-layered. With less than an hour of episodes, and fairly short extras, it doesn't need anything more than 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 there's also an isolated non-dialogue track (music and sound effects — I guess it's handy with subtitles). The English dialogue track and the commentary are Dolby Digital 2.0 surround-encoded, while the Japanese dialogue is Dolby Digital 2.0 not surround-encoded (strange, that). 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) — you'll have to select this one using your player's subtitle controls rather than a menu.

    The English dialogue is clear (crazy, but clear). The Japanese dialogue and commentary both sound clear, but I cannot assess comprehensibility. The commentary is recorded at a very high level (I recommend dropping the volume by at least 5dB before switching to the commentary) — there's some distortion on occasions too, probably due to the high level.

    Nobuyoshi Mitsumune's score is mostly contemporary music, using several songs from a Japanese group called the pillows. The occasional English word in the Japanese lyrics adds to the surreal atmosphere. If you have the full subtitles on you can see what the English words are (they aren't always obvious because of the accent on the singing) — I wonder about "GRUNGE no HAMSTER"...

    Even with the surround encoding, the 2.0 tracks don't provide anything of any significance to the surround speakers. The subwoofer gets no signal unless your amp's bass management sends some of the serious bass, of which there is plenty, in that direction.

Audio Ratings Summary

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

Menu

    The menu is animated with music. It's well matched to the series.

Commentary: Kazuya Tsurumaki (director)

    You have to go to the setup menu to find this extra — the extras menu doesn't include it. Switching it on also switches on a subtitle track, which is important, because the commentary is in Japanese. If you are feeling creative, you could switch the audio to the English soundtrack, and the subtitles to the commentary (it's the third subtitle track) — this will let you listen to the show whilst reading the commentary.

Isolated music / sound effects track

    There is no menu entry for this. You can only select it using your player controls to switch to the fourth audio track. An interesting option to go with the full English subtitles, or even with the commentary subtitles.

Booklet

    This is a negative extra! Unlike the first two volumes, this one has NO booklet, which is a real shame. The booklets were a real feature of the first two volumes.

    UPDATE This was a mistake by the folks packaging the discs. The booklets are available — just e-mail Madman and they will mail one to you.

Reversible Cover

    The reverse of the cover slick is hot pink, and features Kitsurubami (Amanao's sidekick) with a very large gun. Quite nice, and more colourful than the official black-and-white cover.

Gallery: Posters

    Six posters promoting the series, including the Australian one.

Character Profiles

    Quick intros to Amanao, Kitsurubami, and Canti (the robot).

Textless Closing (2:22)

    The normal closing animation, but no credits at all.

Trailer: Australian trailer (2:20)

    The trailer we've seen on the occasional Madman disc...

Trailers: Madman Propaganda

    A stack of trailers — this series gets a lot of trailers, some of which I haven't seen elsewhere.

• Angelic Layer (1:31)
• Blue Gender (1:08)
• Fruits Basket (0:50)
• Gene Shaft (1:16) — a longer trailer
• Heat Guy J (1:31)
• Haibane Renmai (1:13)
• Initial D (0:31)
• Last Exile (1:33)

DVD Credits

    A credits panel showing the DVD authors.

    The Region 1 disc was released in the middle of 2003. It contains the same episodes, the same director's commentary, a gallery, and the same 20 page booklet that we get. They also get outtakes, which sound interesting, and a music video of the pillows. The transfer on the R1 disc sounds like it is at least as good as ours.

    Now that the booklet is available with both versions I am happy to have the R4.

    The end of a peculiarly entertaining, somewhat crazy, but definitely addictive series, presented beautifully on DVD.

    The video quality is excellent, despite some mild aliasing.

    The audio quality is excellent.

    The extras are worthwhile, especially the commentary. It's a shame there's no booklet this time.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall