Kill La Kill

Saw a short parody clip about this show on YouTube recently. Got me thinking about watching it because I know people like it. And so I did.

I honestly don’t fully know how I feel about it. It is definitely not the worst anime I have ever seen, and there were elements about it I can confidently say I enjoyed. Soundtrack. Honestly some of the voice acting, (and yes I watched it dubbed.) Some of the humor and the general over the top style of the show.

But outside the music sometimes, I don’t think it ever got much higher above a base level of enjoyment for me. I wouldn’t say I got particular emotionally invested or emotionally affected at any point.

I’m not sure if I would call the show well-written. Without thinking about it too hard, I think they spent a lot of time telling us how Satsuki was the coolest thing ever (though to be fair she kind of is) and telling us how strong of a resolve she has(or more accurately, yelling it) and not much time showing that.

How Ryuko won her battles kind of felt anti-climactic and a little deus ex machima sometimes.

The twist with the rebellion did not really hit me, but that was probably be because I saw it coming.

I feel like they undermine their own drama a lot instantly. Like Ryuko finding out what her kamui is and what he’s expected to do, only for that to get dropped almost immediately…

…not that I was invested in that drama anyway. Or really any of the friendship moments that were supposed to be touching.

I get the impression that if I thought about it more, I could question why Satsuki exectuted her plan the way she did or at least why she waited.

I don’t know. Maybe I was watching my eyes half closed. But I’m honestly not keen on the idea of rewatching it to look at it more critically (read, “with my brain on”) because of the extremely high amount of a certain element that is common in shonen anime but cranked up to 20,000 here.

You probably can guess.

Yeah, my ultimate takeaway as far as the fan service here was that, contrary to what I was kind of hoping and was sort of led to almost believe and expect, it didn’t really have a place here. Just there mostly for its own sake.

I’d prefer it to not exist at all. But a manga like Chainsawman showed me it can at least be done well, doing a better job of not taking you out of the story and even using it to develop the story or characters. But every in universe justification for it here (read, one) as far as the kamui and all that stuff…

That all could have easily been rewritten to just not be there. Like, make it to where the amount of skin in with the kamui does not matter. Just at all is what is dangerous for most people. And boom. That entire element of the outfit design and all the unflattering views it enables can go away.

Like seriously, dude. And some times you can tell they want you get really excited about the transformations. Like, “Yeah, stuff is about to get done!”…

…and it did not hit me once. True, I never got all that invested in the first place, but even if I did I still think those sequences would have took me out every time. I don’t care what anyone says. That stuff will never be cool. Almost every time I thought to myself, in the words of you kids these days, “This stuff is not tuff.” There was exactly one time where I was like, “Actually yeah, that does look pretty cool.”

And it was when Ryuko was a silhouette.

The only possible contribution that it is somewhat noteworthy (I think?) is demonstrating Satsuki’s resolve to accomplish what she wants and acceptance of herself or whatever. But even that did not need to be done THAT way.

Also, I’m not sure I would call it fan “service” but…

Satsuki’s mom. I…

Wow. I get that we wanted to portray her as a terrible mother and person, but my God.

Though I will say that involving the home room teacher dude did actually kind of make me laugh a number of times because of how unnecessarily, over the top, ridiculous it was.

For a show called Kill La Kill, there is actually quite a lack of killing. Not a complaint. Just kind of weird to notice thinking back on it.