FLCL

Progressive (2018) (S02) 

What thrilled many audiences with its novel, fresh, and for many even shocking approach to anime, and basically earned the original  a cult status, simply could not be successfully replicated in 2018. Plus, the result looks incredibly stale. Perhaps it would not have turned out so badly if the production company had been only loosely inspired by the original, but here, unfortunately, they tried to reproduce everything they could think of as faithfully as possible: the same animation techniques for the plot narrative, and also for the dynamics in the action scenes, the same old soundtrack, the same over-the-top scenes, and a ton of sexual innuendo. However, this just does not work as a whole and the end product is appallingly tedious. The original FLCL was also really insane, however, first of all, with that I always got the feeling that the production company attempted to create an original name, and then tried to figure out how to make the scenes an interesting audiovisual experience. Here, on the other hand, all the over-the-top scenes look like they are just there for effect, as if they had first thought them up, and only after that a wannabe deeper meaning was tagged onto it. Instead of characters having well worked-out psychological make-up, and an interesting main protagonist, there is only a sort of perpetually annoyed emo-girl who takes center stage with her issues, and one uninteresting nerdy little boy we know nothing about. In addition, the art of skillfully teasing the audience with hints and symbols already disappears in the first episode where the producers awkwardly try to shock the audience by letting the teacher show her teenage pupils a porno. I finished watching the whole thing with frequent click-throughs, but it was a struggle. I give it a better 1 star, and I would rather not watch the third season. (13/03/2021)