Kill la Kill

[Yukimura]

I get what you guys didn't like about the episode itself, it was all flash and very little substance and it didn't have any much, according to Ryllharu there was a bit there originality to it. I can't really begrudge anyone not liking 18-20 minutes of the distilled essence of shounen battle anime tropes with not much else going on, it's not for everyone. But what I don't see is where the expectations of substance and certainly of originality that went unmet came from. How did any of the promo material make you think you were going to get anything approaching a deep well characterized plot with new ideas or even a fresh spin on old ones?

Here's a link to the PV (with subs) for reference

The PV basically covers the plot of the first episode it is practically screaming "I AM MADE OF SHOUNEN BATTLE TROPES AND FLASHINESS IF YOU WATCH ME THAT'S WHAT YOU'LL GET" as loud as it can.

If you don't watch the video here's my overly long breakdown:

• A badass/punk/outlaw looking character shows up at a city/school/place (Tenjou Tenge, Ikkitousen, Bleach SS ARC etc. the standard way to start out a shounen battle anime arc)
  
• They are looking for/seeking after something or someone (the typical reason for a battle shounen anime main char to go anywhere and do anything).
  
• They run afoul of some strong adversary who is a mid-boss ranked member of an army of minions who answers to one very big bad (every battle shounen main villian ever).
  
• We see that the mid-boss is one of a relatively small group of mid-bosses under the main boss (very often there will be 4 mid-bosses, go figure)
  
• The other mid-bosses are all very different but the implication is they are all similarly untouchable to the main char at the beginning (shounen battle anime trope #9351).
  
  
• The evil organization (always somewhat fascistic) isn't about to let the main char just go walking around thinking they're little miss badass without a fight (but not against their top level people b/c that would be too fast).
  
• The main char fights whatever sub-midboss person is sent out to them and it doesn't work out that great overall, even if they do survive (beginning of most battle shounen first acts ever)
  
• Then they discover a power source they either never knew they had or lucked into and that allows them to fight on equal or better footing with the level of sub-midboss they first had trouble with (end of every battle shounen first act ever).

END SYNOPSIS

Nowhere in this trailer do I see a single indication of of originality or depth of plot, it's all flash and style and battle action tropes that I've seen before and made up my mind how I felt about years ago. From this trailer I concluded that I was going to watch this show because it should be full of flashy shounen battle action tropes, which I like, and it was. For any of you who expected there to be substance or originality in this anime what is it that made you expect that?

For background, my philosophy is to expect shows to be what they present themselves as, which usually boils down to what trope set they seem to be drawing from in their promo material. If, during airing, a show seems to go above and beyond whatever was in the promos and goes above and beyond the trope set its promo indicated then I might start believing that maybe the show is going to go farther than just being a particular niche filler for the season and might actually be good outside it's niche and I will adjust my expectations accordingly, but when a show is exactly as tropey as its trailer indicated, I don't see that as a surprise I just see it as a show filling a particular niche slot in a season.