Pillow Talk, Part Un

This may not be the "best" anime I've seen, but its without a doubt the second best and my personal favorite. Here's my take on the not-that-confusing greatness that is FLCL.

Warning: There are MASSIVE spoilers. Honestly it won't make much of a difference if you know the plot before you see it, but still in the words of an animated lion, be prepared. I’m going to go through this on a character by character basis and then do the plot and some other random stuff if I haven’t hit on it by then.
Mamimi:
Samejima Mamimi has had it rough before we meet her in FLCL. Her parents are divorced (she reminisces about school plays saying that even though they were stupid, those were happy memories because her parents went to see them together), she gets bullied in school as well as having no friends (we never see her with any other people outside of Naota and when Naota tells her over the phone to go out with her friends she just stands under the bridge and looks dejected, as for the bullying we see her standing in a river in one episode and one of Naota’s friends says he saw some girls bullying her the other day), she doesn’t like school (she frequently cuts class to hang out by the bridge), and her boyfriend just went to America. Mamimi is not in the best state of mind as we see through a couple of mental deteriorations throughout the series. First, in “Fire starter” its implied that Mamimi is starting at least some, if not all of the fires that have been suspected to be arson around the city. The hints to this are somewhat subtle but there are two major ones. First Mamimi has been calling the robot that came out of Naota’s head Canti, which is in reference to a videogame she’s been playing called fire starter in which you are tasked by the God of Black Flame to burn a fictional city of demons that is ever expanding without completely destroying it (because if you do you won’t have a place to live) in order to prevent if from explanding and taking over the whole world. The god, Canti, has black wings and Mamimi see’s Canti with black wings flying one day and is convinced that he is the God of the Black Flames. During the episode there have been a number of fires that are suspected to be arson. Mamimi and Naota are walking across a bridge later, after Mamimi is seen in a river and one of Naota’s friends says he saw her being bullied recently, when her fire starter game falls out of her pocket. Naota later finds her in a ring of cigarettes by the burnt out husk of her old school and tries to giver Mamimi her game back and she says she doesn’t need it anymore, after which she goes to Canti and asks for his kiss and his absolution. Now when you combine this with the second big hint, which is that during a voice over when Naota is talking about the fire starter game you hear a policeman introduced earlier in the episode is says that they know Mamimi is has been committing the arsons. From the fact that Mamimi sees Canti as a sort of God of arson we can infer that by asking for his absolution she meant she was asking for his approval of her work. As to why she’s committing arson there’s a few possible explanations. In my opinion, Canti is a manifestation of Mamimi’s feelings for Naota’s brother Tasku (more on why later, just roll with it for now) and since she sees him as the God from her videogame she’s trying to win back his approval by committing arson (hence her asking for his absolution with a kiss). As to why Mamimi projects her thoughts from her videogame onto Canti (outside of the fact that he actually has black wings throughout the majority of the episode) stems from how Mamimi and Tasuku met. During the episode its explained that there was a fire at the elementary school Mamimi and Tasuku attended. Mamimi claims that Canti was the one that saved her the night of the fire as well (really I think it was Tasuku since who exactly she is talking about in the sentence is a little vague and it would have been extremely unlikely that Canti was there without some very convoluted theories) which reinforces the fact that he is supposed to be a manifestation of Tasuku. Anyways, Mamimi says something to the effect that she used to wish the school would go away before she met Tasuku (I haven’t found conclusive evidence as to whether she burned it down or not) and now, even though it burned down the ashes remain (symbolic of her relationship with Tasuku but more on that soon). Although later in the episode, during a battle with a medical mechanica robot, a projectile and explosion cause the ashes to scatter and the wreckage to completely disappear which foreshadows some later events. Fire starter is the first episode where we really get into Mamimi’s relationship with Tasuku, speaking of which…..
Mamimi’s relationship with Taskuku. Taskuku is Naota’s older brother who has gone to America to play baseball. He used to date Mamimi: however we find out in the first episode that he hasn’t contacted Mamimi (in probably the best scene in the whole anime, in my humble opinion: just had to mention how awesome the bridge scene is) and that he even has an American girlfriend. When Naota tells her this, we get a fairly odd response from Mamimi. She starts clutching her head, stating that she is going to overflow and after doing so passes out. As soon as this happens the first of the robots emerges form Naota’s heard (this is actually the only time that two robots emerge, which is significant but I’ll get into that in another section). I’m going to go into my theory behind the robots later but briefly, they’re manifestations of strong emotions of people that they’ve been keeping bottled up. The fact that Canti emerges when Mamimi “overflows,” as well as the fact that the two times he “activates” (watch the show and you’ll know what I mean) and Atomsk’s symbol appears on him Naota says Tasku’s name (he also says it when Haruko hits Canti with her bass (in the English subtitles of the Japanese voiced version)). However, he doesn’t do anything brotherly towards Naota (that’s another character) except protect him, which more cements him as a Mamimi’s version of Tasuku and speaking of protecting we get into the next facet of the Mamimi/Tasuku relationship which is that Mamimi saw Tasuku as her protector. As we discussed earlier, Mamimi is being bullied at the time that the show is going on. She says that Canti is the protector of the weak in “Fire Starter” and also claims that she is the protector of the weak when she rescues a kitten. From the fact that Mamimi is now being bullied and that she calls Canti the protector of the weak we can infer that Mamimi saw Tasuku as her kind of protector: however Tasuku clearly was not only her shelter from bullying. As was stated earlier Mamimi’s parents are divorced. In Tasuku Mamimi had someone that cared about her and would shield her from the harsh realities of her relatively painful life. The fact that Mamimi saw Tasuku as her protector explains some of her other odd behavior as a result of his being gone. Mamimi calls Naota “Ta-kun” (a shortened Naota but also clearly in reference to Tasuku) and does, what the show refers to as, “perverted things” with him. Now the motivation behind these “perverted” acts is a little bit of mixed bag, the fact that Mamimi refers to Ta-kun is clearly meant to show that she’s using him as a replacement for Tasuku. HOWEVER, despite the fact that she uses sexual things as an outlet has nothing to do with the fact that she’s Naota as a faux-Tasuku. If she actually wanted a sexual replacement for Tasuku she would find someone who wasn’t a middle-schooler. She does it because she just wants an outlet to escape and let out pent up emotions in the way that Tasuku’s protection used to give her. This is solidified by the fact that when Naota actually tries to step into Tasuku’s ex-role as boyfriend Mamimi gets weirded out and tells him that he isn’t supposed to do things like that. You can argue that Mamimi is also sexual with Naota because that’s how her and Tasuku showed affection and that she chooses Naota instead of a random person as a replacement because he’s Tasuku’s brother and reminds her of him, and these are both true. However, neither of these means that Mamimi is using Naota as a sexual replacement for Tasuku or that she’s simply using Naota to let out pent up sexual feelings toward Tasuku (that last one may be part of it but there is definitely other motivation behind it. Seriously. Mamimi’s thing with Naota is not supposed to be SEXUAL sexual. If that makes sense. She’s not just giving a middle-schooler hickies because she’s horny. Honest). Now when Naota starts spending time with Haruko and ignoring (not really but I can’t think of a better word) Mamimi she tries to find other outlets for her emotions and affection in a kitten, and the terminal core robo-dog. Unfortunately for her these things still don’t help (the dog actually makes her deteriorate further into a revenge obsessed semi-deranged Mamimi and it takes the dog getting out of control and eating some of Naota’s friends truck to snap her out of it). And this inability to replace Tasuku leads us to Mamimi’s main development/point/moral/etc which is…..
Sometimes you just have to let things be, you can’t necessarily replace or get over things; sometimes good things leave your life. Mamimi is sinking deeper and deeper into a depression/funk as the show progresses and Naota is paying more and more attention to Haruko and less and less attention to her. She tries to remedy this by finding replacement Ta-Kuns but as I stated above she can’t find anyone to replace Tasuku and her feelings of loneliness and loss threaten to consume her (as seen when the terminal core leads her to become an extremely revenge obsessed semi-psychotic individual). But when she sees Naota confess his love to Haruko and watches Haruko leave (I said there would be spoilers) she realizes that good things in life, the things that make you the happiest, will leave and there is nothing you can do about it. After realizing this, Mamimi sees that there is nothing but painful memories for her in Mabase and leaves to pursue her dream of becoming a professional photographer.
Well there you have it. That’s all the important things I can think of about Mamimi. She’s a depressed girl because the only person who she ever thought cared about her left and has an American girl friend so she’s using sexuality and his younger brother to try to shield herself/give herself an outlet from the pain in her life as well as a way of expressing affection for a person she no longer can. But she eventually realizes that sometimes things just happen and goes off on her own. Her overflowing with emotion is one of the key things that gets the ball rolling in the series (since he almost pure love for Tasuku is the thing that first manifested Canti/Atomsk) and “something amazing” did result from it, just as she says in the very beginning of the series. She is my favorite character of the series by far and has some amazing dialogue, especially the bridge scene.
And that’s all about that. Haruko is next.