02.14
And you thought the bath scene was parental abuse.
I’m finding the process for this article to be harder than usual, because I just couldn’t stop smiling from the beginning to end of this episode. It left me in a trance because of how amazing all twenty-four minutes of it was. Harime gets the shit slapped out of her. Satsuki reveals where her true ambitions lie. And on top of it all, Ryuko gets a heart-wrenching reunion with her mother. It all feels like payoff from start to finish and you really get the sense that this show is in acceleration mode. This show’s in the same kind of speed that Gurren Lagann was at this point, but even more so. I want to yell at the computer screen in the misled hope that I’ll get the new episode sooner rather than later. When 2014 winds down, and we count the pieces of spectacular anime that have run, this will be recognized as one of the best moments.
It felt like being a kid watching the Cell Saga, with all the tension driving up to its peak as you wondered how Gohan was going to beat Cell. I know some people will talk about how Kill la Kill doesn’t have any depth, like it’s junk food for the mind or something. But the thing about junk food is that on one rare occasion, you’ll eat a burger that’ll drive your senses crazier than any rib eye steak could. That’s what Kill la Kill did this week, by transmuting normally boring fights in any other anime into pieces that delve into the characters.
Take that fight between Satsuki and the mind-controlled Ryuko. It’s like the fight from a few episodes where Satsuki was trying to snap some sense into her, but Ryuko learned from that incident. She focuses in to make her spirit ascend from the Life Fibers’ grip. And when it ends, you see Ryuko and Satsuki as warriors who utmost respect each other in terms of ambition, but show utter hatred in how they dictate their aspirations. Both sides understand that the other is fighting for what they see as the greater good, and only have to overcome past squabbles in order to achieve a unity against the real enemy.
And the real enemy treats her fight with Satsuki like a girl playing dollhouse. Ragyo lets Satsuki believe that she has the upper hand, but the young woman’s pride stops her from killing her mother at the first second. Even though she demonizes being dominated by superficial clothes, she leads her actions with twice as many speeches. That proves her downfall, because Ragyo doesn’t let speeches get in the way of putting her foot down on her daughter’s rebellion. Ragyo might be dressed up as Kefka and talking about REVOCS’s domination, but she drops that act immediately and lays the punches fast and firm. And when you take away the bravado, all that stands is who can be who up more. No club presidents. No Elite Four. It’s just Satsuki planning her way up until she could strike, but realizing she brought a knife to a gun fight. And that misplaced cog stings her like nothing else.
"It's like poetry. It's sort of-they rhyme."
Then there’s how Ragyo fights Ryuko, but there’s no equal ground. Ragyo tears out Ryuko’s heart like it was nothing. And in that second, she also rips out Ryuko’s idea of herself. Everything Ryuko ever knew about her life, as the rebellious daughter of Isshin Matoi, is now torn apart by the revelation that she’s been a Kiryuin all this time. All of that wildfire that led her life has been snuffed out, and a woman who couldn’t care less about a dying baby was the prime reason she’s been living like this for the past seventeen years. She was a breath away from being just like Satsuki, and that has to cut worse than anything anybody else has done to her so far. How do you get back up after realizing the people you’ve been fighting could’ve been your loved ones if the right moment happened?