Anything ever - FLCL

FLCL (Furi Kuri or Fooly Cooly) is a 6 episode Japanese animation series produced by Gainax and put straight onto DVD.
The main character is a 12 year old boy called Naota Nandaba, who lives in the quiet town of Mabase along with his perverted father and grandfather. His companions include his brother’s high school ex-girlfriend, and his friends who are obsessed with sporks.

Not soon after Naota has told of the restrictive and boring nature of Mabase, a strange alien woman (Haruhara Haruko) on a Vespa rides up to him and whacks him in the forehead with her Rickenbacker electric guitar.

Haruko’s confrontation with the controlling company Medical Mechanica in order to find “Atomisk” ends up turning Naota’s life upside-down, whilst he also has to deal with the other characters. His brother’s ex-girlfriend Mamimi continues to commit arson and burden him with her affection and antisocial delinquency, whilst Ninamori, the conflicted daughter of the corrupt town mayor also begins to take an interest in him. Over the duration of the show, many of the character’s issues are addressed, for example Naota is forced to confront the way he lives in his successful brother’s shadow, and in one episode he actually saves the town with his underlying heroics. Even after all of these events, however, when Haruko leaves to pursue her love, everything goes back to how it used to be, and Naota returns to his monologue about how restrictive and boring the town is.

As FLCL was brought out straight onto DVD, this cut out the potential opportunity of airing it on television, and thus restricts the audience reach not only from the show but also the advertising. This loss in money, however, was equalled out by the fact that each episode was sold separately on individual DVDs. As this is a rather unconventional way of releasing a show, it grabbed the audience from that alone, and the slow rate at which they were released built up anticipation and kept people wanting more.

The series also has 2 graphic novels based on the show, however they have a slightly different take on events and do not actually feature any proper storyline. It is because of this unexplained nature of the novels that they tend to be bought by big fans of the show, in order to expand their knowledge of the story and characters, rather than a mainstream independent project. This is a good example of vertical integration, taking full advantage of the niche audience that watches anime/reads comics.

Key concepts:
- Vertical integration
- Narrowcasting
- Convergence

Here is a very short clip of the show: