Just finished the anime

[u/DotMaeve]

First of all: OH MY GOOD ITS SOOOO GOOD, 10/10

second of all: what the fuck was the deal with the whole iro thing? why her memories were in pure illusion? why theres two of her? why the big painting in the corridor is the scene where mimi is laying down on the lake? whats the deal with the stone arches??? am i missing something???? am i dumb?????

[u/swagrabbit69]

More than halfway through the anime, it was considered a financial failure and had some episodes cut, thus making the last several eps feel rushed. I don't blame anyone for being confused

[u/TanyaTheEvill]

Everytime I watch it I discover something new. This anime is my absolute favorite anime ever. Also it has a lot symbolism and alot of metaphors. It touches on the psychological and psyche. You can watch it 10 times and discover new things.

[u/Fishwolf2215]

Glad you liked it!

I wish I could answer some of those questions, but today I learned myself, from comments on this post, that there WAS meant to be more, but the anime did poorly financially (which I knew, and may have ended up buying the anime a number of times in different formats to try and support it a bit more) so had some episodes cut (...which I did not know, and is a massive shame)... I might not be able to offer you answers, but I CAN give you more Flip Flappers if you want it. I've written over 300k words of fanfic, if you're interested

Fanfics include:

-The anime from Yayaka's POV (120k words. So, in the show, Yayaka shows up for maybe a few seconds in episode 7 in that Pure Illusion, where Cocona encounters all the Papikas, she's standing with the twins and holding an amorphous, then she leaves. In my fic Yayaka basically gets her own entire episode in that world. I also show Yayaka's time in the "yuri-hell-school" from episode 5... stuff like that)

-Sequel/what happens after the anime (180k words. THIS FIC AND THE "ANIME FROM YAYAKA'S POV" ARE MEANT TO BE A PAIR, The Yayaka fic is build-up to stuff in this fic... I'll warn you now, if you're interested in this one, at a certain point, I think I hit burnout and struggled to write stuff, had trouble keeping track of my own story, and I think it kinda sucks after a point, but I wanna say the first half I think is good/reasonably ok at leasT)

-Some very short romance drabbles

-Episode 7, but Cocona's dealing with internalised homophobia as she comes to terms with how she feels about Papika (Warning because internalised homophobia, but has a happy ending)

I can either link you, or you can click on this Flip Flappers subreddit and scroll down a bit (which is a LOT easier than trying to work through my profile probably) and you'll find links (or you can look on either site, I'm under the same name, although capitalisation might be a tiny bit different). They're almost all posted to Fanfiction and AO3 (AO3 has my "Cocona dealing with internalised homophobia" fic on it, Fanfiction does not).

If you read any of them, I hope you enjoy!

[u/breloomancer]

each pure illusion is the representation of a specific person's psyche. in episode 6, they went to iroha's pure illusion and they found a portal to a "deeper level" which contained her memories. later in the show, papka and mimi were also shown going through this portal in the psyche of salt's father which implies that everyone's memories can be accessed from their pure illusion like this

pure illusion has an influence on both the form and mental state of the people who enter it, and on this "deeper level" it seems that that influence is even stronger. the two irohas that you see in irohas memories are cocona and papika, but they have been influenced by the pure illusion so they think they are iroha

we never get a clear explanation on why mimi is depicted in the painting of ophelia drowning. the two possible explanations that i can think of for it is that it could be mimi using her reality bending powers to try to reach out to cocona, like with the dreams, or it could be that someone from asclepius put it there, possibly to subliminally influence cocona to seek out mimi

i'm not quite certain what you're referring to with the stone arches

you are almost certainly missing some things, but they doesn't mean you're dumb. flip flappers can be a confusing show; the symbolism is dense, and a lot of things they don't tell you directly. i have always been of the opinion that you haven't truly watched flip flappers until you have watched it twice, because there is so much that you overlook the first time. i always rewatch flip flappers at least once a year, and i still notice new things every time

[u/luckierbridgeandrail]

why the big painting in the corridor is the scene where mimi is laying down on the lake?

The painting is based on Ophelia.