FLCL: Shoegaze

FLCL: Shoegaze
Season 5
Key visual for FLCL: Shoegaze
No. of episodes	3
Release
Original network	Adult Swim
Original release	October 1 (2023-10-01) – October 15, 2023 (2023-10-15)
Season chronology

The fifth and final season of the FLCL anime series, titled FLCL: Shoegaze, is produced by Production I.G and Adult Swim's production arm Williams Street. Shoegaze was animated by NUT, with direction by Yutaka Uemura and screenplay by Kenta Ihara. It premiered on October 1, 2023 in the United States on Adult Swim's Toonami programming block. In addition to contributing to the soundtrack of the season, the Pillows performed the ending theme song "About A Rock'n'Roll Band". It is a sequel to FLCL: Alternative and takes place 10 years after it.

Episodes

See also: List of FLCL episodes

No. overall	No. in season	Title	Directed by	Written by	Storyboarded by	Original air date
22	1	"Furu-Bari (Full Barricade)" (Japanese: フルバリ)	Yutaka Uemura	Kenta Ihara	Naoto Uchida	October 1, 2023 (2023-10-01)
A 15-year-old boy named Masaki has felt like a loner throughout his childhood. Ever since smoke arose from a giant clothes-iron shaped building on the outskirts of town, Masaki started to see glowing, green ghosts everywhere he went, in addition to a strange giant purple bird-like ghost on top of Tsuganei Tower. However, no one else can see them and thus he gets treated as a compulsive liar, causing him become estranged from his peers. After transferring into high school, he meets an eccentric girl named Harumi who gets entertained by his sketches of the ghosts. Some time later, Masaki gets sick of his situation and decides to make a bomb with supplies from the school's chemistry lab. Although Harumi catches him in the act, she decides to help him with making it and they go to a local hardware store to continue gathering bomb supplies. In the present day, the two of them trespass into the tower with plans of detonating the bomb at the top floor, with Masaki hoping to find the truth behind the giant bird that only he can see. The two tower intruders get the attention of not only the police, but also Bureau of Interstellar Immigration chief Kanda and Kana Koumoto. When Masaki and Harumi reach the top of the tower, they find a completely empty room, making their efforts seemingly pointless. Harumi decides to prepare to light the fuse for the bomb anyways, but Masaki gets upset with her, setting off an N.O. reaction inside his head that lights the fuse by itself. Afraid they might be killed by the explosion, Masaki throws the bomb out the tower's windows and it ends up blowing apart much of the floor's windows and roof, revealing a portal into imaginary space.
23	2	"Gene-Bato (Generational Battle)" (Japanese: ジェネバト)	Yutaka Uemura	Kenta Ihara	Fumie Muroi	October 8, 2023 (2023-10-08)
Harumi demands Kana buy her multiple types of candy, threatening to blow up another part of the tower if her demands are not met. As Kana drives around town to buy the candy, she flashes back to her post-graduate life: being afraid to meet up with Pets and her other friends despite their time together, being recruited by Kanda to join the Bureau, and then serving as a test subject for Kanda to use her N.O. Channel, but with results that he found underwhelming. Meanwhile, Kanda tries to sow mistrust in Masaki by texting him that Harumi is a Medical Mechanica agent just using him as a tool. Masaki has further doubts when he tries to get Harumi to open up more about herself, but she continues to play coy. As the two touch the portal, they transform the top of the tower into a giant brain-like structure, but are unsure how to make it work. Kanda orders a sniper to take aim at Harumi, hoping to use Masaki's despair to spark an even greater N.O. reaction than before, though the sniper is reluctant to shoot a teenage girl. Finally, Kana returns with a giant bag of candy via helicopter, and throws the candy out while arguing with Harumi about growing up. As the giant brain structure reacts to Masaki's N.O. Channel, the green ghosts he had been seeing suddenly become visible to everyone, including the police sniper aiming at Harumi. As he tries to shoot the ghost, the bullet passes through it and hits Harumi.
24	3	"Far-Fre (Far Friend)"	Unknown	Unknown	TBA	October 15, 2023 (2023-10-15)
Kana tries desperately to stop Harumi from bleeding out on top of the tower as the various ghosts become visible across town. Meanwhile, Harumi becomes a purple ghost, and is absorbed by the giant purple bird ghost atop the tower, seeing visions of herself buying candy with a long-lost friend and riding on a space shuttle to a colony on Mars. Masaki loses control of his N.O. Channel as the world begins to merge with an alternate universe, but the power of the channel threatens to explode out of control. Suddenly, a giant, flying. snake-like creature bursts out of Masaki's forehead and swallows the power source, forcing a shutdown and splitting both universes apart. Masaki looks around for Harumi, only to discover that everyone on this world but him has forgotten her existence. Some time later, Masaki can still see the ghosts everywhere, as they have become invisible to everyone but him again, and despises this world. But at the end, Masaki finds himself able to cross over into the world where Harumi exists and shows them his sketchbook, thanks to a mini version of the snake from before, named Atomsk.

External links

• Official Gainax website (in Japanese)
• Official Adult Swim website