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.

[Kraco]

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 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.

I'll need to see a couple of eps more to judge it sufficiently, but right now my gut feeling is that while this might be distilling shounen battle tropes and some shounen stylistic choices (art, direction, etc), this might fall far short of the likes of TTGL in distilling shounen spirit. Well, the main character being a girl might already matter a bunch in that regard. After all, saving the princess is a solid element of shounen tropes.

[Ryllharu]

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?

[snip]...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 slot in a season.

I agree that the trailer indicated that his would be about as bare-bones of a school delinquent taking over a school with a terrible looming secret behind it's autocratic student council. Just like Medaka Box or anything OhGreat! has ever written (TenTen, AirGear, etc.). I was absolutely sure that Kill la Kill would be exactly what it was presented as.

Because I almost didn't watch the first episode at all.

I didn't find anything in the trailer remotely compelling to give me a reason to watch. I watched the episode ultimately. It was a Thursday and I was surprised something was out after the pattern of the past few season where all the shows are loaded up on Friday-Sunday...and mostly I was bored. True, it has a great voice cast...which can be reason enough for me sometimes.

But there is some originality here. Sure, it is a stupid fighting school anime. Yes, the art kinda sucks but works stylistically. There are over the top punishments that go too far. The evil student council controls all the nearby schools too. It follows the formula Yuki described to a tee. They even gave her a moron sidekick (perfectly cast too, Tamako Market's title character). But what Kill la Kill does do is play with the clichés of these type of fighting series (especially ones that feature girls) in an interesting way:

Exploding clothes.

Not as fanservice, not as titillation, not as a way to fill frames because there is no real plot, but as a goal. It's like Those Who Hunt Elves in that way (striping elves to find spell fragments). They set it up from the very start. Ryuuko's one half of a pair of scissors is designed to destroy the uniforms. Not only that, when she exploded the clothes, a single thread floated out of the pieces and was absorbed by her possessed sailor suit, presumably powering it up further. She'll only be able to achieve her revenge by systematically destroying all the uniforms, leaving them all naked.

Second example:
The over the top punishments? No, they don't leave someone beat up and in the hospital, they don't threaten to throw them off a rooftop. They show that at the beginning to get the idea that they act that way. But what do they actually threaten the idiot friend with? Putting her in tempura. Is she terrified or frightened? No, she's actually stupid enough to worry about her clothes being see-through, rather than the threat of harm.


No, it was never presented as anything more than what it is. Where it succeeds, and why I'll keep watching, is that it knows that it is messing around with as many dumbass clichés it can get, in as over the top a presentation as possible. It's originality stems from twisting those clichés.

It's the school battle anime version of what TTGL was to mecha.