FLCL and the Balance

this is a music video from the masterpiece anime series FLCL. Years and years later, it remains my TOP 5 ANIME of ALL TIME! Nothing can beat Cowboy Bebop, though.

Anyway, the animation style is fantastic not just for the 'Gainax Bounce' (over-animation of the breasts so they appear to bounce) but for the fact that it often goes against convention and what is expected.

Just look at the premise. A girl called Haruhara Haruko starts bashing people on the head with a guitar in the hopes of finding her lover/prey Atomsk, in a town where there is a giant clothes-iron-shaped factory on top of a hill.

All framed by the coming of age story of a kid. There are multiple love triangles that are explored and resolved - all in 6 episodes.

And the notion of the artist and his ideas. Man. The themes and subplots of this series puts a lot of other shit to shame.

The story, animation and music went against convention of what a 'normal' anime is like.

With Watchmen, the quintessential anti-comic comic, we have the purest form of something that goes against the grain.

Superheroes never die, so in the first page of Watchmen, a superhero dies, as scholars noticed. And he stays dead for the remainder of the story.

Fantastic stuff.

But it must be remembered that in order for something to go against conventional shit, there must be conventional shit to begin with. To go against convention, there must be a 'convention'.

Alternative and underground music can't exist without the mainstream. What is punk, without pop? What is the freedom of jazz without the structured order of classical?

And yet, jazz has been deemed as the next classical music.

Stare into the abyss, and the abyss stares back.

When Satan wins and becomes God, there must be a new Satan.

There should and will be a balance!