Name: フリップ・フラッパーズサイコセクシャルの終わり (Flip Flappers: The End of Psychosexuality)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T08:23:42.000Z
Duration: 32 min 49 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

基礎受動態

Flip Flappers was developed as a project drawing from topics which interested director Kiyotaka

Oshiyama, and among those topics were the various branches of psychoanalysis, especially

様態の副詞

those of both Freud and Jung. As a work very directly about the psychosexual realm and

its impact on development, specifically through the lens of queer awakening and the role of

relationships in subject formation, the influence of these thinkers, as well as other works

which drew upon them, like Neon Genesis Evangelion, is startlingly clear. Yet simply analyzing

the series along psychoanalytic lines misses something; the show's powerful pushback

against many aspects of psychoanalysis. Cocona's story, while certainly one of sexual awakening,

is not a cut-and-dried Freudian or Jungian process of therapy and actualization. Mimi,

despite clearly resembling an image of the Oedipal Mother, is not so simple. Rather,

through both narrative and animation, Flip Flappers elaborates a view of the world and

the mind which is much less singularly-focused than the thought of either Freud or Jung,

telling a story which encourages us to forge connections and improve ourselves through

an understanding of our fluidity and status as assemblages of disparate elements.

It's key to establish a few essential points in regards to my perspective here before we

begin. First, I interpret Flip Flappers as a queer text, and believe any reading which

doesn't do so is disingenous at best. This analysis will make no attempt to justify or

prove the queerness in the show, just as it will make no attempt to justify or prove Papika's

existence in it. Second, this is not a moral critique or a

review. Yes, the show has objectionable content, including a number of unnecessary shots which

sexualize the characters. While much of the sexualization in the show is important in

conveying the adolescent discovery of sexuality, not all of it is, and some of it is quite

jarring. Having admitted that, I have no interest in discussing it further.

Lastly, this analysis, while less personal in nature than many of my videos and not intended

to comment on the quality of the show, should be interpreted given the following facts:

Flip Flappers is my favorite anime, something I learned after beginning my fifth watch of

it just a few months ago. I relate heavily to Cocona, and her relationship with Papika

served as an important point of clarification when I began my current and only relationship.

In other words, I am very personally invested in the series, and whether that information

leads you to believe I'm interpreting it to fit my own ends, or makes my interpretation

even stronger, it does seem worth pointing out. Now, with those out of the way, we can

return to the scheduled program. Part 1: Freudianism-Jungianism

In an interview, Kiyotaka Oshiyama explicitly mentions his desire to insert psychoanalytic

elements into Flip Flappers, saying that “Pure Illusion is fairly similar to the idea of

the Umwelt, and one of the themes of the show is the multi-faceted nature of the internal

world we each have, so I felt like psychology would be pretty relevant”. Broadly speaking,

most analyses of the series break down into two primary camps, if you exclude those which

come at it from a vague, personal approach rather than one informed by specific theory.

On the one hand, there's queer analyses, specifically looking at what the show says

about queerness and sexualized or gendered difference, often focusing on Cocona's journey

as one of breaking heteronormativity. On the other, we have psychoanalytic readings, generally

of a Lacanian bent. These modes of analysis are not in contrast, and in fact a number

of pieces on the show dabble in both, but as a result of the series' clear priorities,

they have gained some level of dominance in the discourse.

In order to understand the series and the ways in which it challenges psychoanalytic

thought, therefore, we need to look at psychoanalytic thought, and how the series is generally believed

to engage in it. Broadly speaking, Freudian psychoanalysis

can be seen as a focus on sexual development. Essentially, Freud was concerned with how

the sexual development of human beings impacted their mental processes, and broadly discovered

that this development was primarily determined by early environment, alongside innate biological

drives which also fuel the unconscious. Perhaps as a result of being a bourgeois man from

Vienna, this led his analysis to primarily center the family, in particular the parents,

as the ultimate cause of most complexes and disorders. Lacan added far too much to summarize

in full, and I'm hardly educated enough to do so in the first place, but some of his

important contributions for the sake of this analysis are a renewed focus on ego or subject

formation, the reintroduction of the Other in a Hegelian move, and the conception of

desire as created by lack, separate from the needs of the drives, and dominated by our

existence in the symbolic order of society and language. Another Freudian concept is

obviously the tripartite model for the mind of the id, ego, and superego, but attempts

to connect these structures to the main trio are spurious at best, produce little in the

way of interesting analysis, and don't account for their development across the series.

It's not hard to see how this view of psychosexual development makes itself known within the

narrative of Flip Flappers. While Cocona is not a boy, and thus not the classic example

to be used in the well-known Oedipus Complex, Mimi, her mother, remains cast in that light.

Cocona desires her mother's presence throughout the series, and once she arrives is overjoyed

at finally meeting her. In spite of feeling embarrassed at doing so, she identifies with

her, taking on her appearance, though this is to a large degree due to Mimi's insistence.

To some extent, there is even a sexual tension in the scenes between the two, though not

one which rises to the surface at any point; the intimate body language is well beyond

what we'd normally accept for a parent-child relationship, and the animation in the series

conveys a lack of borders between the two that clearly harkens back to an earlier stage

of ego formation. During this period in which Cocona and Mimi

are together, Mimi occupies Cocona's body in the “real world”, signifying the association

between the two. Through a psychoanalytic perspective, this can be seen in two key ways.

In many works, it would reflect the traditional example of a “healthy” result to the Oedipal

relationship, identifying with the same-sex parent and moving beyond a desire to kill

them. However, the fact that Mimi attacks Salt, Cocona's father and her husband during

this period rebuts this: if anything, it's the father Cocona(because remember, it's

her body) wants to kill for taking her mother. Her Oedipus complex is, of course, a homosexual

one. However, not all Freudian thinkers cling so strongly to this directly binary and heteronormative

understanding of the complex, and some have encouraged us to see it as happening in all

genders and as a phenomena directed at both parents. Where, then, does that leave us?

Clearly, it establishes the fact that Cocona, despite being a middle schooler, has not properly

formed a complete ego; she has not passed through the “healthy” stages of development

in full. She exists and has a self, but she has not yet disentangled said self from the

need for validation from her mother through identification with her, and having failed

that, her sexuality is confused. A great deal of evidence exists to provide

support for this reading. Throughout the series, Cocona demonstrates herself as someone without

a clear idea of who she is, often behaving more as an object to be acted upon than a

thinking subject herself. She exists primarily through her relationships with others, and

relies on Yayaka and then Papika for direction, even as she often protests where that direction

leads. A sterling example of this is provided in the scene wherein Cocona is discussing

high school plans with Yayaka. She rejects Yayaka's choice, given its status as a boy's

school, in many ways objecting to the androgyny of queerness that Yayaka has already accepted

in herself, and yet she is not herself able to formulate another idea. Her desire is occupied

by societally-enforced needs for a “normal life”—she is, after all, an intelligent

and diligent girl—but her need for love and sexuality, particularly of a queer sort,

is entirely unconscious. And yet when it seems as if Yayaka wants to kiss her, she readily

accedes. As a result of her incomplete development, it's easy for those with cruel intentions

to get her to move as they wish. In this Freudian reading, what frees Cocona

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フリップ・フラッパーズサイコセクシャルの終わり (Flip Flappers: The End of Psychosexuality)

perspective

ultimately

episode

eventually