Kill La Kill
Mar 28, 2014If you watch the show for the crazy action and the fan service, you will be rewarded with a whole lot of braindead entertainment. If you are offended by lots of nude, you will drop it early on. If you start thinking about its plot and themes, you will be completely lost and stop caring from a point on. If you start making allusions and symbolisms, and comparisons to every little detail to everything else out there, then welcome to the overthinking group, where no matter how stupid something is, you will still find some excuse to make it seem like it’s amazing.
And now that we clarified the different types of viewers this show creates, let’s proceed to what it really is. It is a zany action comedy about fighting teenagers. Yes, later on they try to make it seem like it’s a lot more by throwing in a convoluted conspiracy about clothes eating up humanity because aliens and shit, but it all boils down to neurotic teenagers yelling and beating the crap out of each other. Yes, it does have a plot that escalates from a simple revenge story to a war for the salvation of the planet but it happens in such a random way that you are better off not paying attention to how things move from point A to point B. The heroine, Matoi, can pretty much level any opponent past the school president since episode 1 and after episode 3 feels like the she forgets her revenge issues and just goes to school like nothing much happens, while her nemesis is not destroying her right away just so to stretch the series to 2 cour. And lots of other similar stuff like that happen later on.
But who cares about that; in terms of style Kill La Kill (KLK) is pretty much eyegasm for retro fans, as it offers a tribute to several dozen titles from earlier decades. The animation is fairly jerky to the most part but stuff will be moving around so fast, you won’t really mind that after awhile. It will keep your eyes constantly wide open, and your willies constantly hard and upwards, and that is more than enough to keep a big portion of the audience entertained.
Of course as good as it is as dumb entertainment, it is equally bad as a well written story with deep characters. You are not going to be watching it for any deep thinking; unless you are one of those overthinkers out there who will be writing a wall of text for every bouncing pair of hOOters being some sort of pro-feminism message. And as much as the show attempts to foreshadow major events in a lazy attempt to make you think it knows what is doing, when the gloves come off it all comes down to “I win because I said so”. Which is no surprise coming from the same creator as Furi Kuri, Tengen Toppa, and Panty & Stocking. Compared to those KLK shares the same zany style and has the highest amounts of entertainment, but is also the most barren in content and planning. Also the nudity is so omnipresent that it will either make you disgusted early on, or eventually give you immunity to it. Which in a way is double lose for me, since it is also supposed to be its main theme and gets treated like a joke that gets tiresome after awhile.
What the show manages to achieve is being the most entertaining fighting chicks anime I know of. And I know all of them (most famous being Cutey Honey, Ikki Tousen, Queen’s Blade, and Freezing). In terms of campy fun it also has nothing to be jealous of famous live-action movies such as Kill Bill or Sucker Punch, thus it manages to be a sort of cult classic overshadowing most of the earlier competitors almost instantly. Which is not a small feat I must say.
It isn’t a masterpiece by any stretch of the word and it definitely didn’t save anime, like most yell while chuckling. It is not for everyone, since lots of its content is plain bizarre and gross to non-fans, while its nudity is too much even for many who already are fans. It is just silly fun and should not be viewed as anything more past that.
There is nothing left besides some fairly simplistic (just like the show is) scoring system.
Art/Sound: 8/10 (good artwork, but jerky animation; good dynamic songs but not amazing to relisten to every so often)
Script/Cast: 4/10 (stuff happen because you yell a lot, character growth is hampered by random twists)
Value: 8/10 (easily memorable and rewatchable, but still the worst of Imaishi’s works to date
Entertainment: 6/10 (depends on how much you are content with brain dead action and fan service; I personally, am not that much)
Overall: 6.5/10
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You know, I may not have agreed with quite a few things you have said in your reviews, but if there was one thing I always respected about you Roriconfan, it was that you were always consistent with your opnions. This review however flushes that consistency down the drain. I'm just shocked that someone like yourself would give a series like this a 6.5/10 when it completly goes against your views you've had until now, it completly staggers me.
Usually, I don't care for your reviews (which is entirely subjective, nothing personal!) but I just wanted to say this is very spot-on about how I feel about the show. Like, word for word, I couldn't have phrased it better. The only thing not mentioned that I, personally, didn't care for, was the kind of perverse and borderline rape-esque relationship Senketsu and Ryuko have. Just made me feel icky, and this is from an anime vet of over a decade, who's seen some pretty bad stuff.Anyway. Good review, mate.
With regards to character development in KlK, Satsuki is a prime example of a character that undergoes a lot of dynamic and has more substance than the entire main cast of AoT. Eren and Mikasa are just vessels for one emotion. In Eren's case he's the typical shounen-lead with a hot-head, while Mikasa's only motivation in the series is Eren.Nothing is ever exposited on the two's feelings or ambitions, we're left completely devoid of any natural progression and over 50+ chapters, Eren and Mikasa are still the same people they started out as.Satsuki, however, begins as your stoic villain and slowly starts to reveal her true ambitions and the emotional influences that affected her decisions. By the end of the show she had retrained her old principles and incorporated new values into her world-view, and was thus able to comprehend and appreciate those feelings of the people around her.
The ONLY AoT characters I can even start to compare to Satsuki's progression is Christa and Armin. Everyone else is either clichéd and conforming to the needs of the plot, or the same as when they were first introduced.Plot pacing in Kill la Kill is also better, as AoT has either forgotten key elements of its story or drags out chapters on unneccessary and unimportant dialogue/exposition. The dialogue itself is bland and uninspired in AoT, making it difficult to identify characters apart from each other.As for tension, there is plenty in both series but I feel that KlK did a better job at piking the viewer's interest and engaging them by creating the desire to watch the next episode for the answers. Trigger delivered on many key aspects in the writing, whereas something that gets mentioned as important in chapter 10 of AoT is never mentioned again, if only vaguely.
I won't get into your opinion of Roricon, but people are allowed to alter their style of writing. They're not forced to stagnate with one style for eternity. And this is the one review I've read of his that didn't come across as idiotic. I'd be more for him writing reviews like this.
Kill la Kill deserving a 3/10 is your opinion - you are not an objective authority on that decision after all. Personally, in a technical review, I would rate KlK a 7/10. My own personal rating was 4/5. I'm not any more wrong for having that opinion than somoene is for giving Madouka 10/10, and I hate Madouka.The fan-service is plenty, but it doesn't detract from what is a well written story that cleverly parodies itself and the genre while having interesting characters. It is in my judgement after watching/reading both that I came to this conclusion that KlK out-performs AoT in most aspects.
@Panta
I am arguing it from a Roriconfan perspective if you are familiar with his reviews as you claim to be in the comment below then you would understand how Roriconfan has just insulted every review he ever did. While tons of users on here hated him because he had a strong opinion and I am told by many users in the forums he was really rude. However I don't know his side of the story and they clearly wouldn't give it to me because they hated him. Why I had some respect for Roriconfan is because if you put aside whether he is rude or not he had precise views on what he would consider wrong in anime.
This review alone destroys everthing he has been saying for the past few years and contradicts nearly everything he has ever written I had some respect for him as a critic and remaining strong to his convictions but I fear I was wrong to do so. Do you have any idea how many series Roriconfan has rated low due to excessive fan service and terrible plot? Countless anime have been given mediocore to poor scores because he found the fan service excessive, the plot and animation lacking.
If this didn't have his name on it I wouldn't have believed it was written by him thats how different this review is to all the others. How could he not call out the incest, excessive fan service, poor plot and the distorted animation when he has critcised better series for doing far less. If we go by his system of reviewing for everything Kill la Kill has done it shouldn't be higher than a 3/10 which seems like a fair score to me.
He should give himself a wake up slap and realise what a mistake he has made with this review and how it contradicts all his earlier reviews. However I am sure he doesn't give a crap about what I have to say but if he wants to remain a credible critic he should undo anything that contradicts himself and leaves him open to hypocrisy.
Also I found your defence of Kill la Kill very amusing while AoT by no means is perfect even though I kept saying that in the forums and no one would listen it is far superior in every way to Kill la Kill. Thanks for the response, I respect all opinions but if you legitmately think AoT beats Kill la Kill in any area other than soundtrack then I am not going to be able to understand how you came to that conclusion. Humor depends on tastes so we can't really argue on that but when it comes to character development, tension, plot progression and general story crafting I don't see how Kill la Kill even compares to AoT? After all as I am repeatedly told ad nauseam 'its not meant to be taken seriously.'
@zetsubou: AoT is cliched and full of stock characters with little to no development at all. While an exciting action show it does little to patch up its poor characters and nonsensical dialogue.
I'm not saying Kill la Kill isn't cliched, it is, but it manages far better on the character and dialogue fronts than AoT, which is content to allow everything to stagnate after the typical shounen stereotypes are introduced.
KlK is far from perfect but it's what's right about the shounen genre; it doesn't take itself seriously, it has fun while retaining an interesting plot and developments, and it allows the characters to flourish in what feels like an organic way.
If it's the fan-service that got in the way of your enjoyment of a show then it's not the show that's at fault when it does so many other things right.