zushi's place

Last year, I watched a little-known anime released in 2016 called Flip Flappers. The show is obscure for good reasons. There's an unusual amount of fanservice, the plot falls apart near the end, and most of the side characters come across as being very two-dimensional.

However, there was one aspect of the show that made a deep impression on me when I first saw it, and over the past few months, I have only come to appreciate that aspect of the show more and more. In this post, I want to capture this particular part of Flip Flappers that made it a special show for me.

(This post will by necessity include some mild spoilers, but I will keep it as light as possible.)
Flip Flappers centers around the story of Cocona, a middle school student who is unable to decide the high school that she wants to attend. To her, this decision seem to have the potential to decide the rest of her life. However, all around her, other students seem unconcerned about their decisions – they seem to have decided quickly play and chat during as usual, and appear not to have given much thought to the issue.

Among these students, the upperclassman Iroha Irodori is an exception. She spends her lunch break on painting, and after class can be found in the art prep room (of which she is the sole maintainer of) drinking tea and working on more art pieces. Unlike the rest of the students at the school, Iroha is thoughtful, calm, and caring. Moreover, she possesses a distinct individuality that few in the school seems to have, and Cocona finds herself drawn to her in order understand where that individuality come from.

Over the course of the show, Cocona eventually comes to understand Iroha deeply, but it is not through the way that the she would have initially envisioned.

In Flip Flappers, Cocona has the ability to travel into fantasy worlds called Pure Illusions. These fantasy worlds are whimsical and abstract, much like the world of Alice in Wonderland. And unbeknownst to Cocona initially, these worlds are deeply connected to the people around her.

In the world where she eventually realizes this connection, Cocona comes to experience the life of a child named Iro through Iro's eyes. In that world, she discovers a gaping wound forming in the child's unhappy life. Unable to bear seeing that scar, Cocona works up the courage to exert her will on that world, and in doing so resolves the trauma that opened up. Though Iro still has a relatively sad childhood, at least Cocona made sure that it wouldn't be a scarring one.

Of course, the child that Cocona helped turned out to be the past Iroha, and Cocona's excitement of helping the child became a rude awakening later on. When Cocona goes back to the art room after school, Iroha is no longer there. Looking around the school, Cocona finds the artist tossing out the old canvases that seem no longer need now. In their interactions, Iroha [no longer ]seem as thoughtful and reflective, but tends to projects her emotions spontaneously instead. Furthermore, she no longer spends her breaks painting, and has instead joined friends' conversations in the courtyard instead.

After Iroha's childhood trauma has been resolved, she has become a part of school's usual scenery of carefree students. It's scenery decidedly absent of that directedness and individuality that had once defined her and drawn Cocona to her.

And in what is unusual for a story like this, Iroha's character arc ends here. Flip Flappers does not comment on her character before or after the change, it does not attempt to have Cocona find and reclaim the old senpai. The Pure Illusion world is closed and gone, and there's no going back to the old Iroha. Cocona is left to consider the impact of her decisions on the world.

I feel that in this handling of Iroha's arc, the show demonstrates an understanding of art, trauma, and people that I have seldom seen in other media. It understands that art is sometimes born from a desire to cope with a traumatic past, rather than from the strokes of brilliance that media usually portrays it as.

It also understands that trauma can be solely responsible for a person's positive identity, yet the person could still develop other positive identities otherwise.

It understands that sometimes, as a consequence of personal growth, valuable personality traits could be lost.

It understands that the dichotomy of individuality and conformity is much, much more nuanced than most popular media would give it credit for.

Lastly, it understands that the value judgement between an artist and a student is outside the scope of the show itself to comment on, and that the audience must reach their own conclusions on this one.

Despite being written and directed by artists in various mediums, Iroha's arc understands and portrays so many bitter truths about artists that I can't help but admire the grace and conviction with which it does so. It is a rare example of a show being incredibly honest and incredibly insightful, complimented by a combination of elegant and beautifully-illustrated storytelling. Flip Flappers is a diamond in the rough, but what diamond is there shines truly brightly.

Looking back, although I have mixed feelings about Flip Flappers, the recentness and the depth of the show gives me a lot of hope that the show will be surpassed on day. Both the screenwriter Yuniko Ayana and the director Kiyotaka Oshiyama are still in some ways up-and-coming names in animation, and I look forward to what valuable things they will say about art, trauma, and life in the future.

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Categorized under: #animations, #psychology, #art, #essay