What They Say:
The Honnouji Academy Cultural & Sports Grand Festival comes to an abrupt and very unexpected conclusion! Battle lines are drawn and Ryuko must decide who is friend and who is foe. But will she have the power to resist the power of the Life Fiber?
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The previous episode of Kill la Kill made it pretty clear that this one would be quite the event. No disappointment there, as it picks up right where it left off, with Satsuki’s monologue about how people should never be controlled by clothing. Ignore the obvious fact that such a concept is utterly ridiculous and you get a rousing speech that harkens back a bit to Gurren Lagann, suddenly causing an entire viewership to respect Satsuki immensely, with her villainous persona up to now only strengthening that fact due to how hard she had to act to both ensure that her plan would succeed against the omnipotent eyes of her mother and that Ryuko would be able to train for this while thinking she was fighting her real enemy. As Ragyo notes, Satsuki is perhaps best at delivering these monologues, and despite how fearsome she’s appeared in the past, even her forces combined with Ryuko and her comrades still aren’t enough to defeat the superhuman Ragyo at this stage.
The only respite in all this comes from Satsuki’s flashbacks, and while some may prefer to see the event at hand uninterrupted, these are very important both for bringing light to why Satsuki has such conviction for her vendetta and for leading up to the revelations throughout the episode. There’s a great deal of attention paid to many of the major fighters in this episode, Ragyo most especially, but from a characterization standpoint, I’d say Satsuki is ultimately the star. No matter how much we might learn about the history or powers of other characters, it’s Satsuki whose mind is truly opened to us, letting us see who she as a human being and allowing for an amount of sympathy you might not have expected even given that her rebellion was very likely. And the episode is well-plotted to ensure that this sympathy reaches its maximum potential, as Satsuki does end up failing against her mother’s unmatched power.
While it achieves wonderful success with its intensity, many of the recent reveals from Kill la Kill have been far from unpredictable. It was at least apparent that Satsuki wasn’t the big villain she portrayed herself as, and I assumed she had been working to overthrow her mother and train Ryuko to fight alongside her for quite a while. But while I have seen predict similar things to what the end of this episode reveals, it still works very well as nobody could possibly have been absolutely sure it would be the case but still makes sense, especially in the context that the earlier flashbacks of the episode provide. Beyond this being far too early in the series to deal with Ragyo once and for all, anyone slightly savvy would know that something would have to go wrong with someone other than the main protagonist insisting that she be the one to take out the (presumed) main antagonist alone, but on the other hand, Satsuki was the only one with the connection with Ragyo, thus the one who would be best fit to defeat her. While it may come off as a plot twist for the sake of a plot twist, this revelation does give Ryuko an almost equal reason to beat Ragyo, and it sets the story up well for the two girls to take her down together. With the way this episode leaves off, though, it makes sense that it would take the rest of the series to do so.
In Summary:
Kill la Kill has no interest to stop the fantastical, bombastic battles or the mind-bending revelations and plot twists that come with them. It’s likely to be a whole lot of what people have been waiting for, and its structure is pretty sound, especially looking at the future possibilities that this opens up. Some of the dramatic reveals skew a bit too much to the either the side of predictability or disbelief, but given the right state of mind that this episode is hopefully successful at putting you in, some of the pieces have a definite chance of falling into the sweet spot between them. At any rate, it’s plenty intense, and does a great deal of work on Satsuki’s character.
Grade: B
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Toshiba Satellite L655-S5191 PSK2CU-1C301U Notebook PC.
fuck you and your Bs
I appreciate the thoughtful feedback. Have you tried reading any of the actual reviews?