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centrally-unplanned · 1 year

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Something from Hazel's FLCL video that caught my eye was this one shot manga Dirty Work, co-written by FLCL character designer Yoshiyuki Sadamoto. There is a scene in Episode One of FLCL where Mamimi, in response to Naota's (petulant) ask about her feelings for his absent brother/her quasi-ex, responds:

...Watermelon. Or like a panda with a mean face. Or like sandals with pressure points drawn on them. Or the smell of a blackboard eraser. Or a Sunday morning, where you wake up and it’s raining.

Its a meandering and mysterious response, but still one that gets the point across. This dialogue was apparently written by Sadamoto entirely on his own insistence, and he claims to have something of a predilection for it, a love for the meandering, obtuse, poet-girl.

Dirty Work is the most clear example of this fetish from Sadamoto's other creations - its a ~20 page story of a teen guy, the childhood best friend who lives at a chicken farm he is in love with, and the people she asks him to beat up or kill who have wronged her. With a duo who, by the way, make it hilariously apparent this is from the character designer for Evangelion:

That is just Shinji and like a Misato/Asuka cross, some of the mannerisms are absolutely identical, its great. It also has some fashion that is really on point:

Ngl I might steal this look. And in continuing the predilections of Sadamoto, Evangelion, and the 90's Gainax psycho-sexual oeuvre, it also fulfills its duty to the otaku nation by have an out-of-nowhere dubiously consensual grope scene! The guy knows what he likes, okay?

But Dirty Work is not really about any of that; instead it is about the limits of longing and your own capacity, or even desire, to bridge the gap. Our girl Kana knows that our boy Tatsuo here is in love with her, and uses that knowledge for her own ends, sure, but she has no plan herself. That control is about the only agency she has in a life otherwise ruled by passivity:

Tatsuo and her are both stuck in their place - but that isn't as bad as it sounds. For one this is clearly an erotically tinged passivity; a manipulative girl keeping a guy on a leash with crumbs of sexual favours in return for acts of violence? Fucking hot, and not a dynamic foreign to FLCL! But that eroticism is elevated by Tatsuo claiming that "when he is reincarnated" (aka metaphorically when he changes who he is) he will win her over, and she replies that she doesn't want that:

And bam, that is our Mamimi sequence. To explain that last section, future panels will tell you that in chicken coops (like Kana's) light bulbs are used at night to convince the chickens more days are passing so they lay more eggs; a symbiotic-but-frozen relationship.

You can treat Mamimi and Kana's lines here as simple indulgences, playful poetry, but it really works for me. Doraemon & Cutie Honey, protractors and compasses, Jenni - okay we are just gonna ignore that line, we can't nail it every time - all these things are kind of great for their differences, right? You don't want to unify them, they are connected, but not fully, and its better that way. Kana is never leaving home, she is gonna run her mom's chicken coop, Tatsuo is never getting with Kana, which you could view as negative...or you could just not, and instead as a (*cough* erotic *cough*) dynamic with its own power. This line sells that, as does the last part of the manga:

Being the lightbulb to a chicken is beautiful too sometimes.

Which brings us all the way back to Mamimi. Mamimi is not Kana, her story is not her story - she is in way worse straits, and she is going to change, dramatically so, over the course of the show. But in Episode 1 you are seeing her through Naota's eyes, the simultaneous object of his disgust and desire. The way that she claims to love Naota's brother while being sexually intimate with Naota in said brother's absence, the way she clings to his memory despite him having completely moved on from her, Naota views this as wrong and maybe pathetic:

And you, the audience, agree with Naota, because its his story, and you don't spend a lot of time in Episode 1 in Mamimi's head. You see Mamimi's lines about watermelons and sandals and shit as an affectation and a cope.

Now, though, I can view them as a reference, as the way Mamimi sees herself - as Kana does. Dirty Work had 20 pages to sell me on how Kana's stasis is kindof beautiful, and Mamimi is a dead ringer for the same mold. More pathetic externally of course, but a match internally. It doesn't last, it doesn't even last this entire scene, but in her mind this relationship is giving something that change is not going to replace.

Or I mean probably Sadamoto has a fetish for cryptic poetry girls and this was his moment to shine. But I like my take better.

#flcl #mamimi samejima #mini essay

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black-coffee-and-sugar · 3 years

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Magical thinking indeed:

- im just over here feeling warm cuz lena really referred to kara's apartment as 'home'. lena truly looked like one partner stuck entertaining the friends alone because the other partner is running late and didn't give an excuse for why

- also kara flying in through the window sans the suit cuz everyone knows now. im living for this

- nia just jumping over the backrest of the couch. it's about time these people actually started acting like friends and i would like to point out that we didn't get to this until lena was back and finally a full member of the super friends. i know im beating a dead horse but we could've had this seasons ago

- i actually forgot about the voldemort/harry thing going on with nxyly and kara but that's honestly on me for always watching these episodes after 2 glasses of wine

- brainy wasn't in this episode because??? like what does he have going on outside of the tower? are him and nia even dating? did we really give his screentime to william and fucking mitch? this is the 3rd game night scene he hasn't been in and im not a fan

- andrea is so mean but like...it's william

- also this embedding william with the super friends thing is utter BULLSHIT. have you ever watched a show that literally has to force a character into scenes? nothing about william's involvement is ever organic and the problem is persisting all because of a contrived connection the writers want to forge between him, kara and the super friends

- alex n j'onn, the gatekeepers of kara's secret, the former blacksite clandestine agents actually agreed to this and WHY

- alex not protecting her identity WHY

- lena's identity and magic needs to be a secret and yet there lena is, eye fucking with kara in the middle of tower in front of william, god and my fucking salad

- honestly if william doesn't figure out who they all are, since they're doing a shit job hiding it, he's just plain stupid

- i get the impression that kara is still too terrified of lena getting directly involved. she doesn't want her on nxyly's radar at all

- esme!

- rainbow bracelet. kelly as guardian still wearing that shit like a proud mom hanging their kids art on the fridge. im soft

- the foster parents were suspect from minute one but the way that woman just pushed that small child outside to defend them. like...what kind of psycho does that? and more importantly why were they NOT ARRESTED?!?!

- 'lena broke my brain'. you know that line was 100% nicole and i thank her for her service. that was hilarious

- nxyly is the first supergirl villain ive enjoyed since S2 lillian

- lena is not amused by william. same girl same

- but credit where credit is due, his baking story for once actually had some relevance and gave lena her epiphany about her mom's spell

- kara offering to go get the flower or whatever for lena because it's dangerous and lena's little and she doesn't want her to get hurt. protective kara we love to see it

- william: you protect lena, supergirl

my dude, unneeded instruction.

- kara being all cocky is peak content. lena's little smile at kara's casual display of strength. SAME LENA SAME

- for a minute i thought kara totally killed that guy with the flicked bullet

- nia's spidey senses tingling at the lover's quarrel kara and lena are about to have.

- im surprised they didn't bring up the brain washing because that was definitely the moment where lena believed it was for the greater good and she was being manipulative and ruthless with her vampire shirt

- can we say GROWTH tho. i love that kara and lena can disagree without all this bullshit drama like before. secrets are OUT honesty is IN. they're communicating and expressing their fears and leaning on each other. this. this is what i want

- also have to point out that lena is kara's humanity. WE BEEN KNEW but that shit is canon now. so is kara being hopeful and happy around lena. and kara no longer feeling alone because lena is back. i can't believe im winning

- so so so last week lena says 'i believe in you' and now kara says it. before it was 'good luck' 'you too'. the way the writers avoid the explicit use of 'i love you' just makes it louder

- currently thinking about the 'i believe in a thing called love' episode and im already losing my mind

- lena and nia god i love them together. their scenes totally feel like genuine katie and nicole vibes.

- yo the stunt work was actually decent? dreamer's black widow style flip. the dansen banter while kicking ass. is...is this still supergirl? im not used to being fed like this

- dansen telepathy. they just agreed 'yep esme is the one'

- did veeta not say that there's a 'prescribed order to the totems'? so why are they now picking whichever totem they feel like?

- ngl the super friends have been the cause of literally all the city's major issues this entire season

- lena does the spell she didn't want to do because??? like that's not even me being a little shit i think i might have missed that cuz i don't understand the chain of events that led to her changing her mind when she was so adamantly against it

- these incompetent heroes continue their idoicy by letting william write this article WHY. they are not running on taxpayer dollars. they don't owe the public shit. they're actually breaking many laws as vigilantes and 'borrowing' satellites and god knows what else

- andrea has no journalistic integrity. or common decency. she's still hot tho

- william growing a pair. good for him but did he and apparently Andrea forget about the 'no competing' clause in the contracts?

- ending with supercorp domestic fluff 2 episodes in a row. bruh don't touch me

- lena: I'm not using my fingers

kara: I'm going to

this is the new 'i don't think about you while im doing it'

it's all so deliberate. they're SO LOUD

#supercorp #dansen #kara danvers #lena luthor #kelly olsen #alex danvers #nia nal #william dey #andrea rojas #kara x lena #supergirl 6x14 #supergirl

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