FLCL and The Courier

I'm not going to make any bones about it... this is mostly another opportunity for me to embed The Courier somewhere. However I might as well take the time to do something with this.

One of the reasons I've chosen Jung Justice as a blog name is because as a storyteller I'm heavily influenced by Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell. Jung's views on dreams and art as an important cathartic exercise validate my chosen vocation, so I'm hardly going to disagree and just about everything I've learnt about film and storytelling has come via Campbell's Hero's Journey in some shape or form.


The connective power of myths and legends (and how that interweaves with our dreams and our worldviews) fascinates me to no end and when these colossal elements and themes pervade what appear to be mundane narratives, I'm thrilled.

FLCL is perhaps one of the finest examples of an otherwise banal narrative (domestic drama, coming of age, guy meets girl etc) and infusing it with imagery of mythic proportions. It takes these everyday moments and distorts them to such extremes with the introduction of fantasy or sci-fi elements that you can barely recognise them anymore. 'Scott Pilgrim vs The World' is another fine example of what I'm talking about.

Which brings me to 'The Courier'. The tale of an extraordinarily dedicated Courier, and the lengths he will go to make sure he delivers on time. Not even an armada of despondent robots will stop him!

This was the third time I was directing a short film, the first one after graduating from Flinders University. It was shot in 2006, with a cash budget of $250. It then took nearly two years to complete, with only one CG artist and one compositor (me again). Of course, I directed another short film during that time, and worked on several feature films, but it was definitely a relief to finish it. It felt like the production of it was starting to become my own little monomyth.

'The Courier' is my first contribution to this specific sub-genre, and as you can see via the embed above, it owes more than a yellow Vespa to FLCL.

The ongoing plans for 'The Courier' series would have been to investigate the bizarre slice-of-life that Jack Carrier has setup for himself at The Carrier Courier Company. Of course whenever he leaves the office Jack is off on a ridiculous adventure, but the character dynamics between him and his staff (not to mention his enemies) would have been based in a more relate-able world.

I had plans for the show to jump from genre to genre with each different episode, with the underlying idea of subverting the expected tropes for each one. Naturally, it would also have been a 'Have your cake and eat it too' scenario, as it would have been impossible for me to not indulge in those very same tropes on occasion. There is a reason we love them after all.


'The Courier' keeps gaining traction with viewers, a lot of whom recognise the FLCL parallels. If you had seen one but not the other... I'm happy to have helped.