FLCL Reanimated is the ultimate fan tribute to a millennial anime classic

This Saturday marks the 25th anniversary of Kazuya Tsurumaki’s beloved cult-classic anime FLCL, which is a joyous occasion for fans — especially since it also marks the long-awaited premiere of FLCL Reanimated, a fan-organized shot-for-shot re-creation of FLCL’s fifth episode, constructed over four years by a team of more than 300 animators across the globe.

“The project started back in 2021, like early 2021,” FLCL Reanimated creator Kobe Kendall, aka “shleptboi,” said in an interview with Polygon. “I posted just a random post on Twitter from this FLCL fan account that I have, saying, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if there was an FLCL Reanimated?’ And that tweet blew up. So immediately I was like, All right, let’s do this. I’ll start this project.”

From there, Kendall created a dedicated Discord server, opened applications, and began poring over the mountain of portfolios he received for the project. After choosing to reanimate “Brittle Bullet,” the fifth and penultimate episode of FLCL, Kendall set about the task of cutting the episode into individual clips and passing out assignments to the project’s team of animators. Eventually, the scale of the project grew so large that Kendall brought on Sydney Cooper, aka “pyrhaeschii,” a Brooklyn-based animator, to co-organize FLCL Reanimated.

“FLCL has always been very special to me. I watched it for the first time when I was in my early tweens,” Cooper told Polygon. “I think I was 11 or 12. And it really stuck with me, which I think is a common experience when you talk to people who love FLCL. There’s a common thread: It really resonated with them at the time in their life when they were watching it. And so it’s always been an important project for me.”

FLCL Reanimated is much more than a shot-for-shot remake of “Brittle Bullet,” however. Over the years, the team behind the project has created and released dozens of promotional videos, including animated IDs, Adult Swim-style bumpers and trailers, and even an online zine inspired by Newtype magazine to document FLCL Reanimated’s production. 

“The thing that was crazy about the promo zine is that pretty much from the moment we pitched it to our server, we hit the ground running and started bringing people on board to work on it,” Kendall told Polygon. “And two, almost three years later, it’s just now coming out. Reason being is, we went through people hopping on board, and then they had to eventually leave due to personal reasons. The idea was to create a big homage to [Newtype] and just tell people more about our project before it comes out, and just wanting to make something cool on top of FLCL Reanimated.”

As if that wasn’t ambitious enough, The team behind FLCL Reanimated also produced Musical Mechanica, a double album composed of cover songs of the FLCL soundtrack and original tracks inspired by the series. “We have a lot of cool people on it,” Kendall said. “For volume 1, we got Scapegoat Wax, who had a song on Jet Set Radio Future. I’m a big fan of his work. We’ve got Spinning Plums, an up-and-coming Japanese indie band. For volume 2, we’ve got tsubi club, we got Juliana Chahayed, who’s known for these really cool analog telephone covers on YouTube. And then of course we’ve got Guitar Fight from Fooly Cooly, who was gracious enough to do a cover of ‘Last Dinosaur,’ one of the most iconic songs from the show. And they even let us use it for the promo zine as well, so shoutout to them.”

After more than four years of work, Kendall says what’s kept him motivated to see FLCL Reanimated through to fruition is the quality of the work he and Cooper have received from the hundreds of animators who have dedicated their time and passion to the project. 

“Pretty much every single clip that we’ve received is just top-notch quality,” he said. “We have people that work in the industry, they do freelance gigs, they have full-time jobs, what have you, that are taking time out of their own personal schedule to contribute. And yeah, I think that’s keeping me going, just again, the quality of work that we’ve been getting from everybody.”

For a generation of FLCL fans, FLCL Reanimated isn’t just an impressive fan project, it’s a love letter to an epochal work of animation that inspired its audience to dream big, take life as it comes, and not be afraid to step up to the plate and swing the bat. As far as big swings go, FLCL Reanimated is gonna leave one hell of a dent in the universe.

FLCL Reanimated will premiere on Newgrounds and YouTube on April 26. FLCL is available to stream on Hulu and Max.