Anime: Kill la Kill

I first heard about Kill la Kill in a Steam chatroom that I frequent. The chatroom was founded based off members of a sub reddit of this other game that blah blah blah, its another story (Nick knows). The take-away is that the members consume lots of anime and Japanese games. A lot of what they like isn't my cup of tea, so I didn't look into Kill la Kill until a co-worker started talking about it as well. At that point I decided to check it out.

At first glance it was rather cartoony-looking with over-the-top fanservice, but by episode 3 I was really enjoying the visuals and dialogue. The series quickly turned out to be over-the-top action, silliness, and dramatic encounters.

The story follows the path of Ryuko, the scissor-sword wielding girl on the bottom right. On her path of investigating who killed her father, she finds herself enrolled in a highschool that is run by... fascists with superpowers. This school is built like a massive military fortress that is the centerpiece of the entire city, in which the power and wealth of the families within depend entirely on the rank of their enrolled students. At the peak of it all is Satsuki, the girl on the top left. Satsuki is the student council president, but wields so much influence she is in fact a dictator of the entire school and city.

One of the early antagonists in the series is the tennis-club leader. These club leaders are serious business, as they are high ranking in the student body and thus have more power granted to them. If Ryuko wants to get anywhere near Satsuki, she has find a way through the culture and powers of people like this:

And where do these powers come from? Apparently from some mysterious component of the uniforms, "life fibers". With a higher percent of life fibers meaning more power. Ryuko comes into possession of a 100% life fiber outfit. This uniform itself is a main character... so yeah when you stop to think about what is going on, it is pretty ridiculous.

As would seem typical and eye-rolling, Ryuko and Satsuki use outfits like this to transform into scantly-clad modes and do battle.

The lead-up to these battles, the music, and the animation are just great though. At least the series has an explanation for a lot of this nudity, being that the life fibers can actually be quite dangerous and thus too much skin contact can be a big risk. Random fan-service in anime is usually a big turn-off for me, but what makes this nudity a non-issue for me, was how it does not feel like it's pandering softcore love to the forever-alone audience. It is always presented unsubtly, with strong characters, with a lot of humor, and just as many male characters end up getting their clothes ripped up or powered up in the same fashion. It becomes a huge plot point actually, defining the series while at the same time being really damn funny.

All in all, its definitely hooked me. The plot moves extremely quickly most of the time, and every episode now has me clenching my fists and rising off the couch at some point. I look forward to every new episode that gets translated each Friday!