This thought came to me while I was driving earlier today. Allow me to explain:Kazuya Tsurumaki, director of FLCL, was also the director of Diebuster the 2004 sequel to the Gainax classic Gunbuster. At a glance to two series seem to have little in common. While Gunbuster maintained detailed realistic animation and featured several hard-sci-fi concepts such as time dilation, Diebuster changed all that for far more cartoony visuals and a focus on super-robot storytelling. As a fan of Gunbuster I was very confused after watching the first episode of Diebuster. It seemed so divorced from the original series. However as Diebuster goes on not only does its plot tie more back to the original, it becomes clear that the two shows share the same beating heart despite their many differences. The soul of both shows is:The strong relationship of the two main female characters.Hard Work and Guts! Overcoming the impossible through perseverance and passion.Diebuster gave us something new and unique while simultaneously holding on the same core themes of Gunbuster. This method of creating a sequel is extremely risky because one wrong decision could make the whole thing backfire, but when its pulled off right you can create a unique work that surpasses the original (which I believe Diebuster did). Similarly with FLCL, I don't want them to attempt the same story as before just with a female protagonist. It was executed to near perfection in the original; any attempts to copy it will just end badly.Instead I want them to give us a story that's radically different from what came before but still retains the core of FLCL, which I would argue was about Naota's coming of age and his journey to understanding what maturity really means. There are a million different ways to tell a coming of age story and in the crazy world of FLCL I'm sure the writer Hideto Iwai can come up with a unique idea.I feel the same way about the animation too (but not the music. The Pillows for life!). The fact of the matter is FLCL 2 is not going to look like FLCL even if they do their best to imitate that style. It was made over 15 years ago and most of the members of that dream team (Imaishi, Yoshinari, Sushio) have moved on to other projects. I'd much rather see Director Katsuyuki Motohiro experiment using the advances in animation that have occurred in the intervening years. Lets see the new generation of digital animators go to town on some of the inevitable crazy scenes. And maybe an episode later embrace a more realistic style similar to what Motohiro has done on Psycho Pass. FLCL already was a playground for animators to take the wheel, lets keep it that way and let them give us a different kind of crazy.Am I alone on this? I honestly don't know. http://ift.tt/2bXbxhE
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