03.28
Ragyo reads the plot for Trigger's next anime.
Above all that must be said, I have to admire the confidence this show exuded throughout the run. It was wacky and in your face, but it could be sincere about it. The show knew how to make a scene where characters have a mass naked hug together, and make it not look stupid. Not once in this series were there any pussyfooting or restraint, hitting plot points and jokes home alike with the subtlety of a missile. This was a very loud series, crying to the heavens that they are going to revolutionize the market in the face of an anime scene swamped with Madoka or Attack on Titan wannabes. It was Trigger’s way of saying that it’s okay to be silly, you don’t have to craft a story that breaks the characters’ souls or builds a labyrinthine plot on a weekly basis. Instead, you just have to be entertaining.
But the finale had to do more than that, which was seal all of this awe and wonder for the past six months into a complete package. One bad ending will spoil the lot, and Imaishi’s not been known for creating wholly satisfying endings in his shows (still reeling over what the deal was with Simon’s end). Even comedies like Panty & Stocking have to have that one plot twist out of nowhere to keep the ending from actually being an ending. But here, the staff at least shows restraint in that one regard. The fight scenes have more breath to them unlike the past two weeks, advancing more than looped animation of Ryuko and Satsuki becoming Beyblades to duel with their mom.
So instead, you have Ryuko summoning up all of her friends’ Life Fibers to pull a Spirit Bomb in order to fight Ragyo. While I’m not impressed with that, I do find it difficult to see what else they could’ve done for that fight. I mean, Kill la Kill has always been about acceleration, so of course it’ll end with two almighty beings duking it out in space. I’m just saying that it could have rocked the boat a bit more. I’m not trying to say that Gamagoori should have died for real, but I expected more of a challenge for the rest of the characters. Instead, it’s just Ryuko’s fight and her fight alone as she battles her mother. Yes, it has been her story from the beginning, but I grew a bit too attached to the side characters to want them to do more than just stand around on Earth while Ryuko does the heavy lifting.
Though that attachment somewhat results in how the show strayed from the previous “girl fights a high school on her own” format. Halfway through, it just shifts into “saving the world from evil clothes aliens” without a second’s warning. But by being so quick with changing plots, it all leaves some questions hanging around like how much of Satsuki’s social Darwinist dogma was just a ruse and how much was coming from her own mouth. I know it was to put up an appearance for her mother, but it just seems so dissonant from the first episodes. It’s difficult to line up the Gamagoori who beat up a kid for stealing a One-Star Uniform with the Gamagoori who saves Mako’s life several times over. You could say character development, but how do you apply that with characters like Nonon who have been rampant bitches in and out of their REVOCS-pleasing persona immediately until the reveal happens?
Then again, Trigger always made it clear that Kill la Kill’s main grace would be the style and animation rather than the storytelling, so I should grant that leeway. What should be heralded is what Trigger had to overcome, like the low budget and having to appeal to overseas audiences in order to garner profit. It accomplished that hindrance through both bravado and hype. Everyone raved and parodied how this was going to save anime, like how a really good album can singlehandedly save music. But beyond that memetic phrase, there lies a simple appeal to Kill la Kill: Nostalgia.
While being different from the rest of the market right now, the series adhere to themes from shows of yore like Ren & Stimpy and Yatterman. This show borrows a lot from past animation to create its own flavor just like how Tarantino movies are basically a hodgepodge of grindhouse flicks. It harkened to cartoons that could be stupid without shame, and brought that to an audience hungry for that aspect of animation. Shows last year tried to do that like Gatchaman Crowds, but they often became bloated by their own ideas, fixating on making a thousand random thoughts at once rather than excelling with the dozen they had. Here, Kill la Kill had a few interesting ideas and rolled with them, zigzagging from point to point with animation guiding the plots rather than the other way around.
And that works amazingly for some scenes like that one where Gamagoori’s face appears on his chest. It’s so stupid, that it becomes endearing in its stupidity. These tiny quirks create a whole on their own, bringing up what was initially cited as a by-the-numbers story by Imaishi himself. He vied to be different by going for different sources of influence to create the series, from manga like Otokojuku and OVAs like Project A-Ko. That series also had a hot-blooded girl and her quirky sidekick fight with a haughty heiress. It’s impossible to see Kill la Kill and A-Ko without recognizing some hint of an influence between the two, while distinguishing themselves enough to avoid any accusations of plagiarism. And maybe I’m rambling about nothing, but that’s what Imaishi and his lineage at Gainax did: Take old works and try to squeeze new ideas from them. And even if that approach meant facing potential bankruptcy, they still held to that belief by using a lack of budget as an incentive to further innovate. Without that, we wouldn’t have Evangelion or FLCL. And we definitely wouldn’t have had Kill la Kill.
So will this series leave a legacy like those shows? That’s been the question rolling around in my head once I finished Kill la Kill. Like, are people going to remember this show for future seasons or forget that it even existed like Haruhi? You could always chalk it up to the serendipity of the anime market, never knowing when one season’s success will become another’s mockery. But the thing is, Haruhi became less popular because too many shows of its kind kept popping out. And they offered nothing new; making it seem like the progenitor was just as bland as the descendants. So for Kill la Kill’s case, I guess its chance for longevity lies in how many dopplegangers will appear in the near future, and how many of them will be good shows in their own right or not. Granted, there’s the chance Kill la Kill will stand out as that one weird idea an anime studio attempted that never caught on (BD sales say otherwise, but still), and maybe that’s for the best to keep it as a standalone project. But barring the cynicism of copycats not being quite as good, it would be fun to see this kind of show happen again.