FLCL Progressive – Episode 3 [Stone Skipping]

This episode opens with yet another really creepy dream. Alterego!Hidomi is in some kind of toxic wasteland, and her personality is very different from how she is in the real world. She’s excited because she and her classmates are going to “devour each other”, but she becomes sad when she realizes she’s the only person present. She rubs her hands all over body as she laments how badly she wants her skin to be ripped, torn and eaten from her body. * gags *

Mini-Jinyus begin raining from the sky and they tell Hidomi to pay more attention to her surroundings. The teenager looks up and a giant water bubble lands on Hidomi. As she stands inside this waterscape, her classmates begin to be reeled up all around her. Hidomi’s head expands like a balloon and when it reaches the water’s surface it pops. And that’s how Hidomi starts her day.

Episode numero trois takes place after a short timeskip, as it is now in the middle of summer. Haruko has decided to only take some of her students with her to the beach – just our main cast. And Jinyu is present to protect Hidomi from Haruko.

Hidomi hides in the shade of an umbrella while Mori (Goro) introduces his “girlfriend” to his friends Ide and Marco. She appears to be a cute girl who’s very shy, and she has a potted plant as an “emotional support plant.” Both Ide and Marco don’t quite seem to understand what this girl, Aiko, sees in Mori. Ouch.

Back at the beach, Jinyu messes with Haruko’s lotion and reveals that it’s only a fraction of her intended payback given that Haruko has spent the last 3 months stalking her. Haruko starts playing volleyball with her students while Jinyu has a bit of a chat with Hidomi. Jinyu asks Hidomi what she wants, and Hidomi, despite having literally dreamt about this at the beginning of the episode, tells Jinyu that she doesn’t know. That’s fair, I guess it -would- be super creepy to tell a stranger that she wants to have her skin eaten off. * shudders *  Later while all the students play in the sand together, Haruko encases Jinyu in a cocoon of cement.

As the sun starts to go down, Ide notices that Hidomi and Haruko are both missing. The three guys run around the beach looking for the two but are unable to find them. Meanwhile Mori has to walk his girlfriend to the train station, while Marco follows them from afar. At the train station we see that Aiko’s personality is completely different from how she appeared to Mori’s friends; she’s a total bitch. Mori “rented” her for the day to go to the beach with his class. Once he’s busted, Mori is super embarrassed…. and then Marco starts crying over how pathetic the situation is, which makes Mori feel even worse.

Left alone to look for Hidomi and Haruko, a submerged Jinyu (talking only when the waves recede) talks in metaphors to Ide, who figures out where to look for the two girls. Sure enough he finds them in the woods in some kind of abandoned… clinic? Storage house? Haruko has Hidomi restrained and is trying to get the teenager to tell her how to make her “overflow”.

Ide busts in and the sight of Hidomi tied up and scantily clad makes HIM overflow. A neon green blob monster bursts from his forehead and fights Haruko upon Ide’s command.

A neat little touch is the extra scene with Aiko that’s slipped into this episode between Ide’s fight against Haruko. Aiko’s dad looks like Bushy Eyebrow guy from the original series, just older. Anyways his living room transforms into some kind of communications device where he can talk to the eyepatch guy from the first episode. Kinda cool, but I’m not sure why this scene was added, unless it’s got some relevance for the last episode. Maybe they both work for Medical Mechanica?

But back to the fight. Ide’s knocked from the sky by the plant Mori hit into the air earlier, but Jinyu saves Ide with her flying car. Ide doesn’t know what to do next, as by this point Haruko has taken command of his green blob monster and Hidomi has overflowed and is encased in a giant cocoon of metal scraps. Jinyu tells Ide that this time he’s going to have to step up and fix the situation himself, essentially, and she throws him her guitar.

Haruko-on-the-blob tries to fight against Ide, but he dodges her attacks in order to attack the giant flying metal ball hiding Hidomi in the sky. Ide’s able to uncover Hidomi but she’s more or less unconscious. Haruko wants to remove Hidomi’s headphones for some reason but Jinyu warns against it. Haruko uses reverse psychology to get Ide to take the cat headphones off Hidomi’s head himself.

However this backfires and the headphones’ emergency locking system kicks in. The headphones attach themselves to Hidomi’s head in a permanent fashion, and neither Ide nor Haruko can get them off.  …Well then. I wonder what Hidomi’s mom will have to say about her headphones now. ^^;;

The metal ball underneath Ide, Hidomi and Jinyu begins to disintegrate and fall into the ocean. As the sun starts to come up, Jinyu and Haruko agree that only one option is left: to attack Medical Mechanica directly. Oh, and Marco and Mori watched this entire scene from the beach, and are understandably clueless as to what really happened. xD

This episode was alright. The only complaint I have is that Hidomi’s inner thoughts are really fucking gross, and I didn’t need to hear her inner thoughts about having her skin eaten off open the episode. Mori hiring Aiko as his girlfriend was kinda sad but cute at the same time, and I felt bad for him when he got busted. If this series was going to be longer, it’d be nice to see him find a proper girlfriend.

It makes me a little sad that this upcoming episode will be the last of FLCL Progressive. I’m wondering if Jinyu and Haruko will ever be able to make amends between them. And will we see Naota at all??