NAOTA NANDABA
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Naota Nandaba is twelve years old and already trying very hard to be finished with childhood. He insists that Mabase is ordinary, acts unimpressed by almost everything around him, and treats caring too openly as something embarrassing.
A lot of that performance comes from his older brother Tasuku. Tasuku was the baseball star who left for America, the person Mamimi loved, and the standard Naota quietly measures himself against. Naota even carries Tasuku's bat while refusing to swing it. Not trying lets him avoid discovering whether he can live up to the person he has built his brother into.
Then Haruko Haruhara arrives and makes detachment impossible. She opens an N.O. channel through Naota, uses him as a passage for machines and weapons, moves into his house, and becomes another person whose attention he wants even when he knows he should not trust her.
Naota's growth is not that he suddenly becomes mature. It is that he gradually stops using indifference as protection. By the end he can swing the bat, admit what he feels, confront Haruko, and let both her and Atomsk go without pretending none of it mattered.
A lot of that performance comes from his older brother Tasuku. Tasuku was the baseball star who left for America, the person Mamimi loved, and the standard Naota quietly measures himself against. Naota even carries Tasuku's bat while refusing to swing it. Not trying lets him avoid discovering whether he can live up to the person he has built his brother into.
Then Haruko Haruhara arrives and makes detachment impossible. She opens an N.O. channel through Naota, uses him as a passage for machines and weapons, moves into his house, and becomes another person whose attention he wants even when he knows he should not trust her.
Naota's growth is not that he suddenly becomes mature. It is that he gradually stops using indifference as protection. By the end he can swing the bat, admit what he feels, confront Haruko, and let both her and Atomsk go without pretending none of it mattered.
NAOTA THROUGH THE ARCHIVE //
GROWING UP IN MABASE //
Open page →Two People Living Around Someone Who Already Left
Tasuku Nandaba never needs to appear on screen to dominate the beginning of FLCL.
He is Naota's older brother, the baseball player everyone remembers and the person whose bat Naota carries without swinging. He is also Mamimi's absent boyfriend, now living in America while she remains in Mabase.
That leaves Naota and Mamimi building a relationship around the same missing person for completely different reasons. Naota wants Mamimi to see him as himself. Mamimi keeps calling him Takkun and reaching for the familiarity Tasuku left behind.
He is Naota's older brother, the baseball player everyone remembers and the person whose bat Naota carries without swinging. He is also Mamimi's absent boyfriend, now living in America while she remains in Mabase.
That leaves Naota and Mamimi building a relationship around the same missing person for completely different reasons. Naota wants Mamimi to see him as himself. Mamimi keeps calling him Takkun and reaching for the familiarity Tasuku left behind.
Why it matters
Naota is not only trying to grow up. He is trying to discover who he is when being Tasuku's younger brother is no longer enough. Mamimi has the opposite problem: she keeps trying to preserve what Tasuku meant to her by transferring it onto whoever is still within reach.
Attraction, Manipulation and the Person He Cannot Control
Haruko gives Naota exactly the kind of disruption he claims not to want.
She is exciting, invasive, funny, dangerous and completely unwilling to behave according to the rules Naota uses to keep the rest of his life manageable. He distrusts her and wants her attention at the same time.
Haruko has her own reason to stay close. Naota's N.O. ability makes him useful in her pursuit of Atomsk, and she repeatedly pushes him toward situations he does not understand because she wants access to what can come through him.
The relationship therefore never becomes a clean romance or a clean manipulation.
She is exciting, invasive, funny, dangerous and completely unwilling to behave according to the rules Naota uses to keep the rest of his life manageable. He distrusts her and wants her attention at the same time.
Haruko has her own reason to stay close. Naota's N.O. ability makes him useful in her pursuit of Atomsk, and she repeatedly pushes him toward situations he does not understand because she wants access to what can come through him.
The relationship therefore never becomes a clean romance or a clean manipulation.
Why it matters
Naota's feelings are real even when Haruko's motives are selfish. Growing up does not mean discovering that one side was fake. It means learning that somebody can matter to you without belonging to you or wanting the same thing you want.
Episode 4 · Tasuku's Bat Stops Being an Excuse
Naota carries Tasuku's baseball bat through the series but refuses to swing it.
As long as he never tries, he never has to find out whether he can live up to his brother. The bat lets him remain connected to Tasuku while protecting himself from the comparison at the same time.
Episode 4 finally removes that option. With the falling satellite threatening Mabase, there is nobody else Naota can wait for. He has to swing.
As long as he never tries, he never has to find out whether he can live up to his brother. The bat lets him remain connected to Tasuku while protecting himself from the comparison at the same time.
Episode 4 finally removes that option. With the falling satellite threatening Mabase, there is nobody else Naota can wait for. He has to swing.
Why it matters
The importance of the moment is not that Naota suddenly becomes Tasuku. It is the opposite. For once he uses his brother's bat to make his own decision.
Episode 6 · He Gets the Power She Wanted
The final irony of Haruko's entire plan is that she succeeds in reaching Atomsk through Naota and still does not get what she wants.
Atomsk manifests through Naota, placing the enormous power Haruko has been chasing in the hands of the boy she treated as the route to it.
Naota confronts Haruko carrying that power, tells her that he loves her and then releases Atomsk instead of surrendering him to her. Haruko immediately chooses the chase and follows Atomsk away from Earth.
Atomsk manifests through Naota, placing the enormous power Haruko has been chasing in the hands of the boy she treated as the route to it.
Naota confronts Haruko carrying that power, tells her that he loves her and then releases Atomsk instead of surrendering him to her. Haruko immediately chooses the chase and follows Atomsk away from Earth.
Why it matters
Naota cannot make Haruko stay and he cannot turn his feelings into ownership. His final act is not winning her. It is making a choice while fully admitting that he cares, then living with what happens afterward.
Ninamori and Performing Maturity
Open →The Class President Is Acting Too
Ninamori initially looks like the kind of person Naota thinks he is supposed to become: composed, capable and apparently untouched by the childish mess around her.
Episode 3 dismantles that image. Her father's scandal is tearing apart her family, she manipulates the class play vote to get what she wants, and the glasses she normally hides become another reminder that the version of Ninamori everyone sees is carefully managed.
Naota catches her in that contradiction because he is doing his own version of the same thing.
Episode 3 dismantles that image. Her father's scandal is tearing apart her family, she manipulates the class play vote to get what she wants, and the glasses she normally hides become another reminder that the version of Ninamori everyone sees is carefully managed.
Naota catches her in that contradiction because he is doing his own version of the same thing.
Why it matters
Ninamori gives FLCL another twelve-year-old who has mistaken appearing controlled for actually being okay. Naota does not need an adult to teach him that lesson. He sees it in somebody his own age.
Tasuku Leaves · Naota Fills the Space · The Name Moves Again
Mamimi's relationship with Naota becomes easier to understand once Naota finally admits what has been sitting between them from the beginning.
She misses Tasuku.
Calling Naota Takkun lets Mamimi preserve some version of the relationship she lost, but it leaves Naota trapped between wanting her affection and knowing it is partly directed through him toward somebody else.
When Mamimi later gives the same name to another creature, the pattern becomes impossible to ignore.
She misses Tasuku.
Calling Naota Takkun lets Mamimi preserve some version of the relationship she lost, but it leaves Naota trapped between wanting her affection and knowing it is partly directed through him toward somebody else.
When Mamimi later gives the same name to another creature, the pattern becomes impossible to ignore.
What changed
By the end, neither Naota nor Mamimi can keep living inside the arrangement they had under the bridge. Naota stops accepting the role of substitute, while Mamimi eventually leaves Mabase and begins moving toward a life that is not built around waiting for Tasuku.
