Was literally just Sawao's intro bit from the "original egoistic version".

Also I think not all of the soundtrack is pillows and I am pissed.

Finally watched the episode. Oh boy, folks...

First off, a lot of regulars here know that I'm not the biggest fan of FLCL. I'm not much of an anime fan in general. I grew out of that hobby when I was a teenager. However, I wanted to be optimistic about the new FLCL, so I went in with an open mind.

That said, after watching the "sneak peak" April Fool's episode, I feel extremely disappointed and misled.
They advertised this with "music by the pillows", but this is only true is in slightest sense. There was very, very little music by the pillows in this. Probably a good 80% of the music just consisted of shitty, generic instrumental music that sounds like it was commissioned for commercials. It's a similar fashion to how McDonald's advertises their chicken nuggets as "made with real chicken" when there is only about 1% chicken mixed with 99% recycled cardboard.

Here's a break down of how much pillows music we actually get in this episode:
-At the very beginning, we hear the intro of White Summer for about 30 seconds.
-About midway through, MY FOOT plays during an extremely lame montage for about 2 minutes.
-Star Overhead plays for the credits. (Less than 2 minutes.)
The run-time of the episode is 23 minutes. Less than 5 of that contains music by the pillows.

I've been harsh on the original FLCL in the past, but this made it look like a masterpiece. In the original, for example, there was a battle with Crazy Sunshine or Blues Drive Monster or whatever blaring in the background. This episode had a battle set to some generic instrumental. I can't wait until the soundtrack is released and Youtube gets flooded with all these shitty instrumentals wrongly attributed to the pillows.

Yeah, this episode was extremely bland and lacking from a writing and directing standpoint. In the original, there were a lot of solid moments of cinematography where a shot was timed up to the music in a really memorable way. To me, the music added depth to those moments. In this Alternative episode, it was, like Mafu said, just a bunch of temp tracks (which might actually be the case?) that didn’t sound like anything. The main character was unremarkable as well, lacking in any traits that would make me feel one way or the other about her.

Pray that the soundtrack was the April Fool's joke? D:

I also got around to watching the episode yesterday.

Definitely agree on the music... especially since it was kinda super generic pillows-lite. When the original used in-house music, it was stuff with a very different sound. Every piece here sounded like filler for what should have been a pillows instrumental. But the climax of the fight definitely stood out the most. That [i]needed[/i] a pillows song.

From a technical standpoint, keep in mind that Alternative is the "new blood" of the sequels. I mean, not to imply that Progressive will compare to the talent at Gainax at the time that worked on the original lol.

[quote="Marekenshin"]Pray that the soundtrack was the April Fool's joke? D:[/quote]
Praying sooooooo hard (...though I'm not stupid, just super let down).

Part of what made the original series so exciting was the soundtrack being pretty much entirely Pillows. I guess directors often just want some background music that doesn't distract at all from the visuals, but the original series proved that real songs could work in perfect harmony with film. At a general level, songs that are written for listening on their own and without any soundtracking intentions in mind are supposed to be [i]inherently good[/i] as pieces of music, so if you pick a good song that fits with your film, it works on both levels. In relation to the original [i]FLCL[/i] in particular, the boldness, beauty, spirit, and sentimentality of The Pillows' music was very much a perfect fit energy of the show; and honestly, I could say the same of The Pillows' new material and these new [i]FLCL[/i] episodes. In contrast, a lot of soundtrack music is shite when listened to without the accompanying visual material, because it's often just there to set the mood with the intention that you don't pay conscious attention to it at all. It's also worth noting that when you have a non-soundtrack pop song but don't want vocals there as a distraction, you can just cut 'em out and you still have one hell of a background track (e.g. "Bran-new Lovesong", "Come Down", many others).

The new episode falls into the trap of using boring, forgettable instrumentals that you aren't supposed to pay attention to. The only problem is that [i]a huge chunk of the audience is intent on paying attention to the soundtrack[/i], because they're invested in the expectation that the soundtrack is as good as the first time 'round. Frankly, I don't understand the rationale behind the lack of Pillows songs in the new episode, and whether the reasons are creative or industry-related or whatever, I don't think we'll get to find them out. I will say, for the record, that I don't actually hate some of the instrumentals; they're mostly shite in comparison to actual Pillows songs, but I did kinda like the BGM from the scene where we meet Kana's whole crew at the lockers, the end of the first Ham Center scene, and the very end of the battle scene (which quite seriously sounds like a Pillows song; [i]listen to dat bass[/i]). But even in regards to those decent instrumentals, there's three criticisms that could be easily lobbed at them: 1) they're not as good on a solely musical level as actual Pillows songs, because they're not actual songs, so they're not intended to be as good on a solely musical level, 2) they're not as memorable cuz no vocals, no real hooks, and you're probably not gonna listen to them on repeat outside of viewing the show and thus commit them to memory like you would with actual Pillows songs, and most of all, 3) they freaking sound like Pillows songs!!! Like, WHY NOT JUST USE ACTUAL PILLOWS SONGS instead of getting someone to make music that sounds KINDA LIKE THE PILLOWS BUT SHITTIER???

I can make all the technical arguments I want about why it woulda been better to have every song in the soundtrack be a Pillows song, but ultimately, I think it's obvious that the show lacks the punch that the original series had as a result of almost exclusively using The Pillows' music. Just having The Pillows' music playing in the background adds so much more depth, excitement and beauty to the show, and when it lines up with key moments in the visuals as chgu pointed out in regards to the first season, it's priceless. There's more than enough material on [i]Smile[/i], [i]Twilight[/i], [i]Penalty Life[/i], [i]Good Dreams[/i], [i]My Foot[/i], [i]Stroll and Roll[/i] and [i]Nook in the Brain[/i] (if you want to avoid Avex, Pony Canyon, and season 1 overlapping stuff altogether) that coulda been licensed to fit literally every scene in all twelve new episodes (and I mean fit perfectly, like right in line with the mood of each scene). And cuz this first episode wasn't super engaging/exciting in its plot or visual content, some Pillows music woulda definitely made the lulls much more entertaining. But easily the most offensive omission was the lack of a Pillows song during the fight scene, as Crescent pointed out. Like, ARE YOU KIDDING? Golden opportunity to throw in any one of The Pillows' million rockin' tracks, and you go with an...admittedly not terrible ([i]but still not pillows[/i]) instrumental and FREAKING BURY IT SO FAR DOWN IN THE MIX THAT IT MIGHT AS WELL NOT BE THERE??? I give up. Thank God I can put the soundtrack out of mind, because even when the instrumentals aren't bad (and a few of the instrumentals are actually [i]good[/i]), they're poorly used.

Final consideration: ...grasping at straws here, but maybe there'll be more frequent use of Pillows music as the season continues? One concern I did have with using Pillows songs in this episode was that the band is pretty lively, but this episode wasn't really. There was a lotta sittin' around and shit, and when the characters got off their asses, "MY FOOT" did play (although there were other moments where the characters were active and no Pillows songs were used, e.g. fight scene, building the bottle rocket, launching the bottle rocket). So maybe The Pillows didn't really fit for this episode, but now that Haruko's back in action, I'm hoping for some more liveliness...again, grasping at straws...

As for the episode independent of soundtrack, I actually didn't think it was [i]bad[/i], in large part because I think it's impossible to judge on its own. My biggest problem with the writing was that, like, [i]nothing happens[/i]. Some girls build a bottle rocket, monster attacks, fin. But there's no way this show is just [i]about nothing[/i]. I'm sure some kinda character arc will be made explicit later on the season, but at this point, no such plot element is discernible. I mean, perhaps it woulda been better if they introduced some kinda conflicts for the MC in the first episode (in the original series, for example, so many of Naota's personal conflicts are right there from the get-go), but again, can't judge that right now without having seen the next few episodes.

Also, I think chgu was spot-on in identifying the difference in pacing. I can certainly live with the slower start (especially if what little plot elements that were introduced are important later on in the season), but the side-effect is that I'm now expecting everything to tie together nicely by the end of the season, with a real crescendo in the energy of the show and definitely one hell of a satisfying climax. [i]FLCL: Alternative[/i] hasn't already failed after one episode, but for me, the bar has now been raised.

Apparently season 2 episode 1 was shown at “C2E2”. People who saw it said that it has a new version of Little Busters. Can’t find any info about other songs in the episode. Unfortunately, most of the FLCL fans don’t seem to be pillows savvy.

This little teaser video has a pretty cool chiptune version of Star Overhead in it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khonoGIENMs

(I think that's an official Adult Swim teaser... I dunno.)

Nine Miles ~Dance Dance Oversample~ mix?

By the way, could this thread be renamed to something like “the pillows in FLCL 2 & 3”? It’s probably gonna serve as the main thread regarding the matter.

Good call. Also, I imagine some threads could be consolidated in general. I'll look when on my actual computer.

New trailer: [url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqDlfqmUlcg[/url] Progressive ep 1 in two weeks!!! (gotta say, ever since the first trailer, Progressive has been lookin way more exciting than Alternative)

But hold up, why is "Star Overhead" playing in this trailer? Isn't it the ED/theme song for Alternative (according to the Japanese trailer, and also the first episode of Alternative that aired on April Fools' Day)? I'm confuuuuuused

[url=https://www.reddit.com/r/FLCL/comments/8m492b/psa_the_pillows_in_flcl_23_soundtracks/]Posted on Reddit[/url] about the lack of Pillows music in the new episodes because people on Reddit and YouTube are already attributing the lame instrumentals in [i]Alternative[/i] episode 1 to The Pillows. The vote counter on my post has been shifting up and down all day; I guess [i]FLCL[/i] fans just can't handle the TROOF.

My favorite songs by The Pillows are FLAME and Rever's Edge.

[quote="Spike"]Rever's Edge.[/quote]

Shin's reverb drenched bongos and Manabe's laid back acoustic work really make this track a gem.