FLCL: Shoegaze Anime Looks As Weird As Expected In First Trailer From Toonami
FLCL is back and looks just as insane as ever. The cult anime—pronounced “Fooly Cooly”—returns on September 30 with a new season, FLCL: Shoegaze. A new trailer just dropped, and it looks weird as hell—just as expected.
The trailer for FLCL: Shoegaze is full of the kind of things fans have come to expect from the oddball series. Guitars, aliens, teens caught up in some kind of otherworldly shenanigans—all set to a groovy soundtrack. Judging by talk of “sexual energy” at the trailer’s (ahem) climax, it appears that this season of FLCL will be just as horny as the others as well.
The trailer for the new season of the hit anime, FLCL: Shoegaze, is here.
The new season comes hot on the heels of the third season, FLCL: Grunge, which premiered just this month. FLCL: Shoegaze is set to run for three episodes, the same length as FLCL: Grunge and half the length of the first three seasons, which were comprised of 6 episodes each.
Despite the truncated runtime, the new season of FLCL already looks to be cramming just as many wild anime antics into each episode as its predecessors.
All of the previous iterations of FLCL, other than the first season, have been named after different genres of rock music, and FLCL: Shoegaze is no exception. Described by Wikipedia as “a subgenre of indie and alternative rock characterized by its ethereal mixture of obscured vocals, guitar, distortion, feedback, and overwhelming volume,” Shoegaze fits right in beside the similarly named FLCL: Progressive, FLCL: Alternative, and FLCL: Grunge.
The FLCL Timeline
Despite being the fifth installment in the franchise, FLCL: Shoegaze has an odd placement in the series. FLCL stayed fairly linear for the first three seasons, but FLCL: Grunge was a prequel taking place before the inaugural season.
FLCL: Shoegaze, meanwhile, looks like it’s intended to be a sequel to FLCL: Alternative, with that series’ main character Kana Koumoto, showing up in the new trailer all grown up and acting as some sort of cop or agent for an unspecified government bureau.
FLCL started life as an OVA or original video animation that was released over a period of time spanning from April 2000 to March 2001. Slightly atypical of most anime series, FLCL arrived in animated form first and became a manga second rather than the other way around.
Despite earning a cult following, the property remained dormant until 2016, when two new seasons, partially produced by Adult Swim, were announced. FLCL: Progressive aired on Adult Swim’s Toonami block of programming in June 2018, with Alternative airing later that same year.
FLCL’s Longevity
Now, with FLCL: Grunge and soon FLCL: Shoegaze, the franchise will have spanned 23 years—long enough for the teens and early 20-somethings who enjoyed the original when it aired to have children of their own old enough to enjoy FLCL with.
According to the trailer, FLCL: Shoegaze will return to Adult Swim’s Toonami on September 30 at midnight—October 1 if you want to get technical. The premiere will be available to stream on Max the very next day.
