Pachi's Anime Review - Kill la Kill

A very late, late evening to all of you! I seem to have lost my way and unfortunately haven't provided any updates in awhile; well I'm fixing that tonight. Sit back and pop yourself some popcorn, 'cuz tonight's review is a long one. Follow the jump below to read my thoughts on the recently completed Studio Trigger action extravaganza Kill la Kill, one of my favorite series of the past year! Hope you enjoy!

P.S. I realize my Review page has been an organizational mess forever, so I tweaked it a bit so it's a little neater. Still not anywhere close to how I want it to appear, but at least I'm not ignoring the blog's cleanliness!

I don't mention this in the review, but one of my favorite aspects of Kill la Kill was how several characters exhibited their own unique visual motifs, such as lighting and backdrop. For this drawing I decided to take my three favorite characters from the show (Satsuki, Mako, and Mikisugi) and make their unique lighting clash. Making the lighting work around each character but also blend into the remainder of the drawing in after-effects was really hard yet enriching experience. It's a lot harder to draw Mako's "HAAAA-LLE-LU-JAH~" arm pose than you might think. Also I apologize if you take offense to radiating penguin nipples. 

Honnouji Academy is more than just another high school - its foundation lies at the pinnacle of Tokyo Bay as a beacon of oppression, where iron-fisted student council president Satsuki Kiryuin and her cadre of elite soldiers reign supreme. Using tailor-made Goku uniforms embedded with "Life Fibers", the elite of Honnouji subjugate all beneath their feet. Enter wandering transfer student Ryuko Matoi, a girl on a mission to seek out her father's killer, armed with only half of her late parent's Scissor Blade as a clue. When these two meet, a bloody warfare begins. 

We've finally hit my 20th anime review, and only now have I gotten an opportunity to talk about the towering juggernaut of animated mass appeal, Gainax.  If you know anything about your anime history (and you should, this is culturally important stuff), you probably have heard of Daicon IV, the short film produced by a young Gainax still in university (then known as Daicon Film) for the 1983 annual Japanese SF Convention. One could cite this as one of several starting points for the otaku boom of the past 35 years in Japanese culture. While Daicon Film was still growing, they displayed heart, passion, and a berth of talented young minds ripe with ideas out the box that would lay the path for a generation of iconic animated properties still relevant and lauded to this day.

I'd feel it remiss to talk about Gainax and not give a section to Neon Genesis Evangelion, the postmodern Sci-Fi deconstruction brought to us from the annals of Gainax co-founder and tortured genius Hideaki Anno. Evangelion has become something of a mental giant in popular animated culture, specializing in deep character introspection, Judeo-Christian symbolism, genre-destructing structure, and giant robot battles. For me, Evangelion is a revolutionary series which turned the medium on its head and explored frontiers never tackled before in a professional capacity - it is The Matrix of anime, fostering new visions that allow for it to be cited as source and inspiration to many modern works; equal to Akira in cultural significance. There's really nothing more I can say about Eva other than you should watch it, no questions asked. This isn't a matter of taste - you don't have to LIKE it. But you should watch it and experience how it altered the vision of TV anime for years to come. It's also entertaining to capture the depression and madness of the mind behind the show's production; Eva has come to be one of those projects that its creator can never be satisfied with. In 1999, the final two episodes of the series (which were completely abstract psychoanalytical mindfucks abandoning story structure) were re-animated and re-imagined into a movie of abstract psychoanalytical mindfucks abandoning story structure: End of Evangelion. I also recommending watching that one. What I don't recommend is watching the Rebuild of Evangelion movies. I'm told by all my fellow anime critics that they are quite intriguing and better than the original series/movie and that they do enhance the original story, but at the end of the day I can't see them as more than glorified what-if scenarios. Anno is beating a dead horse which makes unique sounds at each hit, but he is never satisfied with the sound he hears; that's how I see it. Evangelion is an influential piece of history and I'd rather not explore it further.

I went on record in my last review saying that the coming-of-age tale Furi Kuri (FLCL), easily Gainax's most popular OVA series, is one of the most perfect anime ever created. It's only 6 episodes long, but features a level of frenetic character depth and pathos one normally only finds in TV-length series. FLCL effortlessly encapsulates Gainax's strengths of the era: quick, free-flowing animation which isn't stringent to a particular style and morphs when the mood is right, story-telling not bound by national ties and thus offering appeal on the international level, an accessible application of forward-thinking abstract concepts, and most importantly - energy. You could always spot a Gainax work because of the energy, the soul embodied by the work as characters leapt and bounded across the screen. FLCL contained all of these elements while not becoming tiring or overwrought - it is one of the most fun, intellectual, resplendent anime, OVA or otherwise, ever devised.

There is a bevy of talent to be found in Gainax during their heyday, but no question my personal favorite is director Hiroyuki Imaishi. He was the mind behind Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, the super robot action epic of 2007 that took the otaku world by storm; the biggest Gainax success of the 2000s. Like all good directors, Imaishi brings his own unique style to anime. All of his efforts are defined by increasingly simple ideas fully realized in bombastic, action-packed extravaganzas. He utilizes simple notions like taking down the authority and simple visuals like starting from the bottom and aiming for the top, but he tempers these simplicities by not holding back anywhere else, providing the most balls-to-the-wall insanely energetic and stylized  visuals of any Gainax director to date.  I like to describe Imaishi as a little kid playing with his toys. I can never take critical offense to anything he presents because his directorial style is so straightforward and gosh-darned innocent. I've seen plenty of people criticize his occasional male gaze and objectification of female characters, but I for one cannot be offended by this man.

Sadly, the story of Gainax does not end on the happiest note. Oh they're still around, but not in the same capacity. I consider Gurren Lagann to be their last take-off success. There's a large fan following for Imaishi's follow-up work from 2010, Panty and Stocking and Garterbelt, but it wasn't to my liking. Everything Gainax has released following that series has lost their iconic luster, feeling more and more like your run-of-the-mill, uninspired adaptations. The Mystical Archives of Dantalian, Medaka Box, C3-bu, and Magica Wars is the breadth of their catalogue since then. I've checked them all out, and been thoroughly underwhelmed. The only Gainax production seeing any kind of acclaim these days are the Eva:Rebuilds. What happened? It's simple - some of the most creative minds of Gainax, Imaishi included, went off to start their own animation company in 2011 known as Studio Trigger. You could say the heart and soul of Gainax went with them; theirs is a merit which does not die, but only transfers to the next waiting vessel. Though short-handed on funding, Trigger has utilized their assets expertly and made waves in the anime world with hit after hit. First came Inferno Cop, a fan favorite web series, then the exquisitely animated short film Little Witch Academia, and then, in Fall of 2013, their very first series animated for television. This series is (finally) the topic of today's review: Kill la Kill. We'll start with some talk concerning the origins to KLK's themes and setting, then move in on its meatier attributes: its message and characters.

Several Studio Trigger employees were guests at this year's Animazement, my hometown anime convention, and I attended one of their discussion panels. One audience member inquired, "How did you come up with the idea for Kill la Kill to be about clothes of all things?" Thefolks on hand were primarily Little Witch Academia staff and could only give indirect responses to KLK questions, but basically we were told: "One day in a meeting, Imaishi-san said, 'I want our next series to be about clothing'. And so it was." The title "Kill la Kill" can be interpreted multiple ways, emphasizing both the visceral kill-or-be-killed nature of the show, and a pun off multiple definitions for the Japanese verb "kiru" (to wear clothes, to cut). Kill la Kill is a series predicated on simple wordplay fully developed into an overblown world-setting. The Japanese word for a schoolgirl sailor uniform (seifuku) is pronounced the same as the word for "conquest". Honnouji Academy is a school constructed atop an impoverished war-torn city as military fortress governed by a powerful dictator on high who sanctions combat-ready school uniforms to the best of the best to act as her soldiers. I think you can see the connection.

Now, the idea of a school that shelters a secret militia or one that is governed by its student council body with zero hint of competent adults or faculty is nothing new. Japanese culture is obsessed so much with the setting of high school that they'll set almost any story in one: romance, horror, sci-fi, fantasy, comedy, giant robot, you name it. Traditionally, however, nothing is done with the visage of high school; it's simply a backdrop to whatever plot is in process. Or, the school isn't really a regular school at all, and is actually a government-facility training super soldiers or something, in which case that's not the same idea. Kill la Kill breathes new life into the concept by taking it to its roots, I.E., the very simple wordplay I mentioned above, and building off that. The school setting here also feels less like the classic usage of Japanese high school and more like, just pulling the best example from the top of my head, the school from Matilda. The mass of disciplinary forces (complete with the male anime equivalent of Miss Trunchbull) and fascist rule is supreme, and more than a little excessive, but everyone just kinda accepts it. At times it feels like a dream as a giant of a man crashes through a classroom door to dole out punishment for insubordination, or when a field trip boils down to a military sortie.  KLK is completely in on the joke, but not in a self-aggrandizing fashion. In true Imaishi style, you take the concept and crank it to 11; equally make fun of and embrace your concept by pushing it to its thematic limits. The forces of Honnouji Academy carry their missions with the height of dramatic flair, accentuated by school president Satsuki Kiryuin who delivers her speeches not unlike a general marshalling their troops to war.  This lack of restraint and total embrace of the very simple "seifuku" pun is what makes the world of KLK instantly memorable and lavish.

While I've mentioned the Imaishi style, I want to give a nod to KLK's technical aspects: its style of animation and visual play. Imaishi is a master of taking simple ideas and going all out with them, just as he does with the show's setting, and it is no different in the animation itself. He also understands that a cartoon is a cartoon, and that you can get away with a lot you couldn't do in live action: impossible shots/gags. For instance, a well-known anime trope is that when an important character, super technique or powerful item is revealed to the viewer, giant text appears on-screen telling us what/who it is. This is done for dramatic impact. KLK does this too,  and takes it a step further. The giant text that appears isn't just an aid for the viewer; it's actually part of the world. That's not to say characters directly reference the text or interact with it; it's just there, all the time. Like, giant text appears scribing the name of a just-revealed Goku uniform. In the next scene, we see a character with glasses on the sidelines; the text can still be seen reflected in their glasses, relative to where the text was when it first appeared. After quick sight gags like this, the text will always disappear proper, but just those little moments provide engagingly kinetic set dressing. It embraces and laughs at popular animated tropes just long enough for them to not be contrived. I always felt like Gurren Lagann took itself a little too seriously and P&S didn't take itself seriously enough. KLK hits the sweet spot right in-between.

These techniques embracing classic cartoon motion and sight gags I'd say are what put KLK apart from the rest. Because let's face it, when it comes to consistent animated continuity, they're.........not bad, but kind of struggling. This was, after all, Studio Trigger's first multi-cour series animated for television, and it shows. While never quite as beautiful as, say, Little Witch Academia, KLK still looks mighty impressive when the budget pulls through, particularly in battle scenes. It's hardly worth docking points for the occasional off-model shots or use of still frames, because not only are these instances exceptionally rare (Trigger as a studio knows how to pool their resources and budget well), but the heart of the show's animated prowess lies elsewhere. Namely, the techniques I mentioned above. The fun of Imaishi's style of crass, child-like wonderment is that he injects it into every single aspect of his work: story, theme, music, characters, animation, all of it. This is why his style oozes so copiously out of everything he touches. In the past, Imaishi's work was remembered primarily for its over-the-top action choreography. I think Kill la Kill will be remembered for its abandonment of modern convention and embrace of being a silly cartoon before it is a story being told. A lot of animation suffers from 21st century internet culture which begrudgingly accepts the use of its own medium for the purpose of housing a story. That's not to say animation shouldn't be a vehicle for story-telling, but I get the feeling many animated cartoons, particularly anime, forget that they are, in fact, a cartoon. This is what happens when you get an uninspired light novel adaptation and the result is a boring slog of a programming block that literally does nothing with the tools at its disposal. So much anime these days are just talking heads that barely move, you wonder what's even the point.  Not that one would ever expect a show from Hiroyuki Imaishi to look uninspired, but I respect Kill la Kill for being a cartoon first and a story second.  

But let's get back to talking about the chief inspiration for Kill la Kill that I mentioned earlier: clothing. In this series, the blood-pumping action comes to the viewer through Go Nagai-esque super suits. There are mysterious energy compounds in the world of KLK known as Life Fibers. When threaded into the seams of clothing, the wearer in a sense "merges" with the fibers embedded into their costume, granting enhanced strength and agility. The more Life Fibers, the more powerful the wearer can become, and in some cases, use special abilities and even transform. Ryuko comes into a semi-symbiotic relationship with a sentient schoolgirl uniform made entirely out of Life Fibers (known as a Kamui), which she names Senketsu because of his insatiable thirst for her blood. One brilliant trend in KLK is the more powerful a uniform containing Life Fibers becomes, the smaller the uniform actually appears on the wearer, leaving them nearly bare (there is harsh critical reception to this feature, but I'll get to that later). This is the driving force behind KLK's narrative. Ryuko fights against the Elite Four (no, not THAT Elite Four, Pokenerds) and Satsuki Kiryuin of Honnouji Academy, who all use their Life Fiber outfits as tools for war. The coexistence of Ryuko and Senketsu represents the antithesis to the academy's credo. Rather than suit up for battle, she must get naked, as we see in how skimpy Senketsu becomes when Ryuko merges with him. This is what it means to bond perfectly; to fight as one mind and body.

It's very simple: to defeat the powers that be you must shed the shackles of conformity, defy logic, and get naked; only then will you be truly unique and understand one another. In a sense this is the exact same message as Gurren Lagann. But KLK actually weaves its message into the visuals on screen and, in my opinion, throws more analytical pomp and circumstance into that message. Gurren Lagann only tacked the call to "fight the power" onto a show about giant robots beating the shit out of each other. There's nothing deep to glean from it - it's just a show about giant robots that continually get bigger and bigger. In my mind, Imaishi may write the same story over and over, but Kill la Kill is to date his mastered edition of that story. You can clearly see the themes transcribed into the on-screen factions and their actions - never is there a moment where a character makes a choice that betrays how the interlining themes would predict those actions; all motivations are satisfied and make sense. The story, setting, characters, themes, and message are so tightly woven onto the same spool, not unlike a well-tailored suit, and make for an immaculate fitting.

Kill la Kill's harrowing schoolyard battlefields are populated by many memorable characters. The anime community surmounted hype months before the series' premiere on account of one important draw - promotional material featured two "strong female protagonists" and promised a story where they harbored a rivalry against each other unsullied by the presence of a man. Here's a tip to anticipating female agency in anime: if the promo art features a lone badass girl, the series will immediately give her a milquetoast male protagonist to cater to and eventually replace the original target of her narrative purpose. Thankfully, Kill la Kill is not such a series. Series leads Ryuko and Satsuki are both, as promised, strong females with indigenous sense of purpose and completely free of man-centric motivations. They are also not flawless, independent, unsociable shut-in's, a common caveat of the "strong female" trope. They both have clear arcs paved out for them but can still kick ass and take names while retaining narrative dignity; in short, extremely well-written.

But wait, did you say 'dignity'? I can already hear some of you objecting in order to bring up the fanservice this show revels in. I mentioned earlier how the more powerful a Life Fiber uniform becomes, the more skin it shows on the wearer. In particular, Ryuko and Satsuki's Kamui synchronizations leave them in quite skimpy get-ups, barely covering their naughty bits. Is that not a loss of dignity, an inescapable man gaze? Many have made this argument against Kill la Kill, and it is one I do not agree with. Remember who the director is - Hiroyuki Imaishi. There isn't an impure bone in his body. A big part of the  problem with this mindset is people have gotten so SJW over sexual depictions of women in media that next to NOTHING is acceptable. The truth of the matter is there is both good and bad fanservice; you need to learn the difference in order to accept a little overindulgence. The Kamui fanservice comes from the mind of Imaishi, a man who admires the female body but arguably doesn't objectify it with ill intent. The girls are never shot in a way that implies subservience to a bodiless male gaze, and the focus is always the on-going fight, not what they are wearing.  Time is taken to linger on regular occurrence; but through the filter of Imaishi I can only see this as a celebration of the naked form, not a sexual lambasting. Episode 2 is called "So Sexy She Might Pass Out"; that should make it obvious enough. KLK is sexy, not sexIST. I can sympathize if you just personally find girls forced to wear skimpy outfits humiliating, but I can point out several characters that fairly balance the scale.

First is Aikuro Mikisugi, Ryuko's teacher who is secretly an operative of freedom fighter organization NUDIST BEACH. First and foremost, he is a man; fanservice is not exclusive to women in this show. As you may have guessed, he loves to strip. Several scenes feature him proudly baring his skin for the camera, arguably more shameless than any of the angles used on Kamui transformations. The other is fan-favorite Mako Makanshoku, Ryuko's sidekick at Honnouji. Mako is one of my favorites for her role as the resident Greek Chorus; regularly she stops the action for a comedic one-woman-show imparting thematic observations to what's going on with her own unique spin. She's also the school's damsel-in-distress du jour; normally in series with strong female leads, the person constantly captured by the enemy is the weaksauce male love interest, but in KLK, both are girls. I'm not trying to imply any combination is more desirable than another, because it ultimately comes down to how the writers handle it. And the inclusion of Mako gives us a very strong feminist angle to the series against one of aimless male gaze due to how perfectly the narrative fends off any negative connotations behind her plot-convenient role as the best friend used by the enemy to lure the hero into combat. Even though Mako is often shipped with Elite Four member Gamagoori as a result of their unusual giant and mouse relationship, it's mostly one-sided (on his side) and Mako's actions don't hinge on his. Ryuko and Mako's partnership imply a stronger yuri vibe than anything else.

Hell, I can give you one further: Ryuko shares awkward romantic tension with Senketsu, and he's a goddamn piece of clothing. The point I'm trying to make is KLK does not house an objectifying male-gaze agenda because all genders and characters are objectified equally. Where your mileage will vary is with your personal tolerance for skin shots, but always remember; KLK does it for everyone - it plays no favorites. Under this assumption, I found the fanservice positively indulgent. Context and intent is paramount here.

Kill la Kill keeps the classic Gainax spirit to heart; namely, a love of excess. If you prefer more grounded tales, this one might not be your cup of tea, but I'd still extend an admittedly bittersweet recommendation. I say this because what I'm recommending is the joy and magic of Gainax, which KLK perfectly embodies, but with an anime that is technically no longer Gainax anymore. The advent of Studio Trigger is a sobering triumph, the tearful end of one era and the exuberant birth of another in the same moment. Though the names have changed, the mission remains the same. Trigger made a splash with Inferno Cop and a declaration of purpose with Little Witch Academia; Kill la Kill has made them a household name, a studio to watch out for in all future endeavors. I can only hope the spirit of Gainax endures and the young Studio Trigger doesn't lose its way.

You can currently find all subbed episodes of Kill la Kill streaming online courtesy of Crunchyroll. The series has been licensed by Aniplex of America; the first volume is being released stateside late Summer '14.