Kill la Kill

Episodes 5-6

For all my griping about the dip in art quality in episode 4, the fifth episode of Kill la Kill gets immediately back on track. It's obligated to, because they're introducing a new recurring character: Tsumugu Kinagase, whom I remembered liking quite a bit and was immediately reminded of why. Clothes are the ultimate weapons and, with the exception of Senketsu, the power of the enemy in the world of Kill la Kill, so here we have Tsumugu, a clothes-hunting antifa (that is, “Anti-Fashion”) operative who brings a whole new meaning to the term “going commando." His visual gimmicks are great, fighting as he does with a sewing-machine-gun that fires special needles and dropping spool-shaped bombs. It's that fusion of ridiculous-yet-awesome that Trigger has had on display since this show's heroine started swinging a giant scissor around. He takes on the Honnouji Gardening Club in the cold open showcasing an amazing battle of sewing versus sowing, and this episode never really lets up from there.

I can actually group talking points about both the fifth and sixth episodes of Kill la Kill, fitting together nicely thematically as they do. These episodes see Ryuko starting to adjust to her unique life of going to school and getting into life-threatening duels in pursuit of her goal, and how getting too comfortable in the abilities she relies on can bite her, in turn forcing her to grow. Episode 4's very brief opening smackdown looks as sharp as ever, but the tone portrays Ryuko rescuing Mako from a trumped-up hostage situation as just business as usual now. It underscores the intensity of Ryuko's quest that seems to have receded at this point. Surely this is some battle-action situation of a show where she can just cruise through the ranks of enemies and rely on her friends believing in her and the resulting spiritual power-ups in lieu of any actual hard work and guts, right? This is where an outside element like Tsumugu steps in to prove her wrong.

It's not just that Tsumugu is seemingly equipped to hard-counter everything that's gotten Ryuko by at this point, it's also that he's fundamentally alien to the structures she's been fighting so far. He's not a member of the school she has to take down to reach her goal, he's targeting her because of his own prejudices. He doesn't use super-powered clothes to fight, so she can't get by just with her higher Life Fiber power-level. For the first time since that opening episode beatdown, we see Ryuko truly humbled, worried about what might happen if she can't beat this opponent. Ryuko hasn't won every fight until now, and for all the proof of friendship between her and Senketsu that gets Tsugumu to back off by the end of this one, she still handily walks away with a loss.

This episode and the next name Tsumugu and Aikuro's clothing antifa group as ‘Nudist Beach’, adding more conceptual fuel to the fanservice fire beyond what was discussed in the third episode. In a world where clothing is power, baring yourself is the ultimate anarchic expression, which itself can be read as another post-hoc symbolic justification for Ryuko's transformed look. But this episode and the next also bring to mind the idea of nudity as vulnerability, with Ryuko (who indeed even gets stripped of Senketsu during her defeat by Tsumugu) admitting her shortcomings and resolving to become stronger both times. It's a sharp contrast to fascist ideology, which cannot ever admit loss or failure, even when laid at its most bare.

That sentiment is key to differentiating Satsuki's exposure from Ryuko's, with the sixth episode putting her unflinching philosophy on display through her and her subordinates. The other Student Council members have slowly been stepping out of the shadows the past few episodes (well, aside from Gamagoori, who was right out front yelling from the beginning), with Nonon making a showing in the fifth, and this one focusing on Sanageyama specifically. There's still development for Ryuko here, showing again an arc of cocky confidence to humbling defeat, but it's very nicely framed in this tidy parable about Sanageyama. You know his type: Hot-headed, loves fighting, voiced by Nobuyuki Hiyama. The straightforward stakes of his shonen-battle setup are an absolute delight if you're here for the old-school tropes it's all embodying. But as much as I'm a sucker for all that drama, it's primarily here to fuel the tonal twists this episode really relies on. Ryuko's finally getting to challenge a member of the Elite Four, they have a big battle, but then she winds up beating him barely halfway through the episode? Like Ryuko, Sanageyama is stripped at his humbling defeat, but his loyalty to Satsuki's power forces him to change simply to maintain that fealty.

Indeed, while that first half of the sixth episode is all good fun, the pointedly different vibe of the second half pushes it to pure poetry, or as close to it as a cartoon about a half-naked girl swordfighting a kendo mech-suit can be. It's Kill la Kill's symbolism at its most raw and blatant, as Sanageyama's transformed uniform is described as being one with him entirely now, surrendering himself fully to Satsuki's clothes-based power-structure. His blinded eyes are not just a concession to the over-reliance that led to his earlier defeat, they're a mark of his resolution to stop seeing things for himself in exchange for staying at his dear leader's side. This episode includes a formative flashback (in the brilliant 4:3 aspect ratio KLK uses for those) demonstrating how Satsuki won Sanageyama to her side previously by defeating him. Here she predicted his loss to Ryuko, and again used that defeat to manipulate his loyal strength for her own ends. It's power all the way down, but even that comes at a cost, as at the end of it all Sanageyama now finds no more joy in battle itself nor the rewards thereof. It paints a grim warning for Ryuko herself, in that she does have to overcome her own overconfidence (repeatedly) in pursuit of power to fulfill her goals, but in doing so may find herself losing the ability to be happy with her own success.

That's an extremely tight piece of story work in an episode that's just as great to watch as the previous one, and that's without even getting into the extraneous stuff it does. We also get indications that Satsuki hasn't mastered her Kamui on the same level as Ryuko has, but is hiding that fact, tying back to those humble thematics of baring it all. Episode 6 also briefly introduces Satsuki's mother Ragyo, but we'll have to get into her and her incredible theme song when they're a bit more important later in the series. Both these episodes showcase Kill la Kill at the best it's been since the third one. There are some stumbles, narratively, as there's an underlying plot in the fifth about Ryuko and Senketsu feuding that never quite bubbles to the top the way the thematics need it to, and Tsumugu's motivation of hating Kamui because his love interest was killed by one feels a bit throwaway in how it's deployed. But the stories here keep moving at such a clip and looking sharp enough that you scarcely have time to want for those kinds of script tightenings. The writing doesn't need to be 100% when Kill la Kill is making its point by being evocative, and it's absolutely killing that here.

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Kill la Kill is currently streaming on Netflix, Crunchyroll, and Hulu.