Full Swing

"Full Swing" is the fourth episode of the first season of FLCL. Its English dub aired on August 8th, 2003 on Adult Swim.
==Synopsis==
Haruko has joined the opposition’s baseball team and is getting along a little too well with Kamon. Naota doesn’t have any strange bulges on his head, however he does have some sort of beacon in there that the Bureau of Interstellar Immigration are tracking.
==Summary==
Haruko proves to be a star baseball player with phenomenal hitting and pitching skills, nearly single-handedly defeating the Mabase Martians, who are coached by Naota's grandfather Shigekuni. Naota, however, is ignorant of the game and gets hit by one of Haruko's pitches. At home, Kamon and Haruko indulge in odd behavior that raises Naota's jealousy. He meets Commander Amarao for the first time, who warns him about Haruko. Commander Amarao, who works for the Bureau of Interstellar Immigration alongside his subordinate Lieutenant Kitsurubami, later discovers that a satellite damaged by one of Haruko's hit baseballs is rapidly falling towards Earth. It homes in on a sudden burst of light from the N.O. channel in Naota's head that is triggered by his anger towards his father, targeting Mabase.
Naota confronts Kamon and nearly attacks him with his baseball bat, discovering that his father has been replaced by a robot. He finds the corpse of his real father and revives him with hot water. After receiving a message that Commander Amarao had asked Naota to pass on to her, Haruko takes Naota to the top of the Medical Mechanica plant, where she extracts a Gibson Flying V guitar from Naota's head, which she calls his "bat." She then leaves as the falling satellite heads straight for Naota. It unfolds into the shape of a baseball glove and launches a bomb that looks exactly like a baseball. Naota swings his "bat" and manages to halt the bomb, which begins to detonate. Haruko returns to rescue him by swinging her guitar alongside him and knocks it back into space before it explodes. Mamimi who was watching the whole event has a despondent expression on her face as a result of Naota’s dramatic change. As Haruko takes a sleeping Naota home on her vespa she begins to laugh hysterically about the whole situation, as Amarao and Kitsurubami watch them from a monitor; while Amarao is contemplating on what to do next Kitsurubami is distracted and shocked by Ammrao's fake eyebrows falling off.
==Songs==
* "HAPPY BIVOUAC"
* "White Ash"
* "Stalker"
* "Carnival"
* "Stalker Goes to Babylon"
* "Beautiful Morning With You"
* "Come Down"
* "Crazy Sunshine"
* "Little Busters"
* "Ride on Shooting Star"
== Credits ==
* Original Concept: GAINAX
* Directors: Kazuya Tsurumaki, Masahiko Otsuka
* Executive Producers: Toshimichi Ohtsuki, Mitsuhisa Ishikawa, Hiroyuki Yamaga
* Planning: Hirotaka Takase, Masatoshi Nishizawa, Hiroki Sato
Japanese Cast
*Naota Nandaba: Jun Mizuki
*Haruko Haruhara: Mayumi Shintani
*Mamimi Samejima: Izumi Kasagi
*Kamon Nandaba: Suzuki Matsuo
*Shigekuni Nandaba: Hiroshi Ito
*Commander Amarao: Kouji Ohkura
*Kitsurubami: Chiemi Chiba
*Miyu Miyu: Hideaki Anno (uncredited)
*Takkun: Jun Mizuki
English Cast
*Naota Nandaba: Barbara Goodson
*Haruko Haruhara: Kari Wahlgren
*Mamimi Samejima: Jennifer Sekiguchi
*Kamon Nandaba: Joe Martin
*Shigekuni Nandaba: Steve Kramer
*Commander Amarao: Dave Mallow
*Kitsurubami: L. Villa
*Miyu Miyu: Steven Blum
*Takkun: Barbara Goodson
==Gallery==
Full Swing/Gallery
==Trivia==
*Haruko's line about being "an illusion of Takkun's youth, the memories from an adolescent heart" after crashing into the Nandaba residence is reference to the anime Galaxy Express 999.
*In the book, FLCLick Noise, director Kazuya Tsurumaki mentioned that the animation director for this episode, Nobutoshi Ogura, wanted to included several scenes that were deemed too vulgar for Tsurumaki to include.
*In the manga, rather than hitting a robot clone of his father, Naota actually kills Kamon and later has a vision about him as an angel.
*In the preview for the next episode, Haruko talks about how John Woo films make people relax because they show how shallow the world is. She then states that coolness is in full force because of manly aestheticism and concludes by saying that only idiots do the cool dangerous things and that's what makes them cool.
**John Woo is a Hong Kong filmmaker who is known for pioneering the "gun fu" and " heroic bloodshed" (crime action film genre involving Chinese triads) style of films.
**His motif of using white doves and stylized gun fights are featured in the next episode
**The English version follows the same story about John Woo with very minor tweaks. Previously, the English dub version of the previews were changed significantly to make them easier for westerners to understand. The story was likely kept intact for this episode, due to Woo already being well known in both Asia and the west when this episode originally debuted.
Category:Episodes
Category:FLCL