The first two episodes of the series easily escalate into content darker than in Progressive when MayorKuroiwa gets decapitated while ordering the death of a kid for getting in his way, making him the first person in the franchise to be killed off. Save for those who appear in the original series and the rest of the main cast, Grunge makes it clear that Anyone Can Die with both the mayor and the two warring Yakuza factions.
The second episode shows a ten-year old Shonari being picked on by children pelting him with rocks, retaliating by throwing a rock back at one of his tormentors. However, his species being stronger than humans, he ends up seriously hurting the kid and was arrested by the cops who intended to indict him as an adult before his brother bailed him.
The climax of the first two episodes features a battle between two yakuza factions as Medical Mechanica is about to go on the warpath, all caused by Haruko. Haruko's apathy is at a new high in her showing no remorse over people getting killed, either by herself or through a proxy she manipulated into doing her dirty work.
Shoegaze
Starting from where Alternate's final episode left off, while it saved the day at the time, the black hole Kana summoned is revealed to have actually split her reality with Haruko trapped in another dimension where Grunge and first two FLCL seasons take place in. Worse that other people were caught in the division like Petz, with some having more stranger experiences like a boy whose soul is projected in the Shoegaze dimension and is trapped in the body of a girl.
Also is Tsukata Kanda, his obsession with Haruko compelled him to use Masaki Aofuji's NO channel in a plot to reverse the damage Kana's NO Channel caused with no concern of the consequence of causing a convergence of the two dimensions.
