Anime – Page 2 – Taylor Ramage (2025)

I’ve been busy over the last few months and that combined with writer’s block has made me ignore blogging for a while. To fix that, I’ve put together some light posts based on a 30 day anime challenge I came across a few months ago.

I won’t be posting every day. Heck no. But I feel like I need to have some new stuff going while I finish watching some series and write some of the deeper posts that I tend to do here.

So without further ado, here’s #1 on my list.

The very first anime I watched?Sailor Moon.

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I was in 3rd grade and I think the first episodes I saw were somewhere between the end of the Dark Kingdom arc and the start of the Doom Tree arc. It was the first thing I remember being obsessed with. I remember creating my own character with her own backstory and powers, the first time I’d ever responded like that to a cartoon. My favorite actual character, though, was Sailor Jupiter because she’s a brunette like me and isn’t super girly.

At some point, I acquired a Sailor Moon t-shirt with all the inner senshi on it, but I never wore it to school because I was afraid that people would make fun of me (hooray for internalized misogyny!). So, I’d come home from school every day, change into my t-shirt, and watch the episodes I’d recorded on videotapes. Sometimes, I got home early enough to watch Sailor Moon as it aired on Toonami. I was hooked and wanted all of my friends to watch it, but they weren’t quite as into the show as I was.

One day, I finally worked up the courage to wear my Sailor Moon shirt to school and hoped that no one would make fun of me for liking something so girly. By 3rd grade, I had already vehemently rejected skirts and dresses and wanted nothing to do with such “boring” things. For most of the day, people either said they liked my shirt or didn’t say anything at all. I remember one girl came up to me and we had some conversation about if Sailor Saturn existed (S had not yet aired in the U.S.).

Then, at after school daycare, a boy who found confidence in hating everything saw my shirt and asked me why I was wearing it in his mopey, there’s-a-giant-stick-up-my-ass tone of voice.

“Because Sailor Moon is cool.”

“Who’d want to watch Sailor Moon and her stupid Sailor Scouts?” he sneered.

That really hurt my feelings because I had been so afraid that someone at school would make fun of me and then it actually happened. I was not at all a confident child, so I had no snarky comeback. Instead, I left and sulked somewhere else.

Thankfully, I had a friend who either saw the whole thing or listened to me tell him about it and he (bless his heart) tried to make me feel better by saying that he thought Sailor Moon was really cool. We played together for the rest of the day, but even so, I never wore my Sailor Moon shirt to school again.

After that, my interest in Sailor Moon waned as I moved on to Pokemon and Thundercats. But it came back with a vengeance in6thgrade when what started as an inside joke between my friend and I about “that stupid show Sailor Moon” became a legitimate obsession, especially when we discovered the uncut Japanese version.

That, my friends, is how I became anime trash.

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For the next year and a half, I downloaded and watched all 200 episodes and most of the OVAs and movies (I never saw the Stars movie). My friend bought the manga and I’d borrow the volumes from her. I read through every Sailor Moon website on the Internet, saved every gif and picture, and generally filled my head with as much Sailor Moon knowledge as possible. I wrote fanfiction and original fiction that heavily borrowed from Sailor Moon (which I thankfully never put on the Internet).

I also became a Christian around the same time and got the first taste of my mother’s conservative concerns over my interests and the state of my soul. We had some unpleasant conversations, but they didn’t stop me from liking what I liked. I just learned to be more lowkey about it.

My dad had a more positive view of the whole thing. He saw that I was writing, drawing, learning how to use Windows Movie Maker (for AMVs of course), and attempting to learn Japanese, which, in his mind, were way better hobbies and interests than what other kids my age were getting into.

So, that’s how it all began. 3rd grade me caught Sailor Moon on TV one day and 7th grade me explored it in depth. Now, I’ve seen tons of anime series, been to several cons, cosplayed a bunch, made amazing friends, started this blog and have been interviewed for a Sailor Moon book due to release sometime next year.

Next post: Favorite anime you’ve watched so far. Just take a wild guess, but don’t cut yourself up about it if you’re wrong.

Today, I’m very pleased to welcome a guest post from R. I invited her to write a post after our discussion in the comments section of my Queer la Queer post. R highlightsKill la Kill’s trope play and Senketsu’s vitality to the entire plot. Thanks, R, for writing this!

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If I told you that I ever expected to become so endeared to a fictional talking shirt, well, I’d be lying.

No, I never expected much from Senketsu, best friend and battle partner ofKill la Kill’s protagonist Ryuko Matoi, but then, I never expected much fromKill la Killto begin with. My first experience watching it was right when episode four came out, and, butt pressed up against a friend’s blow-up Companion Cube, my buddies—already fans—decided to introduce the show to me before they watched the new episode. We watched one, and two… and then I told them to just skip to number four. The series wasn’t to my tastes; the comedy didn’t interest me, and it all felt “too anime.”

I can’t really tell you what exactly that means, but I can say thatKill la Killisn’t a particularly fresh or original example of Japanese animation. Watch any one of the “Making Documentary” pieces that were included with the special, Limited Edition releases of the series on Blu-ray, and a recurring theme you’ll get is that the whole show is something of a love letter to older anime from the Showa period. And indeed, one of my initial thoughts as I was thrown right into Mikisugi’s classroom in episode one was that this thing didn’t seem like a recent anime at all—it had this older look to it, and was a far cry from the ultra-shiny material I’m used to seeing from studios such as Kyoto Animation. And though it’s something that went completely over my head, this series is also absolutely filled to the brim with homages to anime of the past, which savvier fans than me have documented in the form of quite heftylists. Perhaps some of those examples are reading too much into it, but the fact remains thatKill la Killdoesn’t exist to be something totally new.Part Three of the “Making Documentary” has scriptwriter Kazuki Nakashima outright admitting that he “wrote cliché dialogue,” and that “part of the point ofKill la Killwas making clichés seem cool and interesting.” So, in one of the bluntest ways possible, we got Word of God telling us thatKill la Killdoesn’t set out to make something wholly original, but rather look at what already exists and what is already loved and utilize it in such a way that the audience gets something of a fresh experience using old and worn materials.

Transforming Clichés

One of the best ways to accomplish this task of “making clichés seem cool and interesting” is to take standard, beloved tropes and absolutely flip them on their heads.Kill la Killdoes this in some obvious ways, but the most blatant example is probably its relation toshounenanime.

Now, technically, the series is categorized asseinen—as in, for older male audiences as opposed to younger male audiences thatshounenaims for—but the Power of Friendship speeches and over-the-top fights give it a veryshounenfeel regardless. Yet, instead of being a male-focused anime as is standard forshounen, female characters fill almost all the main roles inKill la Kill, with the handful of males that are depicted serving as support characters for these female leads.

I say “almost all the main roles,” because just like in your typicalshounenfare,Kill la Killdoes include that one character of another gender whom proves to be very significant both to the protagonist and the plot. I’m talkingAttack on Titan’s Mikasa,Fullmetal Alchemist’s Winry,Detective Conan’s Ran,Yu Yu Hakusho’s Keiko,Ranma ½’s Akane,Rurouni Kenshin’s Kaoru, Anzu/Téa fromYu-Gi-Oh!… the list goes on and on.

And, well,Kill la Kill’svery own Senketsu has a gender identity that’s certainly up for interpretation, but considering how he’s coded as male in the show proper, it seems fitting to associate him with this role. In a female-dominated series that contrasts the male-dominated series that is characteristic ofshounen, Senketsu, despite (maybe) not being female himself, is arguably the second main character and of utmost importance to the plot. IfNakashima’s statement from Anime Expo 2014thatKill la Killis his attempt to “make a form of intimacy that transcends love and species” and is “about friendship” is anything to go by, there’s also the idea here that in many ways, Senketsu ratheristhe plot. After all, you can’t exactly have a story about “a form of intimacy transcending love and species” without that “other species” being present.

I focus this post on Senketsu because he’s one of the more interesting and complicated trope subversions thatKill la Killhas to offer in more ways than simply that, asKill la Killdoesn’t draw inspiration exclusively fromshounenanime.Taylor has already mentioned it, butKill la Killalso takes cues from elements more common inshoujoanime—namely, from the magical girl genre. Say what you will about TV Tropes, a website that has certainly received its fair share of criticism, but on the whole I find it useful for identifying patterns in fiction, and itspage on magical girldefinitely lends itself to some fascinatingKill la Killcomparisons.

Notably, consider what the site credits to have been pioneered byMajokko Meg-chan, a magical girl series from 1974 that allegedly “codified many of the tropes that would later become staples of the magical girl genre”:

Kill la Killhas all of this. Ryuko Matoi is certainly portrayed as tomboyish, Satsuki is her rival, Ragyo is a reallyevilcharacter, the fanservice is notorious and we have the Mankanshoku boys and dog as (supposedly)-lovable perverts, sexual abuse is present with Satsuki’s narrative, and Ryuko loses and faces humiliation, severe injuries, and shock. Combine all this with the magical transformation sequences that this genre is famous for, andKill la Killabsolutely feels pretty magical girl. And one thing magical girls tend to have is what TV Tropes has coined the“Mentor Mascot,”which, at first glance, Senketsu seems to be a perfect fit for.

Mentor Mascot: Wisdom in the Form of a Cute and Cuddly Companion

This “Mentor Mascot,” in simple terms, is the magical girl protagonist’s non-human sidekick, full of knowledge and wisdom to help her out on her journey and shape her into a great hero. Think Luna the talking cat fromSailor Moon, the stuffed animal-looking Kero fromCard Captor Sakura, Hippo the talking penguin fromMermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch, Jama-P the cute and cuddly reformed devil fromWedding Peach—you might even consider Kyubey fromPuella Magi Madoka Magicato be one of these, though he’s a famously villainous example who cares less about guiding the girls and more about accomplishing his own goals. Essentially, though, this character is a strange being who does not fit in with the “normal world” and who serves as the protagonist’s mentor and guide.Kill la Kill’s Senketsu, being a sentient school uniform, makes him look suspiciously like this trope immediately. Add in his attempts to coach Ryuko throughout the series and it’s almost blatantly obvious. Senketsu is Ryuko’s Mentor Mascot, ‘nough said. After all,he even won third place in theNewtypeAnime Awards 2014 under the “Best Mascot” category.

Except, ifKill la Killlikes to do anything, it likes to take these common tropes and twist them. A closer examination proves that Senketsu doesn’t really fit this character archetype at all, perhaps most obviously in regards to his huge significance to the plot, but more subtly too in his characterization.

Not What He Seems

While Mentor Mascots certainly tend to be valuable friends of the protagonist, they largely hang on the edge of the action. Luna is more a guide for the Sailor Senshi than a Sailor Senshi herself, just as Jama-P isn’t a Love Angel and Hippo is not a mermaid princess. These characters watch and listen and provide guidance, and this is typically the extent of their roles.Yet with Senketsu, such is hardly the case. He’s Ryuko’s constant battle partner, with whom she shares a bond that can easily be argued to form the crux of the entire story. A couple of interviews point to this, from Nakashima’s aforementioned statement at Anime Expo mentioning thatKill la Killwas trying to “make a form of intimacy that transcends love and species,” to Ami Koshimizu (Ryuko’s Japanese voice actress) commenting thatRyuko and Senketsu’s relationship being “like family, like friends, like lovers” is what she “[thinks] this wonderful work depicted.”

The Original Soundtrack, too, points this direction, with three of the six vocal songs included—“Before my body is dry,” “Till I Die,” and “Suck your blood”—focusing on their relationship. Notably, the show’s main theme is “Before my body is dry,” which is a duet between the two of them and the only duet included on the OST. No way would Luna get so many songs—andthemost crucial song—focusing on her relationship withSailor Moonprotagonist Usagi, and I could say the same for all the other Mentor Mascots I listed above.

But Senketsu does get this many songs focusing on his bond with Ryuko, because that—and he himself—are so crucial toKill la Killand its story. After all, while the series can certainly be said to be about a lot of things, it is very character-driven and its heart lies with Ryuko and her development. This development—and thus,Kill la Killitself—focuses around a young and lonely seventeen-year-old-girl discovering who she is and where she belongs. Ryuko does this through what she learns from battles with Satsuki and other obstacles that stand in her way, but most significantly, she does this through our veryshounentheme of friendship—namely, through Mako and Mako’s family, and through Senketsu.

Parental Substitute?

So, you might be thinking, if Ryuko’s development is accomplished so strongly through friendship, what makes her friendship with Senketsu stand out? The answer is a complicated one, and one that can begin by looking more closely at the Mentor Mascot archetype that Senketsu resembles.

Another noteworthy aspect of these characters is that they tend to be filled with wisdom. Mostly, they are older and more experienced than the protagonist and her friends, and in this sense, they may come off as rather parental. In terms ofKill la Kill, Ryuko’s strained relationship with her father—combined with Senketsu’s Mentor Mascot appearance and protective, know-it-all behavior in early episodes—creates a seemingly simple connection. Senketsu’s the father Ryuko always wanted, and he’s filled with all the wisdom and protectiveness that a father should have. Put simply, he’s the Mentor Mascot that doubles as a Parental Substitute.

Yet,Kill la Killis, once more, all about subverting clichés and common tropes, and a closer look reveals that this reading doesn’t fit Senketsu much at all. The idea of him having wisdom is thrown straight out the window as soon as episode 2 delves more into his first meeting with Ryuko, as it is revealed he’s lost his memory and is just as lost and clueless as she is. This also takes away the idea of him being experienced, as with no memory, he essentially has no life experience to speak of. We see here, then, that Ryuko hasn’t encountered some wise, experienced, older figure in her basement—as it would happen, we learn later that Senketsu is, at best, only months old, and that many of those months were spent unconscious. Rather than being some all-knowing adult, Senketsu is something of a blank slate, searching for himself and his place in the world just as Ryuko is.Taylor has already mentioned this idea of magical girls gaining their powers through a process of being tossed into situations where they don’t know what’s happening and have no control, and indeed, this does happen to an extent inKill la Kill. Destiny and the red strings of fate are a huge recurring theme across the series, found obviously with the red, string-like Life Fibers and dialogue that is rife with references to being born solely for the sake of fulfilling a particular purpose, and Ryuko herself is certainly shoved into a “saving the world” narrative due to who she is and what was unjustly done to her.

However, contrary to the typical Mentor Mascot trope, Senketsu is not the one who pushes this upon Ryuko. Senketsu is, in fact,notthe one that gives Ryuko her powers exactly, as it’s not of his own accord that they meet. Against expectations, it’s Aikuro Mikisugi who notes both in episode 3 and the episode 25 OVA (as well as the series overview entitled “Naked Memories” which he narrates) thathe’sthe one who brought Ryuko and Senketsu together. Aikuro, too, proves to be much more fitting as a mentor character, given that he’s the one who provides all the info dumps about what’s going on rather than Senketsu.

Of course, to address the elephant in the room, Ryuko and Senketsu’s first meeting is not pretty. I could write extensively about how its execution is in incredibly poor taste, but for my purposes here, let me focus in on the concept of control. As is typical of magical girls, Ryuko has no control in her initial scene with Senketsu. And yet, atypically of magical girl, Senketsu has no control over what’s happening either. Starving and being created from monstrous Life Fibers that view humans only as food, Senketsu loses himself to his primal urges and hurts Ryuko, similarly to what happens in episode 12 when Ryuko goes berserk upon learning that Nui Harime is her father’s killer and her anger is so great that Senketsu cannot hold himself together.

We learn in that second example that Senketsu is so hurt by his loss of control that he cries, something that is unfortunately not expanded upon in regards to his first scene. Still, the character we see once Ryuko’s actually wearing him for the first time—and the character we see all throughout the rest of the series, who is very kind and respectful towards Ryuko—is such a stark contrast to this abrasive, aggressivethingpresent in Senketsu’s introduction that the only justifiable explanation is that he’s not himself and out of control. (Not that this makes hisactionsjustifiable, mind you. It’s still wholly awful.)

In the end, we are left not with a mentor who knows everything and who pushes Ryuko into a role because he knows it’s her destiny, but rather someone who has also been thrown into some great plan and is just as puzzled by it as our protagonist. Senketsu didn’t choose this just as Ryuko didn’t, and he can offer her no answers—only more questions. In this way, they are not playing the roles of mentor and pupil, but rather sharing a role as “because-destiny-says-so” heroes, a concept that only becomes clearer as the show progresses. As Ryuko and Senketsu learn more about themselves and each other, they discover that they were both created as weapons by Ryuko’s father and are essentially one in the same as a result, both being “human and clothing” and “neither human nor clothing” at the same time.

This all has the effect of making Senketsu entirely unlike a mentor in that he’s not above Ryuko in any sense. He’s also searching for answers, and is mentioned time and time again to be Ryuko’s equal and partner, from Mako saying in episode 24 that “neither one of them is the boss of the other! They’re the best match of people and clothes ever!,” to Ryuko herself noting that she and Senketsu are “two in one” in episode 15. Rather than be the one to provide Ryuko with the wisdom and guidance of a parent, Senketsu is her kindred spirit who learns and grows with her, ultimately establishing a level of mutual understanding between the two that Ryuko shares with no other.

Growth and Development

Ryuko and Senketsu’s very prevalent status as equals not only makes the Parental Substitute reading for Senketsu’s character seem ill-fitting, but it also creates someone Ryuko can so easily bond and connect with. There’s a reason Ami Koshimizu and Kazuki Nakashima and the OST and thefinal volume coverand the last moments of the last episodes all emphasize this relationship above all others inKill la Kill, and that’s because Senketsu’s character arc and development are so intrinsically tied to Ryuko’s that it makes up a hefty portion of the plot.And thewhyfor this goes hand in hand with Senketsu’s characterization.Kill la Kill’s huge story element that focuses on Ryuko and Senketsu evolving together as equal partners would never work had Senketsu already been wise and experienced and a mentor to Ryuko. That’s not to say he doesn’t have a know-it-all attitude at times—he most certainly does—yet, this behavior isn’t coming from a place of any experience, but rather from something very mechanical: his “programming.” Designed as Ryuko’s combat uniform and support, early episodes have him simply go through the motions, warning and advising Ryuko very robotically and dispassionately. This drastically changes as the series continues, however. As Senketsu learns more and more about the human world and his own emotions, he often melts into a crying mess, overwhelmed by his feelings.

If I’ve gathered anything fromshounenanime, it’s the power of friendship.Kill la Killis the story of Ryuko’s growth and development, but it’s not a journey she’s taking by herself. Senketsu, too, is figuring out who he is and where he belongs just as she is, and he has one of the most compelling character arcs of anyone in the series.Just as Ryuko, Senketsu’s character begins in the same place: confused and alone. Essentially nothing more than a lost robot at first, Senketsu learns quickly that talking sailor uniforms don’t have much of a place in the world. No one can hear him save for Ryuko, so his entire existence as an autonomous being is mocked and ridiculed. When this is combined with the knowledge that the Life Fibers he was created from are monstrous and parasitic, it only makes sense that Senketsu develops into a character who constantly dismisses his own significance. Come episode 5, he certainly knows and understands love and emotions—after all, how could you describe his self-sacrificing displays of devotion towards Ryuko as anything but?—yet he finds himself unworthy of such things. In his mind, he’s important to Ryuko purely because he’s her only outfit, and her sentiment that he’s herfriendis one that comes as a great shock. Even later in the series he’s shown to be overwhelmed by this concept, hence his repeated bursts of emotion whenever Ryuko reminds him just how important he is to her. In the end, through being with Ryuko and acting as her partner, he discovers who he is and gains a sense of self-worth. Fighting the final confrontation against Ragyo in the show’s climax, both he and Ryuko proudly scream to the stars that they’re not human and not clothing, yetarebothhuman and clothing, are everything.

And it’s the whole of the show and the nature of their characters that allow them to reach such a point of shared character development and power. They begin a bit strained, sure, but Ryuko easily connects to Senketsu right away due to their mutual desire for answers. Though initially shy and bashful around Mako’s family, Ryuko is not so when it comes to Senketsu, openly trying to reach out to him the first night they spend together. Episode after episode, fight after fight, they grow closer as they learn more about one another and more about themselves. Indeed, Senketsu is the one Ryuko confides in the most—seen perhaps most obviously when she openly discusses her fears with him in episodes 13 and 17—and entire episodes (5) and episode arcs (the Naturals Election arc of episodes 9-11, and I’d also make a case for the Raid Trip arc in episodes 13-15) are dedicated to this depiction of their evolution.

Ryuko finds comfort in Senketsu not for his wisdom per se, but because he’s someone just like her who is also learning, growing, and discovering who he is. Had Senketsu been the typical Mentor Mascot he appears to be, so much of this story would simply not exist.

Seriously?

I mentioned in the beginning of this long thing that I didn’t care at all forKill la Killwhen I first watched it, and it’s true—I really, honestly didn’t. It was crude and unfunny, and the plot didn’t seem like it was going anywhere. (In retrospect, I find it a real shame I skipped over episode 3 upon my first exposure to the show.)

But then I was cajoled into watching episode 5, and my interest was piqued. Here we had a character I never expected much of anything from proving himself not to be just an irritating Navi rip-off with hardly more significance to the plot than to give Ryuko superpowers. He wasn’t merely a weapon or a know-it-all sidekick, but a vital character whose devotion to the protagonist helped create one of the most intense and emotional scenesKill la Killhas to offer. With Ryuko’s life in danger, Senketsu leaps to defend her, telling her to get away, to run as he distracts the enemy. But Ryuko couldn’t go, and neither could I.

I’d never seen anything quite like it. This was not the role I ever expected a cutesy, non-human character to play. This was like theshounencharacter I mentionedearlier—butin a form I never would have expected them in. The whole idea of a cutesy, non-human character playing out this huge, intense role felt strangely different, unique, and enticing. And, long story short, I quickly became one of the biggest fans ofKill la Killafterwards.

And with all I’ve written here about Senketsu’s character, it’s probably expected that I’d be irritated with the show’s ending. After all this time dedicated to showing that Senketsu is vital and important to the plot—that he’s an equal to Ryuko and one of her very best friends—doesn’t it just boggle the mind that he’s killed off spouting out that he’s nothing more than a sailor uniform that Ryuko must leave behind? It goes absolutely against everything else the series has been saying, and his “growing up” sentiment ignores the fact that he grew up just as much (if not more) than Ryuko did herself.

But this ending is actually very complex and meta. It doesn’t matter how great or compelling a character Senketsu is. It doesn’t matter that his arc about overcoming prejudice and learning to find a sense of self-worth as he grows up is so hard-hitting, and it doesn’t matter that Ryuko considers him to be the very same as her. At the end of the day, Ryuko looks like a human girl, and Senketsu looks like a talking shirt. You can’t take a talking shirt seriously—it’s ridiculous and silly. Childish, even. And just as so many coming-of-age stories end with the magic and silliness vanishing—from Ed losing his alchemy come the finale ofFullmetal Alchemistto Daisuke of the magical boy animeD.N. Angellosing his mystical alter ego upon the conclusion of his story—Ryuko must too lose the silliness and magic of her sentient school uniform who understood her better than anyone. Whatever Senketsu accomplished, he can’t escape his role as the seeming Mentor Mascot. To conclude any other way would be too absurd, even for this show.

I’m kidding.

But I do struggle to grapple with such an ending to Ryuko and Senketsu’s story. In a series all about defying fate and destiny and which prides itself on its twisting of classic tropes, to play the “Mentor Must Die” concept so straight—and when it’s completely unfitting—is absolutely baffling. Worse still, it’s outright disrespectful, happening mere minutes before the show ends, with hardly any time at all dedicated to Ryuko coping with the loss.

The OVA, too, which was rife with possibilities to wrap up this story tastefully, utterly squanders its potential. Though there’s a profound message here about moving on from the death of a loved one, we’re hardly presented with anything that would make such a message meaningful. Though this is a girl who considered Senketsu to be greater than a friend, who had arecurring nightmare about losing him, who put Senketsu above her initial—and extremely passionate—goal of learning about her father in order to protect and save him when he had been torn apart, who’s so overwhelmed by grief upon his death that she falls unconscious… there’s hardly more than a few glimpses of her mourning. How is the concept of “moving on” supposed to be impactful at all if we’re not seeing Ryuko struggle?

That’s not to say that Senketsu is completely dismissed, because with how both the main series and OVA end, there certainly is care given to the fact that Senketsu means a lot to Ryuko, and that their bond is important. Why else shove the two of them hugging on the last volume cover, after all?

The issue lies, then, inhowthis is done. Rather than be treated as a beloved friend, Senketsu is reduced to nothing more than an object. He’s the sailor uniform Ryuko cannot wear forever, the sailor uniform Ryuko is done with for good, the sailor uniform that’s gone and now Ryuko has to wear new clothes because he is. Not a friend and not a partner, Senketsu is watered down to what he looks like.

Had any other heroic character died instead, I cannot imagine such an insensitive response. Mako, Satsuki, Ryuko—even if Gamagoori had died in the finale as it (maybe almost) seemed like—we would see mourning. We would see characters coping with the loss, and the deceased would not be reduced to a symbol or an object, but treated with the respect deserved. Senketsu’s significance isn’t diminished per se with how his death is handled, but his humanity most certainly is—something that is both disappointing and aggravating, given that so much of his character arc is about his recognition that he, too, is human.

ButSeriously?

All I’ve rattled on about doesn’t change the fact that Senketsu is still a talking shirt, however, which is, undeniably, quite ridiculous and silly. Perhaps the fact of the matter is that there is no way to sensitively handle the death of such a character without being too corny, too much, and too impossible to take to heart.

Yet, a quick peek at fanart of Senketsu’s death shows—to me, at least—that such is not the case. It doesn’t matter that Senketsu’s a shirt; these pieces are beautiful and evocative. (Seriously.Takealook.) Similarly,Transistor, an indie video game that’s oft-compared toKill la Kill, also features the somewhat-silly concept of a talking sword, yet I never found anything ridiculous about the story this game was trying to tell, and I especially didn’t take the sword/human relationship that forms such a huge aspect of the plot this way. (And its ending tore me apart.)

Maybe it’s all a matter of tone, and maybe that tone’s notKill la Kill. MaybeKill la Killwastoo exhaustingand theteam simply didn’t want to edit an ending thatallegedly was already decided early in development. Maybe a talking uniform reallyisjust too silly.

Maybe,as P!nk would say, I think I maybe think too much.

Anime – Page 2 – Taylor Ramage (15)

I enjoyed Gurren Lagann; I really did. It doesn’t replace Kill la Killin my heart, but as I’ve mentioned before, I haven’t responded to an anime the way I’ve responded to Kill la Kill. I guess it’s just the kind of story that happened to hit me at the right time in my life. But while it’s my easy pick over Gurren Lagann, that doesn’t mean that Gurren Lagann is an insubstantial story.

However, there are things in Gurren Lagann that brought me very, very close to dropping the show. In fact, I had a similar experience watching Kill la Kill’s earlier episodes for the first time, but I stuck with it because at the end of the day, I just vastly enjoy shows with predominantly female casts. Yet while I can point to plot and thematic reasons for nudity/fanservice in Kill la Kill,I can’t say the same for its appearance in Gurren Lagann. Episode 6 is off-putting enough, the uncensored version even more so. Yoko is a shoddy token female figure for much of the series and is often the object of Kamina’s (and every other straight man’s) ogling. She deserves better, though she does get some good character development in the second arc. Still, it’s ironic how much the men objectify her and yet when Leeron flirts with one of them (i.e., treats them the same way they treat Yoko), they threaten to kill him.

All of this is to say that in its early episodes, Gurren Lagann presents a toxic, immature model of masculinity, chiefly expressed in Kamina, the self-proclaimed paragon of masculinity. While Kamina is like a philosopher in some ways, he’s still very much a product of living under a rock his whole life. We learn from the start that his father was his hero and the person who took him up to the surface to begin with. However, Kamina doesn’t grow up with his father’s presence in his life, only memories and ideals. So, hehas to invent his own perception of manliness and strive to achieve it. This is a rash, boisterous, yet surprisingly effective worldview that takes Kamina and Team Gurren much, much farther that anyone expects. The problem with Kamina’s understanding of masculinity is not that it’s completely trash, but that it’s not refined or matured, and he never has a chance to grow up like the rest of the characters do.

His dedication to making the impossible possible, to fighting with all your strength and building a future for humanity, and pushing back against any huge, bullying forces (Lord Genome) are all noble ideals that Kamina ties into his masculinity. He also highly values his brotherly bond with Simon, but as a consequence often pushes his approaches onto Simon, who is much more tempered than Kamina. Still, his ideas of masculinity are powerful enough to translate into actual power. The “manly combining” with Simon, creating Gurren Lagann, is a clear manifestation of moving even further in this direction of masculinity to become more powerful. This type of transformation is similar to what I’ve noted before about magical girls gaining more power as they become more feminine. Kill la Kill has its own moment of “sisterly combining” in which Ryuko and Satsuki transform together into their more “feminine” kamui. On some level, both shows are playing with this idea of gaining world-changing power through stepping into some version of gendered strength.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOTlJRcNS_g

Yet Kamina is a parody of masculinity. That’s one of the reasons why his masculinity is so immature and why Simon is the one who actually refines it by the end of the series. Most audiences laugh at his ridiculous declarations, but they’re also inspired. Kamina’s rhetoric is powerful and it becomes even more powerful after his death. His words come to mean everything that Team Gurren fights for and believes in, but Simon quickly realizes that he can never be Kamina. He can never have that kind of masculinity or that kind of general spirit that Kamina had. Rather, Simon uses what Kamina tried bestowing onto him as a starting point to find his own way and unlike Kamina, Simon actually gets to grow up. He becomes the Supreme Commander and takes humanity to the stars to fight for freedom. In the last few episodes, he bears Kamina’s likeness, but he is more realized than Kamina got to be. Simon doesn’t make grand assertions about masculinity nor does he ogle the women around him or feel so threatened by Leeron’s very different presentation of masculinity (a queer, gender non-conforming one) that he says he’ll kill him. He also isn’t as reckless or brash as Kamina was. All of these are ways in which Simon has taken Kamina’s legacy and made it into something mature that can actually sustain humanity.

So, just as Gurren Lagann’s characters grow up, so does its presentation of masculinity. It begins as something powerful and inspiring, but immature and toxic. Then, it’s refined into something strong enough to rip a hole in the universe without destroying the entire human race through Simon’s coming of age and his tendency to read a situation before jumping right into the fray. As much as Simon wears a Kamina mask by the end of the series, he ultimately takes Kamina’s ideals to the next level, and that next level doesn’t require constant declaration or affirmations of masculinity. Not even Kittan, Kamina 2.0, gets to this point and dies in a blaze of glory.

In a series riddled with a lot of anime “standard fare,” this development of masculinity as a concept ties in neatly with the general themes of not just growing up, but growing beyond. The characters go from living under a rock (literally) to reshaping the universe and accomplishing such a feat requires, among other things, a masculinity that takes what Kamina started and tempers it into something that runs on more than just pure adrenaline.

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How could I invest so much time and energy analyzing Kill la Kill without watching its predecessor? Though I didn’t react as heavily to Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann as I did to Kill la Kill, I still have plenty to say about the series. One of those things is its Platonism.

At the start of the show, people live day in and day out in the underground village of Giha, never wanting or dreaming of anything higher. Even Simon is perfectly content digging tunnels all day long. This way of life goes unchallenged and no one sees a reason why it should change, no one except Kamina, who has seen the surface and returned to the underground to convince everyone else to leave the village. Yet this is treated as nothing more than a ridiculous claim from an even more ridiculous man. The surface doesn’t exist and Kamina had better stop causing trouble and spouting nonsense.

This is more or less what happens in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, which describes people living underground, watching shadows pass by of people carrying statues and other objects. All they do is watch the shadows and think they’re observing the real objects, but one person breaks away and finds their way out of the cave. They reach the surface where they see the blinding sun for the first time and can’t even look directly at it. Their blindness doesn’t give them a very good impression of the surface, but they have seen it nonetheless. However, when they try to spread the news of this revelation, they’re met with scorn and disbelief.

I think the connection to Kamina is obvious. Kamina only has vague memories of the surface. He can’t describe or define what it really is, but he’s seen it and he knows that it exists. Knowing that there’s a completely different realm above his head, one where light comes from the actual sun rather that a pale imitation of fire, Kamina cannot rest until he reaches it again.

In Plato’s cave story, the person who breaks free and sees the surface is the philosopher, maybe Socrates, who is the gadfly of Athens and may or may not be a gigantic troll. He pokes holes in people’s understandings of piety, virtue, justice, and other intangible values, leaving them embarrassed or pissed off.

So, this would suggest that Kamina is the philosopher, which would then favor the reading of Socrates as a troll. Kamina is hardly the image of a wise, thoughtful person. If Kamina represents any kind of philosopher, it’s probably a post-post-post-post modern deconstructive type you’d find on the Internet. Then again, that’s assuming philosophy is totally serious to begin with.

“We didn’t ask what it seems like; we asked what it is.”

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Whatever the state of philosophy, Kamina nonetheless is determined to find real things. For him, Giha Village is a farce and he is certain that something truer and greater than its false reality exists. Delving a bit into obscurity for a moment, Kamina partially embodies the philosophy in mewithoutYou’s “The King Beetle on the Coconut Estate.”

In the hot spring episode, Kamina says to Simon, “Let’s go to the moon!” Simon then points to the moon’s reflection in the water and asks if this is what Kamina means, but Kamina emphatically denies that and points up to the actual moon. Not only is this foreshadowing events in Gurren Lagann’s second arc, but it also reveals how serious Kamina is about finding things that are true and real. Like the King Beetle, he’s not satisfied with what things seem like. He wants to see what things are, so he’s not satisfied with going to a mere reflection of the moon.

Kamina dies in this journey from what seems to what is, but not before influencing dozens of other people in his way of thinking. He dies without reaching his promised land, but knows that Simon will actually pierce the heavens. If Kamina is that philosopher in the Allegory of the Cave–Socrates–then Simon is his student Plato. Both Simon and Plato inherit their teachers’ philosophies and carry on their legacies. Though Socrates most likely existed, what we know of his views and writings may be heavily fantasized. He’s a bit mythologized, though his views clearly had a profound impact on his students. One can read Plato with the view that he’s simply putting on a Socrates mask to articulate his own views. Similarly, Kamina is mythologized and his legacy is intangible ideals manifested in Team Gurren. Simon spends a great deal of time figuring out who he is without Kamina, yet by the end of the series, he’s certainly wearing a “Kamina mask” in both his physical appearance and his drive to see the end of the Spiral/Anti-Spiral war.

Divine Illogic?

I’ll continue refining this concept moving forward, but I’ll admit that I actively looked for divine illogic in Gurren Lagann since I found it so readily in its successor. Though there’s certainly plenty of illogic to go around–the kind that does radically change the fate of humanity–it’s not closely linked with any characters or groups claiming or presenting themselves as divine. In fact, this series seems to present the divine as false and illogic as the awakening force to a truth that doesn’t seem to involve any sort of spirituality. This is most obvious in Rossiu’s story, which involves learning that his patron god is just a gunman that he could theoretically pilot and then going up to the surface to live in a new reality where he abandons his faith. Much later, he returns to Adai village and has a resigned, peaceful conversation with the old chief. Rossiu tells him that their village’s holy book was most likely a practical joke since he couldn’t identify what language it was written in. “A joke? Our holy book was just nonsense?” says the priest. “So, I was preaching God’s word with someone’s practical joke in my hand?” Here, faith is nonsensical or illogical, but not in ways that change the world. “You learn that something you thought was a precious treasure was nothing but junk,” says Rossiu before he goes off to attempt suicide in atonement for his sins.

It’s a bleak picture, but also Socratic in the sense that Socrates/Plato challenged the gods and may not have put much stock in them. Socrates certainly got in trouble for allegedly swaying people away from the gods. There is something incomplete about living underground and worshipping an abandoned gunman that fell from the surface. As Simon’s drill keeps piercing through surfaces, literal and metaphorical, he and Team Gurren only find creatures no greater than themselves. Sure, the Anti-Spirals are formidable, but they have no divine mystery about them.

In the end, Team Gurren doesn’t reach Plato’s Heaven, but the story doesn’t focus on finding the true forms of any particular ideals. Rather, it’s about continuously striving to see the world as it is (which might be the same thing as finding true forms) while balancing the tendency to self-destruction that seems inherent in humanity.

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The last post in this series. Today’s theme:how KLK’s oppressive systems work and how they’re dismantled.

Kill la Kill presents a very overt metaphor for systematic privilege and disenfranchising. At its core is a dichotomy between nudity and clothing. Nudity represents total shame and disgrace while clothing affords socioecomonic standing and respect from others. This is particularly exaggerated at Hounnouji Academy and the surrounding town. A student’s performance at school earns them a certain uniform level. The higher the level, the more resources their entire family gets.

This is the kind of system that Satsuki runs. Though we learn later on in the series that she’s trying to build herself an army to stand against her mother, she still perpetuates systematic oppression in order to do so. Episode 4, “No-Late Day” especially highlights just how arbitrary the system is and how much it burdens those who aren’t among its privileged.

If you want a really simple, yet over-the-top systematic oppression 101 lesson, you can find it in this episode.

“No-Late Day” puts the entire well-being of the lowest sector of society (the no-star students) on the line by threatening them with expulsion if they do not complete a test with the deadliest, most ridiculous obstacles imaginable. Said test determines their standing in society and where they can live. There are literal barriers to education in the form of deadly spikes, traps, ramps, bombs, and other ridiculous things barring the students’ entry into Hounnouji Academy. As for everyone above the no-star level, they get a nice, cozy, armored bus ride up to the academy. Not only do these barriers only apply to the no-star students, but the rules of the game keep changing as they go along. In true Kill la Kill fashion, there are 1,000 checkpoints to get through before the no-stars “pass.” The one-stars are even given orders to “prevent them from reaching school with extreme prejudice.”

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By making this system so over-the-top, Kill la Kill presents some otherwise subtle issues in very obvious ways. It takes our discomfort with nudity and complex relationship with clothes and amplifies it into the foundation of the world’s social structure. Keeping people desiring clothing and fighting for better clothing makes it easier for Ragyo to achieve her objectives in the shadows. Of course, Hounnouji Academy needs to play up these extremes even more because of Satsuki’s true objective to rebel against her mother. “The power of my parents, of others, I will exploit everything to my ends!” she says. “But I am the one who uses it! I absorb all their power and make it my own!” When she makes this declaration (in middle school), she sees no other way to escape her mother’s abuse than to use those same methods.

Still, Satsuki plays the role of oppressor for the first half of the series. In a more sympathetic light, she’s a victim of the system made into an oppressor. While the latter may be the truest, her pride in her Hounnouji Academy/Town system isn’t something to brush off. She makes it clear in almost every episode that she has no regard for anyone who’s weak. However, Satsuki creates and maintains this system not for the sake of the system itself, but to destroy another system (her mother’s). This is why her own rules don’t apply to her–why things that should shame her and make her powerless (nudity) actually don’t. She is Lady Satsuki and she gets a free pass.

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Like her mother, Satsuki needs to create illusions to maintain her power. In episode 8, she holds an election to “restructure” her system. Those students who fight their way to the top can earn a coveted spot on the student council. Aptly dubbed “Naturals Election,” it promises a change of social standing at the cost of selfishness and destroying each other. Whoever is fit to be privileged will gain privilege, but it becomes clear that the whole struggle is just an illusion. The Elite Four go off on vacation while all the other students fight. None of them are truly in danger of losing their positions. They are Satsuki’s hand-picked inner circle, people whom she chose to give the most powerful goku uniforms besides the Kamui. In the end, the same people are still in power, but they keep it under the guise of a fair competition. The audience is meant to see through this and so does Ryuko, obviously, but as far as the rest of the students at Hounnouji Academy go, they likely see it as just.

Why does this system work? How are Satsuki and her mother able to create such arbitrary social structures without challenge? Ragyo provides a basic analysis in Kill la Kill’s infamous bath scene. This scene is important for a number of reasons. It’s a follow-up to the main villain’s delayed, but powerful introduction and it’s one of the first scenes that reveal Satsuki’s own powerlessness. Ragyo says:

“Humans are such frail things, aren’t they? When they become naked like this, they become so unbearably uncomfortable. They are immediately overcome with the desire to cover themselves in the miraculous thing that is clothing. That is instinct. A species that defies its instincts will eventually meet with extinction.”

Idiscussed beforehow Ragyo reinforces this idea with an appeal to Biblical texts (that she misappropriates), but her system, and subsequently Satsuki’s, works by manipulating a basic fear of or shame in nudity. Here, Ragyo tries to naturalize it by suggesting that not feeling discomfort in nudity or explicitly denying the inherent discomfort or shame is a fast track to death and destruction. Not only does she exaggerate the shame in nudity, but she makes that shame normal and acceptable. This fits with her larger agenda to make sure COVERS spread all over the world. Normal, upstanding, healthy people are ashamed of their nudity and will naturally wear clothes as a response. Ragyo ensures that those clothes are her company’s clothes, embedded with life fibers that will awaken and consume the entire human race.

Satsuki, who has declared that she will use her parents’ methods or any means necessary to achieve her goal, imitates this in her own microsystem of Hounnouji Academy/Town. To increase the value of clothing, she creates the goku uniforms, adds ranks to them, and attaches those ranks to an individual’s standard of living. Theoretically, it’s possible for someone to move up the ranks. Practically, it takes Satsuki’s blessing or a sheer disregard of the system altogether.

“Will they destroy this academy, or be assimilated into it?”–Satsuki

In episode 7, Satsuki temporarily grants her blessing to Mako and Ryuko in the formation of Fight Club. She lets it go on simply because she’s interested in seeing what comes of it. If she couldn’t reap any benefit, then this “exception” wouldn’t have occurred at all.

“More stars mean a better life,” Mako tells Ryuko in this episode, hinting not for the first time at how desperate her situation really is. Her family lives in a cramped house in a dumpy neighborhood because Mako is a terrible student and therefore doesn’t have a goku uniform. Her lack of a powerful uniform translates into a lack of socioeconomic power which keeps her family more concerned with just getting by than critically thinking about the system that rules them.

However, everything changes when Fight Club attacks. Mako and Ryuko form this club as a response to Satsuki’s command for all club presidents to fight Ryuko. Since Ryuko is too busy fighting to manage the club, all of those responsibilities fall to Mako. Of course, to become an “official club”–to start gaining power and privileges in this society–Mako must fill out an ungodly amount of paperwork and constantly prove the club’s legitimacy.

Yet Fight Club presses on and as its success continues, the Mankanshoku’s economic standing improves. In a matter of minutes, we see the family’s quick rise up the financial ladder and how much they lavish in their newfound riches and comfort. Now, they benefit from the system and have the security they’ve always wanted.

But something’s off and Ryuko is the first to notice it. The more material wealth the family gains, the more distant they are from each other. They forget where they came from and how they related to each other before they gained financial privilege. Ryuko misses the family dinners, crazy as they were, because she never had those connections growing up. Perhaps on a deeper level, this entire situation helps her understand that playing in Satsuki’s system doesn’t work. It’s not enough of a goal for Mako’s family to simply climb up the ladder. The ladder is useless in the first place and even if Fight Club persisted, Mako would probably never make it to three-star rank because Satsuki has an entirely different code for who gets to hold those positions, and it all has to do either with who impressed her in her childhood or who she felt had enough resolve to fight for her real objective. Though the rules of the system are simply that a better performance grants one a more powerful uniform, and therefore a better standard of living, those rules fall apart when you go higher up the ranks.

Mako’s not necessarily trying to get to the top rank. Her main concerns are first helping Ryuko fight all the other club presidents to meet Satsuki’s challenge and then, once her family secures financial wealth and stability, to preserve that position at all costs despite how it’s changed the dynamics of her family. Mako is desperate not to go back to being poor. As the episode reaches its climax, they all turn against Ryuko to protect their life of privilege and luxury. To make Mako even more reluctant to resist the game like Ryuko is doing, Satsuki gives her a two-star uniform. With that uniform, Mako has more power to protect her newly gained privilege and her drive to fight for it makes it clear how desperate her family’s normal situation is even though they put on all smiles.

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Satsuki puts a more pessimistic spin on it:

“Observe, Matoi! This is human nature in its purest form! Prosperity will lead to greed, and greed will lead to their eventual downfall! Once they have a taste of worldly pleasures, they’re enslaved by them forever! They’ve become slaves to this academy I have created! Truly they are pigs in human clothing! Pigs! Which must be tamed by force!”

So, Satsuki sets Mako against Ryuko, paralleling how oppressive systems always seek to make the oppressed fight among themselves. In response, Ryuko only defends herself and then she completely resigns, letting Mako beat her up until sundown.

Then, something clicks for Mako (it could be Ryuko’s cute smirk or something deeper) and she remembers what’s really important to her. She then willingly gives up her power and strips her uniform to let Ryuko destroy it, resulting in a nudity that subverts the values this system needs to thrive. It’s a slap in the face to everything Satsuki has built and maintained.

Nudist Beach: Reclaiming What is Shamed

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Nudist Beach is the only organized resistance against Hounnouji Academy and against the Kiryuin conglomerate. Of course, they are over-the-top with their ideology and methods. From their name to their methods, Nudist Beach exists as an extreme and for much of the series, they don’t come across as a very substantial threat to the established order. This is typical of radical groups. Nudist Beach’s ideology seems downright crazy, yet it’s a radical response to a radical power structure, and can be summarized in this quote from Marcella Althaus-Reid’s The Queer God: “We are proposing an end to the worship of clothes or, as in Klossowski’s novel, locations of power.”*

This is why Tsumugu believes so strongly that people and clothing can’t be friends, and why his first reaction is to resort to extreme measures to get rid of clothing. He saw Life Fibers–power–destroy his sister and he sees it destroying the rest of the world.

To combat this kind of destructive power, one has to deny their pleasures altogether and then seek to undo the rest of the world in that same fashion. This is Nudist Beach’s goal in reclaiming nudity and turning it into a place of power. We see this become a reality later on in the series when nearly every major character standing against Ragyo dons a Nudist Beach outfit.

As far as Nudist Beach is concerned, they can’t accomplish much byworking with the system other than spying on it, though they eventually recognize Ryuko’s role and nature as being in the system but not of it. They are not taken seriously because their starting point is so abnormal. Why take pride in nudity? Those who become naked in Kill la Kill tend to arrive in that state via a stripping of their power. Someone else takes their agency, their social position, etc. away from them and they quite literally have nothing left.

But what about those who choose nudity–who choose shame? By choosing it and being proud of it, clothing loses its power and threatens Hounnouji Academy and Ragyo. Mako resists like this as I described above. Ryuko and Satsuki accept this in how they wear their Kamui. Nudist Beach actively lives this and aims to get their message across in whatever way they can.

Don’t Lose Your Way (of Resistance)

Kill la Kill presents several different ways of resisting power structures. The most obvious is Ryuko’s way (amplified by a catchy, memetic theme song), which is a vocally non-compliant, non-hesitant challenge to every rule she encounters. Even her character design reflects her utter disregard for structure.** The more power she gains with Senketsu, the more asymmetrical her hair gets and the more jagged shapes appear on her outfit.

Nudist Beach’s way is an active and vocal resistance, though they have a sense of staying on the down-low and finding ways to sneak into the system without being noticed.

Satsuki’s way is subtler and she doesn’t reveal her true motives until the second arc. She tries to change the system from the inside, which is the whole purpose of Honnouji Academy. In doing so, she must pretend her allegiance is to her mother and later admits that perhaps this was not the best way to go about it. Comparing sister to sister for a moment, we get a clue about Satsuki’s subtle resistance via her gigantic, glorious eyebrows (and I’ve touched on thick eyebrows being signs of resistance). Though not as extreme in shape as various facets of Ryuko’s character design, these eyebrows stand out enough while not drawing too much unwanted attention, which is exactly the position Satsuki wants to play until she’s built up her army against her mother.

These ways of resistance work to varying degrees, but ultimately, all parties come together to bring down Ragyo and the Life Fibers for good. In the last few episodes, when all secrets are revealed and everyone’s on the same side, this theme of beauty in the illogical and indefinable surfaces, which is the mindset that ultimately tears down this structure.

The World is Not Cut From One Cloth

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In Satsuki’s apology, she admits that the means to her end were not the best. She sees Mako’s dedication to Ryuko, Ryuko’s dedication to Mako and Senketsu, and her own Elite Four’s dedication to her as something inexplicable, something that doesn’t make logical sense yet is nonetheless reality.

Social systems present themselves very logically. Dividing people into classes based on some easily measurable factor makes understanding others a much simpler task. Social systems present acceptable patterns of experiencing life. I discussed in another post how Ryuko’s blissful illusions while wearing Junketsu were an example of this logical system. Heteronormativity is the vision where she has no sense of her real self while queerness is her reality. Her reality is illogical because it exists outside of a prescribed pattern of life that, because it’s accepted as the norm, doesn’t often lend itself to challenging systems.

Mako’s willing act of stripping her two-star uniform and asking Ryuko to destroy it is illogical given the world that she lives in. Satsuki’s seizing of power to ultimately destroy that power is illogical. Ryuko’s desperate tearing away from Junketsu’s power, resulting in her nudity, is illogical. Nudity itself is illogical. The power that all the characters gain from being unexplainably dedicated to each other is illogical–think of how Mako powers that giant ship just on her determination to reach Ryuko. When this kind of love is present, no harmful, oppressive system can stand in the way because its logic cannot win.

All of these illogical things come together in the end to render Ragyo and the Life Fibers powerless. Ryuko and Senketsu, as the embodiment of humanity and Life Fibers while also saying that they are neither, take all of this illogic upon themselves (in the form of Ryuko wearing everyone’s goku uniforms), and fly up into space to confront Ragyo one last time. All she needs to do is command that the Life Fibers release humanity and they do so, resulting in everyone’s nudity. This time, however, the nudity is freedom from all-consuming power and again, this doesn’t seem like a logically desirable thing on the surface, but it’s how the threat of Life Fibers ends.

So then, what does the world look like in this eschaton–this ending of one era and stepping into a more perfect one? What’s left when the structure is dismantled and everyone is freed from its grips?

A World Without Life Fibers

Kill la Killends not with Ryuko violently killing Ragyo for good as we would expect, but with Ragyo pulling out her heart and killing herself. It’s her final act of stubbornness and an attempt to not totally submit to Ryuko. Still, Ragyo’s demise means the end of her system and is a rather strong metaphor for what must ultimately happen for oppressive systems to end: the perpetuators must purge their own selves. The oppressed can fight and fight for their entire lives, but they are still not the ones who created the system in the first place and the system can keep going so long as those with power and privilege don’t yank those actions and mindsets out of themselves and squeeze them to death.

The very end of the series and the OVA present this theme of growing up–growing up from wearing sailor uniforms (as Senkentsu prompts Ryuko to do upon his death), graduating, and growing up from the effects of Ragyo’s oppression. In the final minutes of the series, we see Ryuko and Mako heading off to a different school in a different town while the mess of Hounnouji Town is repaired. With no more Life Fibers to worry about, they’ll lead a normal life. Satsuki’s class has graduated, Honnouji Academy has closed, and things seem to be peaceful.

Yet the OVA is a reminder that the past doesn’t always stay in the past. Even when a major oppressive system ends, its shadows remain and the fighters, like Satsuki, feel that absence of the fighting spirit that defined them for so long. The OVA is an example of living in an already/not yet state. Already, the world has been freed, but it’s not yet perfect. No doubt the shadows of this Life Fiber social structure will linger and the characters will have to face it again in some other form. At the very least, Satsuki and Ryuko will come to terms with the abuse they experienced and will actually have the time to deal with the complicated psychological stuff going on inside of them now that they don’t have to fight anymore.

But there’s hope because the fact remains that they changed the world and stopped something truly terrible from happening. In this sense, they all brought everything one step closer to perfection, some illogical, unidentifiable thing that, in Satsuki’s words, make this world beautiful.

So there it is, all my main reactions toKill la Kill. This blog post series is over now, but I could find something to expand upon after a rewatch. Thanks to everyone who has read and commented! I’d especially like to thank my friends Kit and Becky who have put up with me reading way, way too much into this wonderful series for the past few months.

*This random quote inclusion is dedicated to my friend Kit, who said she had never seen such an accurate summary ofKill la Kill.

**This idea is also dedicated to Kit, who, like Ryuko, has no regard for structure.

Part 3 of myKill la Kill series. Today’s theme: Religion coopted into an oppressive force, blood covenants, crucifixions, and atonements.

Now is the part where I get all Christiany. I’ve briefly mentioned before that Kill la Kill presents a dichotomy in which clothing is power while and nudity is shame. This divide is the foundation of the social structure in which Hounnouji Academy operates. Clothing is associated with power (physical, mental, and socioeconomic) while nudity is associated with shame, disgrace, and powerlessness (all of which is reclaimed and subverted as the series continues). This is the kind of world that Kiryuin Ragyo wants to build and maintain. One way that Ragyo supports this system is through what I am calling a misappropriation of the Genesis 3 story, which describes the fall of humanity.

Ragyo alludes to this in one of her first major speeches of the series.

Ragyo: I put this question to you, gentlemen, what is clothing?

Mass of corporate clones: Clothing is sin! Man’s original sin!

Ragyo: Indeed. Clothing is sin. When man ate the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, he became ashamed of his nakedness and covered his nethers with fig leaves. From the time humanity first gained free will as human beings, it has been his fate to cover his body in the clothing called sin. Clothing made by REVOCS is sold in 90% of the world’s countries and control an overwhelming share of the market. Why is that? Because we alone know man’s sin and create clothing for clothing’s sake! I put the question to you again! What is clothing?!

There’s a lot going on here, but before I dive in, I have to note that some of the language I’m going to discuss in the series may come from “best guesses” in terms of translations–in other words, many parts of Kill la Kill use language that signal something religious (specifically Judeo-Christian) to me, but since Christianity in Japan doesn’t seem to be much more than something exotic/cool to use in stories, it could be the case that some words/ideas were translated into English to use Western religious language so Western audiences get the basic idea. I can’t tell because I’m not an expert in Japanese. So, I proceed with this caveat made–that the theology I’m finding in Kill la Kill is not concrete or absolute and was likely not intended to be as deep as I’m going to make it out to be.

But that’s what’s fun about analysis.

Ragyo the Religious Misappropriator

At her core, Ragyo is a villain whose form of evil is taking things that are not meant to be evil or abusive and making them so. She misappropriates sex, motherhood, clothing, theology, and queerness by tying all of them to power and oppression. She can be boiled down to an evil capitalist or a twisted clown (and by extension, a misappropriator of childhood joys).

So, in her speech above, she’s twisting a few things to fit her/the Life Fibers’ agenda. She connects clothing to original sin and understands the existence of clothing as a consequence of Adam and Eve a) becoming aware of their own nudity and b) being ashamed of it. Clothing is a reminder or sign of original sin, but Ragyo’s wording here (or the translation of it) may also suggest the general sin that humanity hascovered ourselves with since the original fall. Ragyo’s version of the story suggests that nakedness is the original sin and that nudity is inherently shameful. This is a common misunderstanding of the text–some even say that sex is the original sin, which inaccurately equates nudity with sex. Genesis 2:24-25 says, “Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed” (NRSV). Combined, these verses can suggest that a) sex is healthy and natural and b) nudity is not inherently shameful and Adam and Eve were aware of their own nudity before either of them ate of the tree.

The original sin is basically the act of eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. There are thousands of ways to unpack that, but some understandings are that they aspired to be like God and have God’s knowledge before they were mature enough to handle it, or that they didn’t trust God enough. Whatever the interpretation, committing this original sin–gaining the knowledge of good and evil (whatever that may mean)–is what causes Adam and Eve to feel shame in their nudity. Christian Naturismmakes some interesting points about the acceptability of nudity specifically among Christians that fit comfortably with Nudist Beach’s view on clothing and their dedication to deny the shame in nudity to destroy the Kiryuin’s social structure.

Ragyo needs the world to believe that there is shame in nudity in order for her system to stay standing. This not only helps her sell more clothing and increase her wealth, but it also helps Satsuki impose a socioeconomic hierarchy on an entire town solely based on what type of clothing the school children have.

Ryuko: “There’s a pretty distinct gap between rich and poor.”

Mako: “Well, it’s a city ruled by Lady Satsuki. Top-tier students get put into the exclusive residential area. Lower-tier students like us get the slum.”

Ryuko: “Your position at school also determines where you live?”

Mako: “Yep! Pretty straight-forward, right?”

In the KLK universe, nudity is shameful and clothing alleviates that shame with power, but clothing (Life Fibers) has its own purposes for humanity: namely to use them for feeding and reproduction. Ragyo is the grand conductor for all of this and benefits greatly from tying clothing with social, political, economic, physical, and mental power. Shaming one state of human presentation (nudity, the natural state) pushes all of society to desire and need another state (clothed). Having this form of power is a sign of privilege and prosperity, which people will fight to protect (see the Mankanshoku family in episode 7). This sort of power feeds the oppressive system that Ragyo needs to accomplish her goals.

Ragyo subtly appeals to religious stories to support this world she has built. This is a practice we readily find in our own world. She twists it just enough to suit her needs (and conveniently leaves out the part where God gives Adam and Eve better clothing upon their expulsion) so that people are too busy trying to use clothing to survive rather than questioning the system at all. Only Nudist Beach (and likely Satsuki) has any clue about the Life Fibers’ true nature because they have radically resisted the fundamental framework of the social structure in which they find themselves.

On a minor note, Ragyo’s rainbow aesthetic could be read as a misappropriation of the rainbow God makes at the end of the Noah story as a sign of God’s covenant with him. What is meant to be a symbol of peace and never destroying againbecomes tied with destruction itself.

With the power of the Life Fibers, Ragyo builds a world where clothing becomes equivalent with access to resources and a higher quality of living. She spreads Life Fiber clothing all around the world via capitalism (her company REVOCS) and connects the need for clothing with a deep-seeded religious text that at the very least is familiar to most people around the world. At most, it’s authoritative. This connection not only compels people to buy and wear clothes, but it also gives them a taste of the power they can wield with clothing made of Life Fibers. If people want to wear clothes to preserve their social standing, then it’s much, much easier for the Life Fibers to feed once they’re awakened.

This is how Ragyo misuses theology (among other things) and why she needs to misuse it. She needs to find the most covert way possible to realize her vision of a silenced world made of one cloth. She needs to tap into very deep human needs and traditions toemphasize certain insecurities (nudity) andmake her entire system work. By incorporating religious ideas specifically, she can be understood as a personification of corrupt religion.

Kamui and Blood

One of the most powerful manifestations of Ragyo’s vision is the Kamui Junketsu. Junketsu is meant for Satsuki, although we learn later that she can’t wear it properly according to Ragyo. However, since Satsuki’s transformation is called “Life Fiber Override,” I think Satsuki is wearing it wrong on purpose, making its form on her match that of Senketsu on Ryuko so she can wield the power of a Kamui without it totally taking over her. When Ryuko wears Junketsu properly in episode 20, it’s covering most of her body and she has no control over herself. Satsuki may have some sense of this, which is why she exerts such extreme control over Junketsu from the start.

“Kamui” typically translates as “god,”although it’s rooted in Japanese mythology so I don’t think its use in Kill la Kill is invoking a Western understanding of God. I watched the Crunchyroll subtitles, which don’t translate “Kamui,” but I’ve seen clips of other subtitles that translate it as “Godrobe.” Translation nuances aside, it’s clear from the context of the show that the Kamui are otherworldly. With minimal understanding of how they work and where they come from, they could be interpreted as spiritual or divine because the power they hold is stronger than any human can fathom. They also relate to/connect with Ryuko and Satsuki in a spiritual way: blood covenants. This is made most explicit when Satsuki dons Junketsu for the first time. “Come, Junketsu,” she says. “This red blood is the eternal vow between you and I. The red thread of our covenant.” Again, this could be a case where the translation uses language that would be more familiar to Western audiences, but isn’t quite describing the religious context it’s coming from. Even so, blood oaths are a common spiritual element in many religions, so I think the Kamui are being equated to something spiritual.

The blood bond between the Kamui and their hosts maximizes both of their power. In this sense, it’s right to call it a covenant since both parties benefit and the bond is deep. Conversely, neither girl’s initial relationship with their Kamui is consensual. If Junketsu is anything like Senketsu, then he should be a conscious being, but he is either not sentient or Satsuki overpowers his will that much. She imposes the blood covenant onto him. Senketsu does this to Ryuko as well, though the full power of their covenant doesn’t manifest until she completely accepts it. This, however, can still be seen as a forced or coerced covenant and is not fully aligned with any Christian understanding of covenants (that I’m aware of).

If the blood that Kamui consume is a sign of a spiritual bond/contract, then Senketsu’s self-sacrifice in episode 21 (to save Mako from Junketsu!Ryuko) closely parallels a Christian understanding of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. When Senketsu sheds this covenant blood (spilled by an act of violence under oppression), Ryuko finally wakes up from Junketsu’s spell. She realizes that she is being controlled and she uses Senketsu’s gift to tear herself away from Junketsu. Blood washes over her as she’s restored to her own self, so this entire scene becomes a sort of atonement or salvation. Ryuko vows that she will always wear Senketsu, even though returning to reality means death to the ignorant bliss she lived in under Junketsu’s control. Salvation can entail recognizing that what seems happy and normal is just an illusion, and in a Christian context, it most definitely means that the life ahead is not guaranteed to be painless. Though it’s often a path of struggle, it’s also a path that ensures greater self-awareness, a greater ability to see oppression for what it is, and a promise that that oppression can be overcome.

Crosses Everywhere

Crosses appear in tons of anime, many times because they’re cool, and typically don’t represent anything too deeply religious. Kill la Kill goes over the top with the cross imagery, as with everything else, especially in the second half of the series.

There’s even a crucifixion scene.

I chalk the crosses up to two things: 1) the cool factor of using crosses/Christian imagery for funsies and 2) the fact that Hounnouji Academy’s crest is a cross and the whole school is actually Satsuki’s training ground to fight Ragyo. In this sense, Satsuki is reclaiming a religious symbol to fight against something that’s also using religion to achieve its goals.

The Crucifixion of Kiryuin Ragyo

I think it’s pretty obvious that this scene where Satsuki seems to kill Ragyo is meant to be a crucifixion. Ragyo is pinned on a cross-like structure and two barbs pierce her wrists. Ragyo is a symbol of an abusive, oppressive Church given the way she misappropriates theology for her own selfish purposes.

So, Satsuki killing her here is actually pretty powerful. Ragyo embodies so much systematic power that seeing Satsuki do this is liberating. Satsuki is both a perpetuator and a victim of her mother’s system and for her to bring an end to it specifically in a manner reflecting a significant religious event shows that oppression can be humiliated and killed. Christ’s crucifixion was meant to mock him and the power he claimed to have. In the Gospel of John, Jesus says, “It is finished” right before he dies and Satsuki says this same thing (in the Crunchyroll subtitles) when she delivers what she believes is the final blow to Ragyo. Furthermore, Ragyo is wearing clothes and clothing is power now made powerless in this moment.

However, even in crucifixion and her apparent demise, Ragyo is still a misappropriation of a Christ figure. Not only does she not actually die from this, but her “death” is not sacrificial and doesn’t really overturn anything since it’s not really her death. But again, all Ragyo needs is to look like Christ without truly being a representation of him. This ties into how she misuses the Genesis 3 story. She comes close enough to embodying religious truths and symbols to disguise all of her evil actions and ambitions with divinity.

The Crucifixion of Matoi Ryuko

Ryuko, too, experiences a sort of crucifixion, though it’s not quite as obvious as Ragyo’s. But while Ragyo’s crucifixion only mirror’s Christ’s in appearance, Ryuko’s is a little more closely aligned in significance. It has more of a story and ends with a mental resurrection. Ragyo’s crucifixion is one where power and control are put to death, but Ryuko’s is one where she is so severely stripped of control that she completely loses her sense of self.

It begins in episode 20 when Junketsu is first forced upon her. I discussed this part of the series through a queer theory lens in myfirst postand now I’m pointing out some Christian theological elements to it. I think episodes 20-21 introduce a lot of significant plot and character themes that can certainly be read in a hundred different ways.

Just as Ryuko is about to attack Nui (again), Junketsu appears (in a cross shape; fancy that).

Before she can even react, her arms are forced out to her sides and she’s pulled into the air.

And Junketsu is forced on her, resulting in the death of Ryuko’s own sense of herself. In this total powerlessness, Ragyo sexually abuses her and she goes on a rampage. The power of the kamui has completely overtaken her and while it feeds her illusions of happiness, her reality tries to break through to her. Specifically, it’s Senketsu’s sacrifice–his spilled blood, which is covenant blood, that awakens Ryuko and leads to this:

Complete nudity, Ryuko’s self brought back to life, and showers of that covenant blood washing over her. This atonement not only restores Ryuko to wholeness, but it also exemplifies the upturning of Ragyo’s social system. Nudity should be shameful, but here it isn’t because Ryuko is loudly and forcefully resisting the power of clothing–what wins in Ragyo’s system–and reclaiming nudity from shame and degradation.

Christ, too, was naked on the cross. His death was meant to be humiliating and final and take control away from him, but he resurrected, showing that oppressive systems do not win and that illogical events, such as rising from the dead, are catalysts for unraveling them.

I use a liberation theology approach here to talk about Christ’s death and resurrection simply because it’s a closer fit to what I see happening in Kill la Kill. As far as the individual salvation understanding goes, the closest hint is Senketsu standing in the line of fire to protect Mako when Ryuko attacks. However, I don’t think the personal sin and salvation interpretation is present in Kill la Kill. This doesn’t mean that the two concepts can’t fit together at all, just that Kill la Kill isn’t doing anything with the latter.

Ryuko isn’t a perfect metaphor for Christ. Her motivations are personal until she realizes that the fate of the entire world is at stake. She also readily resorts to violence and has no qualms killing anyone who stands in her way. Christ was angry and critical of his society, but he wasn’t violent. Also, at no point in the series is Ryuko framed as a sacrifice for anything, nor does she willingly go into something that she knows will kill her for the sake of the entire world. She may not have Christ’s attitude, but she certainly experiences some things that, in a way, align her with Christ.

Nudity and Clothing in Scripture

Besides Genesis 3 and Christ’s crucifixion, there are other instances in the Bible where nudity is tied with some sort of spiritual condition or is contrasted in some way with clothing. The Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) each contain a story in which Jesus heals a demon-possessed man and sends the demons (Legion) into a heard of swine. Mark and Luke both suggest that the man was naked while he was possessed. Mark 5:15 says “15 They came to Jesus and saw the demoniac sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, the very man who had had the legion; and they were afraid.” Luke is more overt: “27 As he stepped out on land, a man of the city who had demons met him. For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs.” It also later mentions that once the man was healed, he was “clothed and in his right mind.”

In this story, the man’s state of nudity is directly related to his possession, or his spiritual state. He is naked and isolated from society and overwhelmed with evil. His state is despicable, decrepit, and arguably shameful. This story would fit very easily into Ragyo’s framework of making a state of nudity something to avoid at all costs while making clothing signs of right-mindedness and power. There are even some loose ties between this story and Satsuki’s oft-repeated mantra “You pigs in human clothing.” Pigs were considered unclean animals for the Jewish people (based on the laws in Leviticus and Deuteronomy), so a story of demons being sent into a whole herd of them reinforces this idea. Though the man should not be defined by the demons, they were in him for so long that they could’ve just became who he was (in a sense) and Jesus casts out who he was into a bunch of pigs. And afterward, will the other villagers see him as anything more than that? Will he always be a man whose evil essence was cast into unclean animals? “You pigs in human clothing” comes off as derogatory and connotes uncleanliness/unworthiness. It most literally refers to how all of humanity becomes food for the Life Fibers, but Satsuki is always saying it with some more figurative meanings. Since she has been resisting her mother from the start, perhaps she understands that something about the people around her/below her needs to be cast out in order for all of them to truly fight for their freedom. This doesn’t mean that Satsuki is right or that her methods are justified, but this phrase of hers is certainly one of many examples of her balancing her resistance with making sure Ragyo doesn’t suspect her. So while the phrase sounds like something that perfectly fits Ragyo’s ideology, it could have other implications.

I don’t think Kill la Kill is really trying to overtly do anything with stories in the Bible aside from Genesis 3, so these connections I’m making here are really more the result of connotations.

Other parts of Scripture equate stripping clothing with reverence to God or being so filled with God’s spirit that they tear off their clothes.

Though the tearing of clothes is certainly a cultural thing, it’s clear that the Bible contains some important, complex relationships between clothing and nudity. If Ragyo wanted to, she could easily find more accounts from the Judeo-Christian tradition to further support her vision of the world.

Fully Clothing,Fully Human;Neither Clothing,Neither Human

One of Kill la Kill’s major plot twists is the revelation that Ryuko is made of Life Fibers, which explains why she stays alive when she should be dead, why she heals so quickly, and why she can sync perfectly with Senketsu. After first discovering this, Ryuko understands herself as neither human nor clothing and has an existential crisis. Yet later on when she and Senketsu are flying into space for their final confrontation with Ragyo, they both declare, “We are neither human nor clothing. But at the same time, we are both human and clothing! We are everything!” These illogical statements not only contribute to the overturning of Ragyo’s logical world, but they also parallel dominant theological understandings of Jesus: that he is both fully God and fully human. Jesus needs to be fully human to triumph where Adam failed and restore all of humanity to God. He needs to be fully God to actually not fail where every other human has. It’s a difficult concept to grasp and opens up a host of other questions because it’s illogical. The nature of Jesus and God goes beyond human logic, but we can sort of grasp what it means with our limited perception and understanding. Likewise, Ryuko and Senketu’s nature as fully clothing and fully human, but also neither clothing nor human, reaches beyond the limits of their world and the structures Ragyo has built.

Ryuko and Senketsu accept that they were born in a world where Life Fibers-clothing–would eventually rule. Though they were both created for this purpose, they fully deny it in their nature. Ryuko especially struggles with accepting that part of her identity is that which she’s been fighting against this entire time, but she comes out of that struggle knowing that her nature–who she is–is not what she was initially made for. She may be clothing, but she defies the seemingly inherent part of clothing that is parasitic and can be coopted for oppression because she is also human. Senketsu is also more than clothing as he has free will, empathy, and the same drive to preserve humanity that Ryuko does.

This is how they can simultaneously identify themselves as both and neither. They exist as a paradox, something unpredictable that cannot fit in the kind of world Ragyo wants. In Kill la Kill, this idea of illogical, crazy, and unpredictable people/plans foiling Ragyo’s objectives becomes a major theme in the later episodes. In the end, these things that don’t make sense triumph and humanity is freed from the Life Fibers. Ryuko and Senketsu need to exist outside of Ragyo’s framework for them to have any chance of defeating her.

Ryuko’s entire fight throughout the whole series, while rooted in personal revenge, becomes a fight to uproot a very messed up social system. In some ways, she’s not too dissimilar from Christ in that she’s a revolutionary and openly challenges the status quo without pulling her punches. There’s her dual nature as human and something more than human, as well as her blood covenant with Senketsu. Her father even acts as her John the Baptist. He’s eccentric and head-hunted by Ragyo, just as John the Baptist was a target for Herod Antipas. Most importantly, he prepares the way for the only one who can truly defeat the Life Fibers–the one who is fully life fiber and fully human.

Ryuko and Senketu’s true nature cannot be confined by the system of their world and that nature gives them the power to bring about the end of it–to remake a world without Ragyo and without Life Fibers, and take the first steps into a world where oppression is over.

Next week, the final post:Kill la Kyriarchy: Building and Destroying Power Structures

Part 2 of myKill la Kill series. Today’s theme: feminism, magical girls, and growing up.

The mahou shoujo genre of anime is among the more popular genres as it contains many classic series, old and new (Sailor Moon, Precure, Princess Tutu, Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne, Magic Knight Rayearth, and Puella Magi Madoka Magica to name a few). Sailor Moon really defined the genre for Western audiences and I’ve explored in the past how it directly ties femininity with power and why such ties are important. Furthermore, the magical girl story is the coming of age tale for girls. This post makes some excellent points about that.

Mahou shoujo stories are, at their core, expressions of what it’s like to grow up as a girl. Though it shares some of the same basic principles as the young boy’s coming of age story, as the post I linked above highlights, the act of existing and becoming a woman in this world is vastly different–and in many ways far more dangerous–than growing up and becoming a man. The magic of most magical girls sends a message that girls do have power and said power is found in the things they may use every day as expressions of their femininity (makeup, jewelry, and sailor fuku). Some mahou shoujo series are cheery and generally hopeful (Sailor Moon) while others are bleak and cynical (Madoka).

A magical girl series is not necessarily one with a sentai team who fights evil monsters, although that’s a common plot element in many stories. Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne and Princess Tutu feature magical girls who mostly act alone. They’re also not necessarily lighthearted, positive, or optimistic. Puella Magi Madoka Magica is a prime example of that.

The point is that I think the definition of mahou shoujo is much larger than just anything that that nods to Sailor Moon. I’ll call something mahou shoujo if it A) has a female protagonist who acquires/has magical powers, B) said powers are activated by a transformation, and/or C) said powers are bestowed upon the girl by something/someone that does not or should not logically exist in the real world (a talking cat, a talking Kyubey, a sentient school uniform).

Kill la Kill easily fits into the pattern of a magical girl show. Female protagonist (Ryuko) encounters a talking magical creature (Senketsu) that gives her super powers, which she can access via transformation (Life Fiber Synchronize).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M93xdABB2dw

Much of KLK’s plot is also very shonen: protagonist seeks revenge, gains amazing fighting power, becomes more and more godlike with each upgrade, engages in over-the-top fights with a million bosses, and has a (mostly) side-lined sidekick/cheerleader/love interest (yet I would not categorize Mako as poorly written or glossed over in any sense). As it’s an anime that references, parodies, exaggerates, and celebrates just about everything that came before it, I’m not surprised that the story crosses over several genres.

Transformations

Transformations are a huge part of magical girl stories, so I thought it’d be interesting to compare Kill la Kill’s transformations with those of other series. Though I didn’t find any shot-for-shot parallels, I did find that some transformations involve sexier outfits than others. This, of course, is very subjective, but here are some transformations I think result in a revealing/sexy outfit in the vein of Kill la Kill:

  • Sailor Starlights:
    • Specifically, Sailor Star Fighter and Sailor Star Maker’s second transformations cut to their breasts and lower waists, which happens for both Satsuki and Ryuko.
    • Really, every Sailor Moon transformation does this, but the Starlights also have the most revealing outfits.
  • Panty & Stocking:
    • Goes without saying–in my opinion, this is more overtly sexual than Kill la Kill.

On a different note, Jakuzure’s transformation (and her aesthetic in general) reminds me a lot of Sailor Chibi Moon’s.In a sense, Jakuzure is basically Chibi Moon on steroids.

Femininity and Power(?)

In my post about Sailor Moon and feminine feminism, I noted how Sailor Moon–and the magical girl genre in general–directly ties the power to save the universe and fight wars against aliens with typically feminine items (female school uniforms, jewelry, makeup, etc.). On one level, KLK does exactly this: the power comes from the Kamui, which are girls’ uniforms. When Ryuko and Satsuki transform, the Kamui take on an even more “feminine” form. Scanty outfits, with all the debate they bring, are by and large associated with femininity and women. So, on a surface level, as Ryuko’s outfit becomes more feminine via transformations, she gains more physical/magical power. The same goes for Satsuki.

Nudity in Kill la Kill is complex and exists for more than just the sake of nudity. At the start of the series, when the status quo is being laid out, nudity is associated with shame and weakness while clothing is associated with power. The status quo of KLK needs this dichotomy to achieve its goals and maintain the current oppressive social structure. Yet early on, we’re given hints of some people reclaiming nudity from shame and using it to actively resist Ragyo and the Life Fibers. I’ll come back to this in a later post, but one of the manifestations of this framework is within femininity and growing up as a girl, but it’s not always an empowering process.

First, there’s Senketsu’s rape/assault of Ryuko in the first episode. To call it anything less or dance around it with excuses would be disingenuous. Like many similar scenes at the start of other magical girl series where the heroine doesn’t understand what’s being presented to her (Usagi repeats what Luna says exactly without questioning why), Ryuko has no control over what’s happening to her and actively resists Senketsu to no avail. Even though the two end up building a genuine friendship and discover that they are essentially one in the same, that does not take away from this moment where Ryuko is made powerless by clothing. Specifically, a type of clothing that is often required for girls to wear to meet certain standards of acceptability. We see this highlighted later when Ryuko fights Gamagoori and he attempts to mold a transformed Ryuko into an ideal female student.

Women have a complex relationship with clothing thanks to how steeped the clothing made for us is in patriarchal culture. Countless of young girls, myself included, have struggled with clothing and self-esteem. We’re trained to think “I don’t fit into these clothes” rather than “these clothes don’t fit me.” We ask things like “Does this dress make me look fat?” as if fatness is bad and the dress has power over how the world perceives us. Girls are simultaneously hypersexualized and shamed from showing any bit of skin (look no further than the ridiculous suspensions of female students in public schools for what they’re wearing). At the end of it all, girls are steeped in a culture where clothes really do have power over us. Required uniforms and dress codes are ways that female bodies are controlled outside of our consent. Clothing (or lack thereof) is one of many things that become a powerful force for girls’ and women’s self-esteem.

I see this assault and Ryuko’s subsequent expressions of discomfort showing off her body as an exaggeration of this. It’s a simple, obvious, and shocking way to point out things that often take more critical thinking to realize. With Senketsu, Ryuko gets forced into both the required uniform/dress code aspect of girls’ experience with clothing and the over sexualized aspect that contributes to the shame of her own body while showing it off anyway. Ryuko says that she “hate[s] to get undressed in front of people” (episode 3). Senketsu’s most powerful form becomes more disturbing when Mikisugi suggets that his design is merely her father’s personal taste. At this point, it seems like the Kamui really just exist to appease the straight male gaze–can they really be considered empowering? That’s left for the audience to decide. However, the story does much more than shrug its shoulders and leave it at that. We learn much later that, since the Kamui are made of 100% Life Fibers, they had to be designed in such a way that the wearer can maintain control of themselves/their will. This meant minimizing the surface area that the clothing covers. The scanty Kamui have another purpose besides simply being sexy outfits. They come to embody the shame in nudity, the power in clothing, the power in reclaiming nudity from shame, and the idea of using an agent of oppression (Life Fibers) against oppression.

While Ryuko’s initial relationship with Senketsu is one in which she’s constantly ashamed and has no control over how she looks or how this is all happening to her, Satsuki’s relationship with Junketsu is one where she is constantly in control–the complete opposite of Ryuko. Junketsu, “purity,” is initially presented to Satsuki as her future wedding dress. However, she decides when she needs to take its power and she doesn’t let anyone stand in her way. She defies the orders of the male steward who is technically in charge of the Kiryuin household in her mother’s absence and begins changing her clothes without regard to hispresence. A blinding light appears in this particular instance of Satsuki’s nudity, which at this point emphasizes how high above she is from what she considers “the values of the masses.”

In her fight with Ryuko, Satsuki makes one of several dramatic, impressive speeches loaded with strong rhetoric. When Ryuko (weakly) mocks Satsuki in her “exhibitionist getup” (and is thereby perpetuating the internalized misogyny she has put herself through thus far), Satsuki declares, “This is the form in which a Kamui is able to unleash the most power! The fact that you’re embarrassed by the values of the masses only proves how small you are!” Satsuki has taken the male gaze and the shame in nudity and reduced them to values of those she dominates. As the person in power of Hounnouji Academy, she is far, far above anything that would be of major importance to the generic one-star students, including the objectification and criticism of a revealed, naked female body. By relegating male objectification to a “value of the masses” she is essentially diminishing and conquering a worldview meant to oppress her as a woman. For Satsuki, there is no shame in her own nudity despite the fact that in the culture she created/rules nudity is shame. This highlights how leaders of oppressive structures are able to conduct the very acts they ban/look down upon without criticism. She has such tight control that no one can question her bending her own rules and whatever limiting oppressions or negativity her society contains are not powerful enough to affect her because they’re all just “values of the masses.” Satsuki has no shame in wearing the Kamui. If it means gaining power–if it means destroying a mother who is controlling and abusing her–she will do whatever it takes.

The big question is, of course, does Satsuki’s reclaiming/subversion of the norm actually work? For herself as an individual, it seems to, and it provides a glimpse into a vision of a world without Ragyo–a sort of eschaton (already/not yet) that I’ll get into in another post. Practically speaking, it only works for her and in the real world, this method of undermining objectification does not work for all women everywhere.

In the first arc of the anime, we see nothing but a Satsuki who has complete control over everything around her. She is 100% comfortable with the form the Kamui takes and has better control over it than Ryuko does of Senketsu. In fact, her joining with Junketsu is the exact opposite of Ryuko meeting Senketsu. While Senketsu clearly assaults Ryuko and reveals how she lacks control, Satsuki completely dominates Junketsu and forces herself onto it. “Even a Kamui is merely a garment and I will make it bow to my will!” she says. If Junketsu is sentient or has a will, we never see it and Satsuki totally disregards it anyway.

Satsuki wants Ryuko to adopt her framework–to stop being ashamed of wearing a Kamui and to actually, truly wear it. We learn later on in the series that Satsuki was shaping Ryuko into a powerful ally the whole time and one of the first steps Ryuko must take toward that end is to adopt Satsuki’s ideology. Of course, in episode 3, Ryuko is far, far from accepting anything Satsuki has to say, but with Mako’s intervention, she finally gets it. “The reason why you were drinking so much blood is because I was rejecting you out of embarrassment! The more my heart was closed, the more you yearned for a blood connection!” she says as she unlocks Senketsu’s full power. By accepting the Kamui’s form and understanding the power that comes along with doing so, Ryuko spends less energy (and less blood) worrying about how exposed she is. In a way, she has accepted this portion of Satsuki’s worldview and has risen above the values of the masses.

Of course, the other side of this is that it could all be read as Stockholm Syndrome. Is Ryuko really empowered by accepting the form of these clothes that she didn’t want to wear in the first place? Does this example of sex-positive, anti-slut shaming feminism actually achieve its goal, or is it still belittled by the reality of objectification? While the self-acceptance and self-confidence aspects of this scene are positive, I’d hesitate in fully labeling it a feminist triumph simply because it only seems to work on an individual level (with the hope/projection of it working on a systematic level) and the circumstances behind both Ryuko’s and Satsuki’s acceptance of their bodies, the Kamui, and their power involve some questionable, nonconsensual acts that create uncertainty about any of this really being empowerment. Different audiences will have different takes on it–some see more beneficial aspects of it, but for others it’s a deal-breaker. Personally, I felt more encouraged when I watched this scene and when I thought about why, I realized that I completely identify with Ryuko’s view of her body. Before I learned to be proud of my body, I, like Ryuko, was very embarrassed by it. Exposing any amount of skin besides my arms or calves made me very uncomfortable, partly because I lacked self-confidence and partly because I was taught that my body was something sexual that needed to be covered lest my brothers in Christ stumble (commence eye-rolling). It wasn’t until I started unlearning all of these things and accepting/loving my body for what it was that I not only felt comfortable wearing a bikini, but empowered. So as I watched Ryuko accept Senketsu’s form (which is very much like a bikini), that subconsciously struck a chord with one of my own experiences of coming of age and accepting myself. By no means is this everyone’s experience, and I wouldn’t expect everyone to have this same reaction to Kill la Kill, but I think this is one reason why many women can relate to it.

Still, it’s not perfect and even though Ryuko becomes comfortable with herself in a Kamui, this doesn’t stop others from imposing their views on her. One of the more telling moments related to oppressive views is when Ryuko fights Gamagoori and the following exchange occurs:

Gamagoori: Where do you get off anyway, modifying your sailor uniform into that slutty outfit?! How utterly depraved! How utterly deviant!

Ryuko: What about your precious Lady Satsuki, then?!

Gamagoori: She is an exception! Her form is made up of her iron will and well-trained body.

Ryuko: Don’t give me that self-serving garbage!

Gamagoori wants to mold Ryuko into an ideal student. “This mold is of the ideal, proper female high school student. ‘A proper spirit starts with a proper shape.’” He has a literal shape of a female body that he is literally trying to force Ryuko into and it is physically painful. Here is a man trying to force an actual alive woman into an inanimate mold or ideal that pleases him, not to mention his hypocrisy in allowing Satsuki’s scantiness, but not Ryuko’s. Gamagoori’s role and character as the enforcer of all rules makes the metaphor even more powerful.

In another moment toward the end of the series, Ragyo perpetuates an idea of how a lady should act, shaming Ryuko’s recklessness as she fights. Both events highlight how peers, parents, and authority figures constantly try to regulate the female body/femininity and which versions of it are acceptable. Gamagoori’s view especially shows that Satsuki’s ideology as described earlier currently only works in theory and it only fully works for her (this could also suggest that Gamagoori has feelings for Satsuki and thus makes him biased).

One last word about the series’ nudity: in my opinion, most of the female nudity is actually non-sexual. I’m not denying the presence of fanservice because it’s most definitely there, but I think we often have the tendency to see a naked female body and automatically assume that it’s sexual just by its mere presence. The female nudity iscertainly more sexual in the beginning, which is why many people stop watching, but as the story becomes serious, instances of nudity are more connected to this power/shame structure that frames theKill la Kill universe rather than appeasing the straight male gaze.

Growing Up is Messy

Coming of age in Kill la Kill involves all of the mess and chaos described above and then some. However, there’s one final stage that Ryuko especially must reach before her journey is over. In Senketsu’s words, “The time comes when a girl outgrows her sailor uniform. From now on, wear whatever you want.” At the end of the day, Senketsu is just a school uniform and eventually, Ryuko will graduate from high school and will no longer be expected or required to wear a uniform. Just as Ryuko gained power through her complicated experience with a school uniform, she must ultimately let it go to begin the next stage in her maturing process, one that we only see hints of between episode 24 and the OVA.

Additionally, growing up is uncomfortable. I think this is the most obvious during Ryuko’s transformation sequence. As she dons Senketsu, a complicated example of what it means to come of age as a girl, she looks like she’s having growing pains at one point.

There might also be some connection between periods, growing up, and the gallons of blood throughout the series, though nothing in the series jumped out at me about this. Still, periods are part of many people’s coming of age (regardless of gender) and would fit within the show’s theme of growing up.

Kill la Kill is many things and a coming of age tale is one of them. Though it’s covered witha lot of other genre elements, it ends where just about every high school anime about girls does: with a graduation. I think this is one reason why it’s become such a favorite. Everyone can relate to growing up no matter who they are, and this is a story that deals with that in its own, over-the-top way.

Next week:You Pigs in Human Clothing: A Theology of Clothing in Kill la Kill

Kill la Kill is one of those rare series that has delivered just about everything I could possibly want in a story and then some. It has impressed me so much that I actively analyzed and took notes on it as I watched/re-watched, which honestly hasn’t happened for me before. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be posting a series of Kill la Kill articles focusing on queerness, religion, coming of age as a girl, and oppression. Most of my analyses are just my own thoughts plusthe show.Today’s theme, post 1 of 4, isqueerness.

Queerness, and romance in general, are not the central focus of Kill la Kill. All of the main characters are far more concerned with their world-changing goals to spare any time for romantic involvement. That being said, a handful of characters show some levels of overt queerness (though technically, the entire cast could be queer as assuming straightness as the default is heteronormative).

Kill la Kill treats queerness as a very natural part of the world and the characters. It’s so natural to them that it’s not something they ever dwell on or obsess over; they simply act on it or accept it in the ways that suit their characters. Queerness has several different manifestations depending on the other qualities it’s tied to, qualities that other aspects of each character’s personality bring to it. Not all of these manifestations are positive (see rainbow trash mom Ragyo), but together they present a queerness that goes deeper than cutesy high school romance (which wouldn’t fit into KLK very well anyway).

Ryuko x Mako: Illogical, Nonsensical Dedication

Anime – Page 2 – Taylor Ramage (42)This is perhaps the most positive, consensual, and healthy expression of queerness in the show and it’s the one that’s given the most attention. Much of it is due to Mako’s unapologetic personality. She’s a ditz who is simultaneously stubborn and sweet and whose idiocy onlyadds to her willpower and perseverance. What would Kill la Kill be without strong-willed characters? Mako has nothing to be embarrassed about, so she has nothing to hide, even if those with more sense would try being discreet. When it comes to Ryuko, Mako makes up her mind from the moment her family adopts Ryuko. Mako shows nothing but undying affection as well as unapologetic attraction. Early on in the series, Mako is right there with the crowd of generic male students ogling over Ryuko in her transformed Kamui getup. She thinks Ryuko has a nice rack and nosebleeds when she sees it.

More seriously, Mako seems to find some sense of herself and reality in Ryuko. In episode 7, when Mako gets her two-star uniform and becomes the Fight Club president (cue every joke ever about Fight Club), she actually replaces Ryuko as her stronghold with the wealth and comfort her family now lives in thanks to her performance at school. The fear of being poor again is enough to make her fight desperately to keep her position, and who can blame her in a society with such extreme and arbitrary class divisions? Yet Ryuko, who’s doing all of the work to make Fight Club successful, reaches her limit. No amount of money will replace the family dinners she misses so much or the feeling that she actually has a family. This divide leads to a fight between the two and Ryuko, choosing friendship over victory, simply lets Mako beat her up for a long, long time. At length, all Ryuko needs to do is smile and Mako finally remembers that Ryuko is her anchor, not social standing. She makes the illogical decision to choose Ryuko over comfort. This choice is illogical not because it’s foolish, but because it goes against protecting a better means of living. However, by refusing to fight for the comforts afforded by an unequal and oppressive social system, Mako’s return to Ryuko is one of many hints at the way illogic and nonsense defeat evil (not to mention that Ryuko herself embodies standing against the status quo). “Right next to you is the safest place!” says Mako to Ryuko in episode 15 as Osaka is exploding around them. She consistently chooses Ryuko over self-preservation no matter how dangerous the circumstances.

For Ryuko, the feeling is mutual, although she doesn’t fully understand what she feels for Mako, nor does she have much time to explore it. Very late in the series, she admits that Mako and Senketsu are more than just friends to her, but beyond that she has no other language to identify her feelings. However, Senketsu immediately notices the effect that Mako has on Ryuko. Jumping back toward the beginning of the show, Senketsu states “Your heart rate and pulse have returned to normal. So, she is the key to getting you to relax, right?” In context, this relaxing effect saves Ryuko and enables her to fight longer, or at least not pass out. Mako is the only one who can reach Ryuko’s heart and seems to be the only person who will make Ryuko stop in her tracks no matter what happens.

This idea of Mako being the only thing that calms Ryuko peaks in two events: when Ryuko is completely consumed by Senketsu in the first arc and when she is completely consumed by Junketsu in the second arc. “When I was drunk on power,” Mako says to Ryuko when Senketsu has taken over her, “you were the one who brought me to my senses and now it’s my turn.” Mako knows that Ryuko would never hurt her and may even know just how much she affects Ryuko. Again, this is either a sign of lucky idiocy or the nonsensical dedication that ultimately overthrows the kind of one-cloth world that Ragyo aims to create. This is highlighted again when Ryuko is wearing Junketsu and has no control over her actions.

I say that she has no control here because Junketsu was forced upon her and now the actual Ryuko is deep in this false state of bliss that wearing Junketsu creates. In this state, she’s given the family she always wanted and the visions of her life follow a very logical/ideal pattern: two supportive parents, a normal life at school, and growing up to get married. These visions are free of the pain she has felt at losing her father, not having a real family, and living in a world where she is constantly angry and fighting. However, these visions are nothing more than a blatant escapism from reality. Ryuko may feel blissful and at peace, but in reality she is being used and abused by Junketsu and Ragyo and has lost all sense of herself. So deep is she is this cesspool that, on the outside, she fights desperately to defend it and the false bliss conveniently masks the abuse that she is actually experiencing, making it impossible for her to break the illusion for herself.

Mako, of course, immediately sees that this is not the Ryuko she knows and without hesitation, she does everything she can to bring Ryuko back. Remember that Mako is consistently the one person who has any sort of immediate calming effect on Ryuko, but when Mako breaks into Ryuko’s wedding dream, it seems hopeless as even the internal Ryuko will do everything she can to defend this dream despite the fact that her spouse-to-be is a headless Cover, not even a real person. However, with a bit of sacrifice from Senketsu, Mako is finally able to make Ryuko wake up and return to the nonsensical reality. This reality may be broken, but Mako is there and Ryuko has freedom in the chaos.

I’ll come back to this scene in other posts, but what I want to highlight here is how the love between Ryuko and Mako undermines the various oppressive powers they encounter. Ryuko’s blissful visions can be seen as subtly heteronormative in that she appears to be marrying a man. Heteronormativity is a piece of this logical, carefree life pattern that wearing Junketsu presents to her, but it is gray scaled/sepia toned and it is simply not Ryuko’s reality. Mako becomes a reminder of this and calls Ryuko back to freedom in a world that doesn’t make sense. In a way, this is a “coming out” for Ryuko as her relationship with Mako restores her sense of self. The bliss of wearing life fibers, as Satsuki observes, is the bliss of slavery. It distracts the wearer with images of complacency while it perpetuates evils unnoticed. This is one example of how systematic oppression works: fabricate comfortable patterns for existence to quell resistance and keep the evils of abuse in the shadows.

Mako and Ryuko are each other’s anchors and peace. Before the very last battle with Ragyo, Mako blatantly asks Ryuko on a date when she returns and Ryuko accepts without hesitation. Though this is also one of Kill la Kill’s many, many examples of exaggerating every possible anime trope ever, it is also an example of how Ryuko and Mako have found stability in their relationship and will fight for a world where such a relationship can exist in freedom. These two are undeniably queer and undeniably canon. It is one of the prime examples of how radical, illogical, and nonsensical love overcomes oppressive systems.

**NOTE: Read the comments between R and I for an argument that Ryumako is not healthy**

Nui x Ryuko: Fascination and Desire for Control

From the moment Nui arrives on the scene, the entire plot of Kill la Kill begins to unravel. Despite being the Grand Couturier whose task is to sew things together, she actually makes things fall apart for both Ryuko and Satsuki. Nui’s playful personality combined with her lack of concern for consequences make her a catalyst for Ryuko’s loss of control. From the start, Nui is enamored with Ryuko. Though her infatuation may seem steeped with sarcasm at first, or just a ruse to get under Ryuko’s skin, I think it’s actually genuine, especially since she never really stops hitting on Ryuko every chance she gets.

However, Nui, being born directly from the original life fiber and completely in line with Ragyo’s goals, is largely interested in control and manipulation. Her feelings for Ryuko are real and she wants Ryuko for herself. How does she ensure that she “gets the girl” while simultaneously eliminating an obstacle for Ragyo? By threading Junketsu to Ryuko and thereby forcing Junketsu onto her. With this done, Ryuko is technically under Nui’s control and is incapable of repelling Nui. Nothing that Nui and Ragyo do to Ryuko while she’s wearing Junketsu is consensual. By extension, nothing that Ryuko does or says is truly coming from her own self or her own will. In this part of the story, Ryuko has no agency. She may feel bliss and pleasure, but it’s a deceptive mask of reality. Even the orgy scene at the beginning of episode 21 shows that Ryuko is stunned more than anything. While Ragyo and Nui are free to move around, Ryuko is tied up by red threads, showing that both of them have completely subjugated her. Ryuko’s kiss with Nui, in my opinion, is another instance of this control, even though it seems to surprise Nui. Though Nui may not have expected the kiss, it’s still something that happened because she tied Junketsu to Ryuko–because of her (and Ragyo’s) desire to control her.

Alternatively, the kiss could be an instance of Ryuko’s will overcoming what’s happening to her, even if just for a brief moment. She most definitely forces the kiss on Nui. She grabs Nui’s collar and pulls her close before Nui even has a chance to react. Though Ryuko is not at all in her right mind, there could be something subconscious that’s enacting payback for forcing Junketsu onto her.

There are many ways to interpret the relationship between these two, but one thing is expressly clear: no matter the reasons, the end goal is dominance over the other. It’s mostly Nui who wants to dominate Ryuko and perhaps leave Ryuko no choice but to attempt giving her a taste of her own medicine. Here, queerness becomes corrupted into a manipulative power. Nui choses to act on her crush, which is harmless and not problematic at all, by forcing Ryuko into a Kamui–and a mindset–that’s more suitable to her desires.

Ragyo x Satsuki, Ryuko, and Nui

Calling Ragyo “queer” is a stretch to me largely because I think she uses sex as power and is not necessarily “in love” with her daughters, which is why I’m only talking about her a little bit here. Furthermore, I have to be very careful not to suggest that queerness, incest, and sexual abuse are one in the same because they are most certainly not (as we see in healthy queer relationships like Ryuko and Mako). However, her actions are such a vital part of the story that I can’t ignore discussing them. In my opinion, Ragyo is the ultimate misappropriator: she takes things that are good or neutral (e.g., clothes, sex, theology) and misuses them to achieve her agenda of silence (via Life Fibers), domination, and submission to her will. She twists the story of Genesis 3 to suit the purpose of her giant corporation (which I will discuss more in depth in a separate post). Similarly, she takes rainbows (a sign of pride in the LGBT+ community as well as a symbol of God’s promise not to flood the Earth again in the Old Testament) and associates them with her abuse, her will for silence, and her ruthlessness–things that rainbows were not meant to symbolize.

In terms of rainbows being a queer symbol, Ragyo takes what should be a sign of love and makes it a sign of her manipulation andcorporate agenda, which is really tied to her world domination agenda. She exaggerates and abuses this aesthetic just as she abuses Satsuki and Ryuko.

Nui seems to be the only one who enjoys/consents to sex with Ragyo, although Ragyo even uses her as a tool in the end and Nui gladly kills herself (sort of) at Ragyo’s command without hesitation. Is Nui really as independent and willful as she seems, or does Ragyo have complete control over her as well? I don’t think there’s a clear answer here.

What I do think is clear is that Ragyo uses queerness as an illusion to mask the heinousness of her actions and further her goals. She doesn’t use it for love or any expression of being a marginalized person overcoming oppressive social structures–she uses it for the antithesis of what it’s all meant to stand for in the first place. So, I only discuss Ragyo here to begin unpacking how her entire modus operandi is misappropriation.

Everyone else

I headcannon many of the other characters as ace (Satsuki, Inamura, Kinase, to name a few). Kill la Kill’s story is so focused on everyone fighting each other, fighting against the Kiryuin family, and fighting against the Life Fibers that orientation really isn’t important. Nonnon’s feelings toward Satsuki could just be the feelings of dedicated friendship or she could be in love with her (I ship it, so there’s that). The series doesn’t give too much attention to their relationship; however I’d classify Nonnon’s attitude toward Satsuki as similar to Mako’s attitude toward Ryuko. Both are dedicated to their respective best friends/love interests for the long-term no matter what.

Finally, I’ve entertained the thought of Senketsu being trans since he is technically female clothing with a male voice. The implications of Senketsu being trans are beyond what I feel I can analyze and formulate an opinion about, but at the very least, no one in KLK ever questions why a set of women’s clothing has any bit of masculinity attached to it. As with queerness (orientation), queerness (gender) seems to be something that is simply accepted in the world of KLK, even though it doesn’t overtly deal with the gender spectrum.

Concluding thoughts

Kill la Kill presents several different manifestations of queerness, some good and healthy and others concerned more with power than love/dignity toward the other person. When queerness is overt, it’s never contested or questioned. It’s quite normalized, which is important for representation. What becomes questionable is not queerness itself, but how each character expresses it, which says more about the right/wrong way to treat others in general rather than defining queerness as a particular type of expression.

What I’ve outlined here is certainly not exhaustive–what do you think of Kill la Kill’s queer characters? I’d love to hear about any thoughts on asexual or transgender representation (or lack thereof).

Next week:Girlhood and Magical Uniforms: Coming of Age in Kill la Kill

Princess Jellyfish is a cute little series that I honestly think is severely underrated, largely because no one seems to pay it much attention. Of course, with all of the big epics and more avant-garde series around, this one does tend to fall through the cracks, but it’s such a treat and easy to marathon in a single day if you believe in yourself.

Besides being a hilarious slice-of-life comedy, this series artistically strays far from the typical anime look and thus, each woman is not conventionally beautiful in the slightest, emphasis on conventionally.

Anime – Page 2 – Taylor Ramage (46)

The fact that they’re all socially awkward and don’t look like supermodels or cute anime girls (with the exception of Kuronosuke in drag) is one of the story’s main points. It portrays the struggle between how you naturally look, how much “work” you’d have to do to become “beautiful,” and how that ultimately intersects with your self-confidence. If this were a typical kind of story where an “ugly” girl learns to totally accept makeup and fashion, I wouldn’t have anything to say about it here.

Women like the ones pictured above hardly appear in anime, much less as central protagonists. Their mere presence normalizes girls who don’t fit into standard notions of attractiveness and their struggles at times hit very personal notes for anyone who has ever struggled with seeing themselves as beautiful. Moreover, I think characters like these can make it normal for us, on a deeper level, to feel comfortable actually expressing the discomfort we feel with our appearances.

I struggled for the longest time with my self-image and though I’m at last at the tail end of my issues, I haven’t totally shaken them for good. As an adolescent/teenager, I struggled a lot with A) believing I was fat and B) viewing that as a bad thing. I hated fashion magazines, makeup, celebrity gossip, and everything else related to that, so my mother would often frustratingly ask me where my problems were coming from, since I apparently wasn’t getting all those negative messages from the usual suspects (but the truth is that these messages are everywhere whether you’re a hardcore anime nerd or a fashion queen). Who at school was telling me I was fat? No one. Who was telling me that I was ugly? No one. Then why did I feel that way? I didn’t know.

There are good intentions in that type of reaction–you’re trying to prevent the other person from spiraling down into a pit of negativity and you want them to understand that whatever they’re starting to believe about themselves isn’t true, but sometimes it can have the opposite effect. It can create an atmosphere where openly expressing that you feel uncomfortable with your body is a sign of weakness, proof that you’ve given into peer pressure and that you should really be smarter than that.

But it’s not that simple. Stating or implying that it’s weak or vapid to be so affected by what others may think of you could end up only bottling a lot of feelings deep inside that will explode in your face sometime shortly after you start college and it’ll keep squirting at you like a ketchup bottle that never empties as you enter your twenties.

Yes, beauty standards are vapid, arbitrary, and socially constructed. They attempt to define people’s worth by how hairless they can be and how brightly their eyes can pop. They consistently snuff out other ways of looking beautiful at the expense of those who don’t fit the mold, which is most women, especially women of color. However, if there’s one thing I’ve learned from therapy it’s that when you vocalize some deep-seeded turmoil within, you can give it a name. Then, you can start to understand it and it’s not some insurmountable, mysterious problem anymore.

That’s the real treasure of Princess Jellyfish. Tsukimi is an “ugly” girl who truly struggles with this throughout the series and she always vocalizes her feelings about her new identity as a “pretty” girl and her more comfortable identity as a not-conventionally attractive Amar. Ultimately, she finds confidence somewhere in the middle.

I think this is vastly different from seeing other anime girls struggle with their weight or attractiveness. Just about every female character in every anime ever is at some point concerned about her weight, her boobs, or her face, but what we the audience see is just another cute anime girl with unrealistic looks/proportions anyway. This doesn’t diminish the experience of conventionally attractive girls who struggle with these issues because that is certainly very real, but it still presents a narrow experience. Tsukimi is cute, but she’s also expressly designed and written as someone who looksmore like an average person than most other anime girls.

The story doesn’t end with everyone suddenly changing or feeling totally different about themselves either. That’s partially because the manga continues well beyond the anime, but it’s also because it’s simply a more realistic way of writing this type of story. Feeling comfortable in your own skin is an ongoing challenge that can involve a lot of other parts of a person’s identity. Princess Jellyfish is a series that, in a sense, encourages us to vocalize that struggle and it does that through characters who actually look more like real people.

Anime – Page 2 – Taylor Ramage (47)

Anime is one of the few mediums where you can really say that there’s something for everyone. Or at least, that’s the idea. Recent anime has scarcely provided anything interesting, but at least this season has something slightly different: Sakura Trick.

Representation of anyone other than straight people is rare in media, and anime is no exception. So, of course I was immediately interested when I caught wind of this series because the endgame couple is made cannon from the very start. There’s no question that Haruka and Yuu are together, which means that for once, cannon is doing work that fans often have to do in order to feel that more people like them are in the stories they love. Simply relating to characters is one thing, but being able to share any part of your identity with a character is something else. Ask any person of color what it means to see (or not see) people who look like them in movies, books, TV shows, anime, etc. and they may give you tons of examples of whitewashing, exotification, and stereotypes. The same goes for women, disabled people, and LGBT+ people (Hourou Musuko is the one anime out of every anime I’ve watched ever that has actually done a very good job of portraying transgender people. That’s one anime out of everything I’ve watched).

When we look at stories, there are two questions we have to ask ourselves: who is this story about and who is this story for? I think how we answer these questions can help us determine if a historically oppressed group of people is being treated as fully human by the creator(s) of the story.

Who is yuri anime about?

On the surface, the answer to this question is obvious: yuri is about girls who fall in love with each other. Most, if not all, of the characters are female. If dudes make an appearance, they’re older brothers, fathers, random family members that appear to make the series last a little longer, etc. In that sense, yuri rejects the tendency of just about every other kind of story ever to focus on men in some capacity. All of this seems great for more diverse representation, but the analysis can’t end with this question.

Who is yuri anime for?

This is where things get more complicated. Yuri series like Sakura Trick and Strawberry Panic are saturated in femininity to the point where they’re almost parodies of high school anime in general. Because these series don’t even have a dude there for romance, one would logically think that dudes would pass over them since these stories are not about them.

But usually, these stories are still for them, especially the anime. Every unnecessary boob and thigh shot in Sakura Trick is a reminder of the irony that a lot of media that represents gay women isn’t actually for gay women. I don’t find it appealing when the camera focuses on body parts detached from the rest of the person. In general, I don’t like this trend of dividing people, especially women, into tantalizing parts. When yuri “doubles the fun,” so to speak, it becomes more obvious. There’s this prevailing idea that two women in a relationship together exist to please or entertain a straight dude and that couldn’t be further from the truth.I once had a conversation where someone offhandedly remarked how Orange is the New Black is clearly trying to get their male audience by showing the sex scenes between Piper and Alex, and I just stared at them blankly for a second before we moved on to a different topic. It’s like people forget that some gay women can and do enjoy that content, or that gay women exist for themselves and not for the male gaze.

Because of this, yuri often makes me feel divided. The surface level representation is nice, but the way it translates to the screen makes me question whether or not a given series exists for the people it’s about or if it exists for people who want to fetishize gay women. For this reason, I’ve found that manga and light novels can be less promblematic, but even that depends on how the story is told.

Yuri and Unrealistic Expectations

Furthermore, most yuri recycles the shoujo manga idea of romance just falling into your lap. Strawberry Panic takes that to an extreme and presents a fantasy in which literally everyone is at least a little bit gay. This is a nice escapist fantasy since it’s never that easy to find anyone in real life, especially if you’re gay. Even outside of anime, a lot of stories about gay people present this false notion that romance/relationships happen easily (not to mention that a lot of those relationships are destructive. I’m looking at you, L Word). However, for anyone just coming to terms with their sexuality, it could set them up for a lot of disappointment when they find that romance still isn’t easy even though they now understand themselves much better.

Media representation still paints a pretty bleak/unrealistic/incomplete picture. On the one hand, things are progressively getting better, but on the other hand, I’d personally like to see more shows like Orphan Black where two of the main characters are gay, but their romantic relationships are neither dramatized nor erased nor the central focus of who they are as characters. I’ll have a glowing blog post to write if Krista/Historia x Ymir becomes 100% undeniably cannon because it would be in this same vein.

Whether or not yuri anime is decent representation is up to the individual who is being represented. Sakura Trick is a relief to many since it’s so light-hearted. In that sense, it’s a step forward because pretty much every other anime about women in love is very dramatic and usually tragic. At the same time, I think Sakura Trick falls into the same trap that just about every other recent anime has fallen into: the characters don’t act like real people. They’re rarely more that cookie cutter versions of the same tropes. Literally the only difference between Sakura Trick and any other anime about girls going through high school is that the implied yuri in all of those other series is overt in Sakura Trick. It’s fluffy candy, which is all fine and good as long as people recognize that and keep pushing for better, more comprehensive representation.

Anime – Page 2 – Taylor Ramage (2025)
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