Netflix Now: Swing the Bat Edition

Bob MuirBy
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There is a lot I could talk about in this week’s installment of Netflix Now. For example, if girls are what you want, you can watch Emma Stone in Easy A or Angelina Jolie in Salt. I could point out how newly added films are not to be confused with ones you might actually like to see, such as the case of Le Professional, a French film that is not to be confused with Leon, known as The Professional in America. And there’s the usual b-movie magic represented by titles such as Scream, Blacula, Scream!

But all that pales in comparison to one of only two new TV shows added during the past week: FLCL, a.k.a. Fooly Cooly. Clocking in at only six half-hour episodes, this hallmark of anime from the studio behind Neon Genesis Evangelion is easy to finish in one night if you treat it like a long movie. It’s the story of a young boy hit on the head by an alien girl’s motor-powered bass guitar, which causes bizarre robots to shoot forth from bumps on his head, which he manages to fight by getting eaten/absorbed by the first robot that came out, in order to combat some mysterious alien — explaining it is quite hard, I suppose. An explosion of creativity drenched in LSD and backed by Japanese rock band The Pillows, FLCL is easily one of the best coming-of-age stories I’ve ever seen. You owe it to yourself to see what anime is capable of when it doesn’t pander to basement-dwelling introverts.

Even though I own the original DVD releases, I know what I’m adding to my Instant Queue. What are you adding?


New additions to Netflix Watch Instantly apply only to readers in the United States. For those in other parts of the world, your choices may vary.

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