Flip Flappers ep 3. The show continues to pay off what it set up quickly. The ep opens in a barren and forbidding (but still beautiful) world, and you can immediately guess you’re in Pure Illusion, and you can easily guess whose mind you’re in.
In this world, the villagers are creatures who have learned to suppress their desires for the sake of their survival and the raiders want to indulge in her desires without restraint. It’s an interesting mentality, that embracing your desires means becoming a monster. And I suppose it’s fitting that everyone in the world wears a mask. Behind the mask, you can embrace and project your ugliest self, and wake up the next morning and marvel at the terribleness of it all.
The fights here were executed incredibly well. Just casually pulling off dizzyingly fast-paced and wonderfully impactful duels. They’re choreographed and animated well-enough that you can appreciate their individual fighting styles. A lot of proper action anime don’t have the characters’ personalities come through in the way they fight, and it’s great to see it in a quick exchange here. (Hell, I wouldn’t mind more of it if they’re this good.)
It’s an interesting decision in the second half of the ep to go ahead and make “submitting to your desires” less abstract and more directly sexual. The Roman-style orgy and the lewd transformation scenes were curious decisions, but I do appreciate shows not pulling their punches. If it’s going to talk about primal desires, why not be sexual.
It’s also very interesting that the villain of the ep posited that a mask doesn’t create a new identity; rather it pulls your real identity to the surface. Without her own, self-defined identity to resist it, Cocona’s most animalistic urges rose to the top.
As bombastic as the fights were, this was all just a way for Cocona and Papika to apologize to each other. It’s a small gesture, but an honest one.
Yayaka stealing the show (and the fragment) in the end was cool as hell. I guess there’s another faction now. The show hasn’t bogged itself down with lore and mechanics so far, and I hope it never does.
Evoking Mad Max, DBZ, and Sailor Moon in one ep, without losing track of the meaning in its fights. This show fuckin’ rules.