Posted in: Look! It Moves! by Adi Tantimedh, Movies, Recent Updates | Tagged: anime, entertainment, flcl, Gurren Lagann, Hiroyuki Imaishi, Kazuki Nakashima, Kill la Kill

Anime Series Kill la Kill Keeps Killing Clichés – Look! It Moves! by Adi Tantimedh

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2013 15:00:00 -0600

by Hannah Means Shannon

Comments

Adi Tantimedh writes:

The anime series getting the most buzz this season is Kill la Kill, new studio Trigger's postmodern deconstructionist action comedy. You may have heard of this plot before: tomboy street brawling tough girl Kyoko Matoi transfers to the elite private school Honounji Academy armed only with her fists and giant scissor blade sword in search of the killer of her scientist father, but has to fight through the fascistic student council led by its president Satsuki Kiryuin, who rules over the school and the city with an iron fist. Their uniforms grant them superpowers based on their skills and interests, and to fight them, Kyoko ends up with a superpowered uniform of her own, a living weapon invented by her father, who may have had a hand in creating the student council's uniforms as well.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=havZiN8gpM8[/youtube]

That's right. School uniforms. Not for children and NSFW.

And when Kyoko transforms into fighting mode, her uniform becomes a ridiculously skimpy costume that leaves nothing to the imagination. The elite students with their starred uniforms also transform into various forms of armor and costuming depending on their favorite pastimes or obsessions. Ryoko has to fight the president of the tennis club, the boxing club, the swimming club, all the while half-naked. And when she defeats them, she destroys their costumes and strips them naked. She still has to get to Satsuki Kiryuin herself, who also has a living costume that renders her the most powerful fighter on the schoolyard battlefield. It's all about the clothes. And the shredding of clothes.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyaVC8rHbp4[/youtube]

It's all gloriously stupid, gleefully absurd, cheesy, sleazy and lunatic, and it knows it. This is a show that wants its fanservice and eats its postmodern deconstructionist commentary cake at the same time. The show makes fun of the ridiculous skimpy costumes of female characters in superhero and fantasy stories while also making fun of how we're expected to leer at them, then turns it around again to comment on the female characters controlling and owning their sexuality and half-nakedness, then having her strip her enemies naked. Even her homeroom teacher, who's really an undercover agent from an organization called Nudist Beach , is an itinerant exhibitionist. They know just how phallic the swords and weapons are. No pervy obsession is left untouched. Male gaze is indulged in and made fun of.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9k3QySd3AjI[/youtube]

The layers of deconstruction, pop references and silly slapstick satire run deep in this show. Each episode is named after a song from the Showa era. The characters' dialogue is culled from decades of cheesy and melodramatic lines in pulp and action movies. There's the cheerfully silly best friend. There's the tough guy posturing right out of Japanese tough guy movies. It takes the piss out of the dominance of high school in Japanese pop culture. And it's all served up as manic slapstick farce. The art style goes from straight action grimness to Chibi cuteness to the chaotic rough sketchiness reminiscent of Go Nagai. This is comedy by smart people making stupid jokes as stupid as possible, wrapped up in a manic superhero spoof.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=by44grBe71Y[/youtube]

And where else are you going to find Marxist critique in a comedy anime? Honouji Academy dominates the city and the lives of everyone who lives in it. Families' social status is determined by how many stars the high schoolers have at the academy, with the no-star students relegated to the status of plebs and cannon fodder. Only starred uniforms give them superpowers, and their families better homes and income.

School council president Satsuki Kiryuin believes people are pigs to ruled over and dominated by an upper class elite led by her and her council. As far as she's concerned, the masses are easily intimidated and then lulled into placid obedience by promises of rewards in Hunger Games-style contests. Except this is Hunger Games by way of Monty Python and Benny Hill. This is high school life as an allegory for class warfare with the heroine as revolutionary fighter. There's even an episode about Kyoko trying to subvert the school's system only to become an alienated laborer fighting to keep her best friend's family in a luxury lifestyle as they get assimilated into the system rather than overthrowing it. This is like if Bertolt Brecht was a horny otaku animator living in Tokyo.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUiMUsXEpMM[/youtube]

This is really par for the course for director Hiroyuki Imaishi and writer Kazuki Nakashima, whose previous worked included FLCL and absurdist Science Fiction Gurren Lagann. The feel is like punk rock, anarchic, manic and with a short attention span, yet fully in control of their themes and ideas as they mix metatextual references to pop culture, movies and anime with social and political commentary. It's a throw-everything-to-the-wind approach to genre storytelling where they decide they can ignore any pretense at scientific naturalism or accuracy and just make up whatever the hell they want to support their themes even as they follow the superhero fantasy of empowerment and push it so far over the top it goes into orbit. They want you to be in on the jokes.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HD310hOyfs[/youtube]

Where FLCL and Gurran Lagann were allegories about a boy's coming-of-age, Kill la Kill is also about a teenage girl's coming-of-age. The sexual symbolism of her shedding blood to transform into a half-naked warrior is overt, and the story is full of allusions to her quest for identity and purpose. Even the sedate end credits sequence shows her wandering the city streets pondering the various gender roles society pushes for women and ends with her angry, rebellion gaze as she turns her back on it all. More proof that Japanese anime and manga are miles ahead of the US sophistication, even at its silliest.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=had93mxg3Ys[/youtube]

Kill la Kill is currently simulcast streaming on Crunchyroll, Hulu Plus, Daisuki in the UK and Wakanim.co.uk in the UK.

Wearing it all on the sleeve at lookitmoves@gmail.com

Follow the official LOOK! IT MOVES! twitter feed at http://twitter.com/lookitmoves for thoughts and snark on media and pop culture, stuff for future columns and stuff I may never spend a whole column writing about.

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!