Anime Review: Flip Flappers Collection

Flip Flappers Collection (UK Rating: 12)

It takes a special anime to grip from the first episode, but Flip Flappers manages it easily. The strange art direction, combined with some fantastical designs and a promising premise. It's utterly enthralling. The first two episodes are dedicated to these adventures without any sort of explanation to the world. Thankfully, the third episode is stuffed with exposition as Papika takes Cocona to the headquarters of Flip Flap.

This pair of magical girls needs to traverse a series of magical worlds, entitled "Pure Illusion," and in each hunt down the shards. Each of the worlds of Pure Illusion is drastically divergent, as are the stories that the girls experience while there. Turned into Bunny Girls and having to traverse the inner workings of a huge machine, experiencing a shadowy school straight out of a Korean horror movie, a desert wasteland like something out of Mad Max or Fist of the North Star. These shards have granted the pair magical powers also, turning them into classic anime Magical Girls.

The magical girl abilities are glimpsed from the very first episode. On their first adventure, Papika is lost trying to retrieve Cocona's glasses from some gargantuan beasties, and Cocona undergoes some sort of Super Saiyan meets Magical Girl transformation. She explodes in a burst beautiful phosphorescent energy, sprouting an epic anime haircut and saving Papika. As the story develops, Papika gets her own transformation and in the third episode the pair gets the classic Magical Girl transformation sequences - Cocona becomes Pure Blade and Papika becomes Pure Barrier. They aren't the only magical girls in the world, either, as Cocona discovers her classmate, Yayaka, is also tracking down the fragments within Pure Illusion with the help of a pair of twins, each with their own special abilities.

Studio 3HZ has really gone its own way with the art style, a style that changes up almost as often as in Space Dandy. During the normal everyday real-world moments, the art is completely charming, a strange scratchy pencil and painted aesthetic that works well with the oversized cliché anime eyes and the simple designs. Then when things get weird and the ladies head into Pure Illusion, the art goes up to eleven. A little Panty and Stocking, a little Kill la Kill. Huge over the top designs, massive fluorescent colours, and explosions - it's filled with wonderful insanity.

The bonus features are the usual minimal collection of clean opening, closing, and trailers for some other series. This release does, however, include both the original Japanese dub and a new English dub. In the Japanese dub, Cocona is played by Minami Takahashi, the sweet and subdued Megumi from Food Wars, a good VA but one who has done little. In English, Cocona is played by Luci Christian, a voice actress also from Food Wars, although a smaller part in the English dub, taking the role of the fresh game expert, Yuki Yoshino. Luci has a ton of characters to her name, and some major ones, too. She's played Nami in One Piece, Hestia in Danmachi, Pipimi in Pop Team Epic, and even Ochako in My Hero Academia, amongst tons of other memorable performances. As with Cocona, the voice actress for Papika is more renowned and prolific in English. The Japanese voice actress is Mao Ichimichi. She has a handful of characters to her name, but little of note, what is important about her is she played Luka Millfy, also known as Gokai Yellow, in the undisputed greatest series of Sentai, Gokaiger.

7/10

Very Good - Bronze Award

An absolutely unique, weird and engrossing show that has likely passed by many anime fans since it launched during the Winter 2016 season. Clips really can't portray just what Flip Flappers is; it embraces the strangeness of the magical girl genre and while it can't live up to the giants that have done so previously (no-one is taking that crown from Madoka), it carves its own path and tells its own story. Even better, it tells a Yuri story without having to bash the viewer over the head, delivers lots of memorable scenes, and, most importantly, is crazy good fun.