Review: Kill la Kill

Hype is a dangerous thing, a seriously hyped serious will raise peoples expectations and no matter the quality that hype will play a factor. Kill la Kill is the first full series from Studio Trigger, a studio full with notable names. This follows on from their Anime Mirai special Little Witch Academia and whatever Inferno Cop was. This was an extremely hyped series. I did not buy into the hype and as such my view is not going to be swayed. That said Kill la Kill is a failure, a failure in every department, a series that I hate, with a passion which is no mean feat. I will explain why.

The plot is pretty standard fare, Ryuuko is a girl who wants to avenge her estranged father after he is killed, she goes to Honnoji Academy to confront who she believes to be his killer. She is beaten badly, returning to the home of her father she discovers a weird uniform called Senketsu that overpowers her, by taking in Ryuuko's blood Senketsu can transform into a powerful form, Ryuuko uses this to her advantage and sets off to Honnoji Academy again to take on Satsuki and all those under her who happen to have Goku uniforms that allows them to transform as well. Thus starts the revenge story.

While this is a fairly basic story later on there are twists that drastically alter where the series heads. These twists though are a problem. The series starts off nonsensical as it is, to ramp this aspect up is to also bring down any sense of being engrossed, I could not care less about these twists, each one rang predictability and took the series to another level of ridiculousness. I am not against series with crazy setups, Nobunaga the Fool is a perfect example of one, but where that differs is it's excellent execution and character driven story. Another point about the twists is that the characters seem to just take them in their stride seemingly giving no real thought to these, I found that quite bizarre.

Ah the characters. Oh boy where do I start. Ryuuko is your run of the mill generic shonen lead character, one dimensional, no personality and her development throughout the 24 episodes is minuscule. Satsuki on the other hand is leaps and bounds an improvement. She has a personality, something distinct, a determination and not afraid to go ahead with her plans nor use those around her. She is the only positive about this atrocity. Then we come to Mako, a girl Ryuuko befriends at the series beginning. I will say this, she is the worst character I have ever seen in a show, anime or otherwise. Incredibly irritating, idiotic in the extreme and subject to no development whatsoever.


These are the main 3 though there are plenty of others. An Elite 4 of Honnoji academy who serve as Satsuki's executives/school council chairs, a suspicious teacher, Mako's equally irritating and anger inducing family. Any more and I will be spoiling what little plot there is. I have to say though that I happened to like Nonon of the Elite 4. If only because she uses music to fight and any character who does that gets my love. It's a shame she was quickly chucked to the bottom of the barrel after some trolling.

The biggest problem by a distance is an aesthetic one. The art is horrendous, it looks poorly made, cheap in every sense, still shots are used aplenty, almost to a long running weekly shonen show standard. There is a lack of detail in the majority of scenes, it's cartoonish and rushed. Then we come to the animation. Again it falls flat on it's face. There is a serious lack of it, clips are recycled time and again and together with the horrible art it is a disaster. Take a look at any scene with close ups on faces and you will see the glaring issue.

Dead Leaves had a similar art style, it was distinctly western looking if that makes sense. That worked though and it worked well. The film was 40 minutes long and as such the art style and animation looked unique. Here is the opposite, how do I put this, it outstays it's welcome. At first it's a bit out of the ordinary but week after week of watching it and the flaws come to the fore, it's cheapness begins to show and then some. Dead Leaves never had that problem because of it's length. If Kill la Kill were say an hour long film or OVA then it too would have fared better.

The second issue with the art style is the character designs. Plain for the most part, exploitative and later on rather childish. Know how kids like to add spikes to everything to make it look cool and they think it looks good? Apparently the creators of this show thought the same. It looks atrocious. This particular issue I have to say is primarily when Senketsu and the Goku uniforms enter their transformed state. When not in that form the character designs are plucked from the anime 101 design basket.


The action, an element where a show of this kind should take pride of place is messy, it really is hard at times to figure out what is going on and who is doing what. Any possible sense of enjoyment is ringed out because of this. The Naruto manga has a similar problem with art, it can and does ruin potentially good fights. There is also nothing particularly inventive with these fights, nothing you haven't see a million times before so don't rush in expecting much, Ryuuko likes to run in without a plan in the beginning and use the same move over and over. She changes over time but it takes good while for this approach to change for the better.

Another major issue is the fan service. If any of you know me or what I like that sentence may come as quite a shock. I adore fan service but here it serves no purpose. It is blatant, oh so blatant, not necessarily a bad thing but what with the whole art style being awful it ruins any sense of titillation. When you have fan service and even I am not a fan you've done it wrong. Another problem that arises from this is a serious one. This series is trying to tell a story believe it or not and the constant fan service takes away from any serious moment. A prime example is a character trying to give a serious speech that will progress the plot forward while on screen they have a glowing genital area and nipples, no I am not kidding! This takes away massively and in the second half of the series is used a lot. I am all for gender equal fan service but this takes it and runs it into the ground.

The soundtrack is at first good. It complements the intense moments and the sad moments very well but it suffers from overuse. Sometimes far too much within too little a space of time. One particular scene had a track used repeatedly for minute after minute. This is a soundtrack that upon hearing a couple of times works but under repeated listens does not come up to scrutiny. There is one particular track that will stick with you, if only because it is used multiple times every single episode, that is poor and another signifier of the cheap approach to this series. The OP and ED are actually decent. The first OP in particular is from GARNiDELiA who have become one of my favourite artists so this series was good for something.

This series genuinely made me angry. Week after week it dragged, everything about it is impressively bland given what it is aiming for. Just because a series knows it's bad doesn't mean that it then becomes good. If you want a show with fan service and a great story go watch High School DxD, Highschool of the Dead or Freezing. All ecchi series with fantastic plots. This ranks as the worst show I have ever had the displeasure of viewing. Quite an achievement.

Studio: Trigger
Aired: Fall 2013 - Winter 2014
Episodes: 24 + OVA
Available: All good DVD and Blu Ray retailers

0.5/10