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At first glance, FLCL feels like a show that’ll give you more of a headache watching it rather than enjoyment. It looks like a huge mind trip with a Vespa-riding pink-haired alien, robots, and an electric guitar battle sword coming straight out of a teenager’s forehead. But at its core, FLCL is a story about growing up. All the weirdness is a part of a discussion on what that looks like, whether it’s going through puberty, the relationships the characters develop with the people around them, and or the character’s revelations about themselves.
In the show’s final season, FLCL Alternative, the season’s lead, Kana Koumoto is no exception. While Kana’s arc is about her growing up and finally accepting the inevitable changes in her life, it can also be used to express another message. FLCL Alternative doesn’t just act as an allegory from transitioning from high school to adulthood, but it’s also Kana’s journey to coming to terms with her sexuality.
Grown-Up (Straight) Wannabe
The beginning of FLCL Alternative introduces Kana as she prepares to go to school. She recites a monologue explaining how much she enjoys her life since it’s filled with routine, despite it staying stagnant and uneventful. But she’s also very conflicted about allowing change into her routine — something constantly brought up by her peers and teachers who prompt her to start thinking more about the future. Kana’s feelings for things to stay the same feels familiar for closeted folks.
Being in the closet, many times it feels easier to avoid acknowledging one’s sexuality in favor of continuing to go about their day-to-day. For someone whose day-to-day already feels perfect, any shift can be scary to consider. Throughout FLCL Alternative’s run, Kana consistently talks about his fears about things changing. Her reluctance to confront these changes and understand her feelings shows how much she wants to avoid them.
Almost all of FLCL Alternative’s season involves Kana inserting herself into the lives of her friends and using that as a way to avoid confronting her own looming problems. For example, in Episode 3 “Freestyle Collection,” Kana becomes obsessed with helping her friend Mossan achieve her dreams as a fashion designer. Mossan at the beginning of the episode is the only one in their friend group to have filled out her college planning worksheet. This is further explained when Kana, Hijiri, and Pets are having lunch at the soba restaurant Kana works, and the two remind Kana that in any situation, Mossan always knows exactly what direction she wants to go.
Lost Spark
While Mossan walks headfirst into her goals, Kana doesn’t even know what she wants. After Mossan ends up in the hospital due to exhaustion, Kana take advantage of the situation and forces herself and her friends to help Mossan out with her job. When Mossan angrily confronts the group, Kana realizes she never asked for Mossan’s permission to help out – but instead just went for it. Although Kana’s intentions were good, they were selfishly done so she could distract herself from her own feelings.
Continuing on, Kana reacts similarly in Episode 2 “Grown-Up Wannabe.” When she finds out her friend Hijiri (who she remarked in the first episode was so pretty that she “made her feel all the feelings”) is dating a college boy named Toshio. Kana gets invested and even idolizes their relationship, almost living vicariously through Hijiri and Toshio. She gets upset when the two of them break up and even desperately pushes herself to be involved in trying to get them back together. This further emphasizes Kana’s desires for a relationship like Toshio and Hijiri’s which can be seen as her wanting to be “normal” just like her friends. Despite this want, Kana still has reluctance in pursuing a straight relationship even when given the opportunity.
This is seen in her budding romance with Sasaki in Episode 5 “Pit-a-Pat.” As an ongoing joke for Kana and her friends, she is constantly paired with her classmate Sasaki. After numerous failed attempts to get to know him better, she finally has a chance to kiss him when the two of them share an intimate conversation at school. Kana, however, turns away, saying she no longer feels the spark between them. Then, later on in the episode, Kana apologizes to Sasaki and rejects him gently.
Kana’s fear of change and reluctance to be with a guy feels very similar to the experiences many closeted folks have dealt with. After feeling pressured to get into straight relationships by loved ones, many closeted folks attempt to be in straight relationships only to realize it’s not for them. For Kana, although it felt right at the moment, deep down she recognizes this is not what she wants. Like many of these revelations, Kana doesn’t quite realize them until being pushed into situations where she has to have them. That’s where a certain pink-haired alien comes in.
Haruko Haruhara
In each season of FLCL, Haruko plays a similar role for each protagonist. Acting as a catalyst for growth, she brings all the messy, awkward, frustrating parts of growing up to these characters so it triggers their N.O., a superpower that allows the user to access portals and pull out items from their forehead and is arguably a metaphor for opening up one’s mind. Haruko’s presence comes moments after Kana makes a comment about wanting a magical cat to come from space and give her a magical wand.
Which Haruko literally does, by triggering Kana’s N.O. She also makes a point of manipulating parts of Kana’s life so she lives through the changes she would otherwise avoid. She’s the one who points to Kana that now is the time things change, and Kana needs to be prepared for that. Haruko first exhibits signs of acting as that inciting figure when she visits Kana at her job in the first episode. She explains to her that being 17 means change is going to happen – which triggers Kana’s survival mode to keep her life intact.
This sets up the first distraction for her, building bottle rockets with her friends rather than addressing her problems and fear. The startling realization that these distractions will only last for so long comes when reality literally falls straight from the sky. The first of many robots crashes into the recreation center, and destroys the bottle rocket. It’s a lot for her, and Kana’s reaction has her crying profusely as she refuses to run away from the lip robot, much to the confusion of her friends who plead with her to get out of there.
This is the moment Kana realizes that change is there is staring her right in the face, and she cannot handle it. Haruko’s presence in this episode also marks the first time we realize Kana has N.O. Like the previous FLCL protagonists, she wields the power to open her mind to use these powers to help people, but she’s afraid to. Like many closeted folks, the heavy feeling of this new perspective on the world is intimidating and painful, and Kana feels physical pain whenever N.O. tries to come out. But since Haruko’s role is to push Kana’s growth, she’s the one who must show Kana the potential of her powers and how by accepting them, Kana is more likely to save the people around her.
Kana’s inner conflict between channeling N.O versus hiding it is a recurring theme in the series, and the perfect visual for queer people who repress their sexuality out of fear, hiding some of the best parts of themselves. Episode 1 ends with a monologue about cherishing the moments you have with people, it’s the first stage of Kana recognizing how fleeting things are. Haruko is the waves that start to rock Kana’s life, while also reminding her of her potential if she just embraces her fear, her wants, and life’s changes.
Kana-bun + Pets
Kana’s relationship with her best friend Pets also supports her coming out narrative. Their backstory follows many friends to lovers tropes, such as Kana being lonely before she meets Pets. Kana is her and Pets are also the first relationship we see introduced in the series. But it isn’t until viewers reach Episode 5, “Shake It Off,” are they shown the full extent of what Pets means to Kana.
In this episode, Pets goes missing and Kana hears that she will be evacuating to Mars with her family due to the impending doom caused by Medical Mechanica, a mysterious corporation that is sending robots of mass destruction on Earth and a recurring character in the FLCL universe. On her way home, Kana is confronted by Pets’ mother only to realize she knows little to nothing about her best friend, which hurts her.
“I didn’t know anything. On top of that, I didn’t know that I didn’t know anything. I just acted like I knew. Everything I my life was made up of lies.”
Kana says to Haruko who has picked her up after Kana tries to escape Pets’ mother. For a moment, it feels as if Kana has finally grown up and developed recognition of her past mistakes. But shortly after leaving Pets’ house, Kana realizes Pets has been captured by the regenerated lip robot from Episode 1, after Pets sneaked into the ruined recreation center to pick up some last minute things before her trip. While hanging onto the wires of the robot to save Pets, Kana pleads with Pets to answer her why she didn’t tell her she was leaving and how she’ll make sure everything stays the same.
The two of them get in an argument where Pets accuses Kana of being selfish and that she doesn’t want anything to do with her. She even brings up her misfires when trying to help Mossan and Hijiri, and even her feelings for Sasaki that Kana ignored. Pets’ final words to Kana are:
“Stop apologizing, do something about it.”
After Kana falls off the robot and taps into N.O. to rescue Pets. After becoming unconscious from the impact of the fall and the intensity of N.O., Kana imagines her perfect ending – she, Pets, Mossan, and Hijiri on the beach together. The dream is very Pets-centric, with Pets apologizing to Kana and promising her she is not moving to Mars. It even ends with Pets telling Kana she loves staying with her. Although this proves to be a dream, the dream sequence and Kana’s insistence for Pets to stay reads like Kana’s gay yearning for her best friend. She wants to be with Pets, but too many things get in the way of that.
I Love Everybody!
In the final episode, Kana and the rest of the characters on the show prepare for what seems to be the end of the world thanks to Medical Mechanica. There are moments of longing from Kana, as she lays in bed looking at old photos of her and Pets and she cries when she sees Pets’ hair clip on her desk. But despite her missing Pets, Kana still rejects expressing those feelings as she, Hijiri, and Mossan go to the beach to say goodbye to the rocket heading to Mars.
As her two other friends wave goodbye, and Kana sits and watches the rocket signaling Pets has left. This is a callback to the first episode as Kana watches the bottle rocket fly into the sky, and it serves a warning to her change has arrived. It isn’t until later on in the episode that Haruko helps Kana realize she wields the power to defeat Medical Mechanica by confronting her own fear. In the final battle, Kana starts off with the statement, “I love everybody” but becomes hesitant and worried about what people think of her. As she overthinks everything that she’s saying, Kana stops and reverts back to closeting herself.
In This City, I Will
Although it’s a vey unconventional way of explaining coming out, by closeting herself and denying these important parts of herself, Kana’s actions weaken the Earth’s chances of survival in the same way that being in the closet makes it harder to live. It isn’t until Haruko confronts Kana to stop acting selfishly and accept who she is that Kana then reaches the ultimate level of N.O., her hair a fiery rainbow flame as she stands tall against the most powerful robot of all.
As Kana begins to unravel her feelings about Pets leaving, she questions why Pets left without telling her, says her how much she wishes she could’ve done more – but finally acknowledges her feelings of missing Pets. Mirroring the same goodbyes Mossan and Hijiri did at the beach that Kana didn’t participate in, she finally admits that she loves Pets.
Although it’s not exactly how anyone imagined FLCL’s final season to end, Kana ends up bringing everyone and everything on Earth to Mars through a new dimension and in return saves everyone. The world, although very similar to her previous world, still has differences given Kana’s coming out. But it also marks her finally coming to terms with herself and accepting of her new life and her identity. For the first time, Kana no longer has to hide.