Flip Flappers

Cocona is an average middle schooler living with her grandmother. And she who has yet to decide a goal to strive for, soon met a strange girl named Papika who invites her to an organization called Flip Flap.

Dragged along by the energetic stranger, Cocona finds herself in the world of Pure Illusion—a bizarre alternate dimension—helping Papika look for crystal shards. Upon completing their mission, Papika and Cocona are sent to yet another world in Pure Illusion. As a dangerous creature besets them, the girls use their crystals to transform into magical girls: Cocona into Pure Blade, and Papika into Pure Barrier. But as they try to defeat the creature before them, three others with powers from a rival organization enter the fray and slay the creature, taking with them a fragment left behind from its body. Afterward, the girls realize that to stand a chance against their rivals and the creatures in Pure Illusion, they must learn to work together and synchronize their feelings in order to transform more effectively.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Papika Main

Ichimichi, Mao Japanese

Cocomine, Cocona Main

Takahashi, Minami Japanese

Yayaka Supporting

Ohashi, Ayaka Japanese

Uexküll Supporting

Murase, Michiyo Japanese

Yuyu Supporting

Toshinou, Airi Japanese

Hidaka Supporting

Fukushima, Jun Japanese

TT-392 Supporting

Okitsu, Kazuyuki Japanese

Sayuri Supporting

Hikasa, Youko Japanese

Mimi Supporting

Kayano, Ai Japanese

Welwitschia Supporting

Toyosaki, Aki Japanese

Nagatani, Takayuki Producer

Kaneko, Hirotaka Producer

Yoshie, Terushige Producer

Isogai, Noritomo Producer

Reviews

May 4, 2025

spandy

Recommended

Fun, dumb, and gay. Mostly an animation showcase with a lot of nonsense worldbuilding. The animation and art direction are very good, though. Fast paced and colourful, each episode takes a mahou shoujo duo into a new fantasy setting with a different theme and aesthetic. I loved the Moebius inspired Mad Max world, and the haunted house episode was effectively creepy.

The writing is slight when it comes to building a mythos, the mechanics and lore of the world are truly uninteresting, but some of the individual episodes do have good stories. There's an otherworldly eeriness to some of the worlds the girls arrive in and ... the tone changes often enough to keep things engaging. Other than the more somber episodes, some are just meant to be a goofy good time. The show is balanced a little too strongly towards the latter as the Utena/Evangelion-like shifts in storytelling come a little bit too late for my liking.

A lot of the characterization and plot details aren't revealed until the ending story arc. This didn't work for me as for most of the series I had a very "so what" response to those aspects of the story, and when those gaps are eventually filled in it doesn't land strong enough to feel like the withholding was justified.

The fan service is, y'know, a lot. This features one of the horniest transformation sequences I've ever seen, which is saying something. This doesn't really bother me, a certain amount of it I can enjoy, and there are moments of genuine tenderness sewn into the story as well. Also, look, I'm not made of stone: when magic is activated by girls holding holds with each other I'm fully on board, regardless of whether or not it makes any sense.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Apr 30, 2024

AnnihilatorX3000

Mixed Feelings

Flip Flappers is basically a lighter version of Puella Madoka Magica with a generous pinch of magic mushrooms. It follows the duo, Cocona and Papika, as they flip-flap their way between dimensions, adventuring as magical girls in an LSD-infused world. Each episode is a journey into a different dimension, which comes its own landscapes, physics, and artstyle. The genre-bender nature of this anime is reflected in its storyline, which jumps around as much as the imagination of a child with ADHD as they sample through various TV channels by chewing on the remote. You've got everything: magical girl transformation scenes with loli fanservice, villains practically ... dressed up as the KKK, characters super saiyaning a Gundam, a green bunny with a mouth between its eyes named Uexküll like wtf is this Elon Musk naming scheme (Edit: Apparently it's named after an animal behavioural scientist. Maybe this whole anime was a psychological experiment). This Alice in Wonderland, Spongebob imagination box of a show perfectly captures the feeling of sinking deeper and deeper into insanity - the more I watched, the less I could help but question, "WHAT THE FUCK AM I WATCHING??".

And yet, I'm not a fan of this anime. For starters, you get thrown into it with absolutely no explanation whatsoever. Cocona is just a random student who was basically conscripted into the mahou shoujo army by some little twerp on her flying surfboard who thinks it's all fun and games. The show might as well be tagged as NTR as Cocona somehow eventually enjoys this thrill of nearly dying all the time. The relationship between Cocona and Papika is about as consistent as teenage drama: at times it feels like that of a mother and a peanut-brained runt, and at other times, it's like watching two of the gayest lesbians known to womankind. Papika also has to be one of the most strangle-able characters in existence because good lord, the number of times they scream each others' names is like a fight scene between Naruto and Sasuke. I swear I will go crazy if I hear 'COCONA' one more time because I've already heard it 238 FUCKING TIMES (proof: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6B-tsxruIcs). Because of how wildly disconnected each episode is, I found it difficult to get invested into the 'story'. I think the producers wanted to provide some mystery by having you figure things out along the way, but because of how random everything was, any possible explanation for anything in this show would just feel entirely unconvincing. There were many occasions where I wished it would just stick to one thing. To its credit, however, I did begin to enjoy the show halfway through, but only when my brain gave up and finally decided to just accept what I'm seeing.

As much as I love stuff that makes me go WTF, the lack of any substantial sense of consistency in the storyline to firmly latch onto means that it's a bit too difficult for me to recommend.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Jan 1, 2017

Animorphimagi

Not Recommended

This show is amazing...if you liked Madoka or any generic anime that has an organization that won't tell the main character what they are doing or why they should be doing it until the last 2 episodes of the show.
The show's atmosphere drips with the depressing normalcy of Cocona's life. She's a realistic shy high school/middle school girl who just wants to live her life in peace. UNFORTUNATELY, a random girl shows up named Papika, who is one of the most unrealistically cheerful and positive plot driving characters ever. If you like that type of character then this is definitely a fun ride, if you ... would prefer something more realistic, again Madoka like, then this show falls short. Papika might as well be immortal, or at least an inhuman freak who believes she is immune to death. Papika and Cocona are two of the lucky few who get to go to bizarre and amazingly inventive worlds the likes of which no one has seen since the Witch Labyrinths from MM...
Although the worlds are more thought out and unique than MM, they lack a sense of purpose towards the greater plot and are just a showcase for whatever random thing popped into the animator's head that week. The two girls go to these worlds, which may be quite deadly, for no reason beyond curiosity and a prize that neither seems to care about. They desire the greater goal of getting "a wish" but they barely care about the 10 or so pieces they need in order to actually get the wish. Once they learn the organization's overall goal, it becomes even more questionable why they would help out the organization beyond the fact that the story must happen or there will be no show.
Character designs are very unique and purposefully cartoonish, allowing radical changes to their designs when going to different worlds. Unfortunately, the designs are easily the most interesting part of the characters. The art style of their shaded eyes reveal their lack of complexity and failures compared to MM. You might believe there's depth beyond their standard girlish antics, but in reality the character's emotions range from super excited to depressingly sad with nothing but boredom in-between.
The story obviously is just going to string the audience along until the story becomes darker and darker where the leader of the organization reveals his wish that he wants to achieve and the girls must use the power of their love for each other to overcome whatever the "adults" have chosen to believe is the superior ideology. There is an evil organization. They are barely explored and are basically just the villains from the anime Evangelion and Darling in the Franxx.(hooded figures who want to rule/warp the planet into their own ideal world bla bla bla)
It is above the traditional, generic magical girl series, but only just barely and I pity anyone who has much higher hopes than a 6/10 for the show's run.
To be fair, this is probably more like a 5/10, but my standards for stories right now are to at least break previous ideas of the genre and go in a direction that might be better than the ones before it. For that reason I dropped it to a 3/10. You need more than a unique art style to push the boundaries of what's expected in new anime.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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