FLCL: Grunge trades the anarchic joy of the original for something colder: three separate stories about what happens when the surreal teenage years actually end. The cel-shaded neon aesthetic is gorgeous, but it feels like the show is performing adulthood rather than living it. The three-perspective structure should create depth instead of fragmentation, leaving you waiting for threads that never quite connect. Action sequences still spark with creativity, but they're scattered across a narrative that can't decide if it's sci-fi worldbuilding or character study. This is FLCL for people who wanted the original to be more cynical about growing up. It lands that bet only sometimes, and never with the reckless energy that made the franchise matter in the first place.

Three teenagers have finished school and started working, living in a city sunk in decline and poverty. The adults around them have given up on the future, but the young people treat the city's hardship as an ordinary fact of life. That changes when Haruko throws the whole city into chaos. The fourth season of FLCL and a sequel to FLCL Alternative, this three-episode CGI production is built around what it feels like to be an adult, mixing action, comedy, mecha and science fiction.