Flip Flappers makes you feel like you're watching someone else's fever dream, except it's so visually gorgeous you don't want to wake up. The animation constantly shifts styles to match whatever reality Cocona stumbles into, and there's no other show that trusts its audience to just feel what's happening instead of explaining it. By the final episodes the plot tangles into something that might not entirely make sense, but the real story was always about Cocona learning to choose her own life instead of waiting for someone to tell her what she should want.

Cocona is a middle schooler living with her grandmother who still has no idea what she wants to do with her life. Then Papika, an energetic stranger, drags her into Flip Flap, a secret organization. Suddenly Cocona is crossing into Pure Illusion, a bizarre overlapping dimension, to hunt for crystal shards and fight strange creatures. The shard they seek, the Shard of Mimi, is said to grant any wish. When danger strikes, the crystals let the girls transform: Cocona becomes Pure Blade and Papika becomes Pure Barrier. A rival organization is after the same fragments, so the two must learn to sync their feelings to transform more effectively. The result is a magical girl action comedy with psychological and sci-fi touches, built around the mystery of why the shards matter.