Kill la Kill: Studio Trigger’s First Strike

In 2011 a significant group of animators, led by Hiroyuki Imaishi and Masahiko Ōtsuka, abandoned the legendary Studio Gainax and formed their own studio, which would come to be called Studio Trigger. But it wasn’t until 2013 that they would release their first work, Kill la Kill. 

To understand Studio Trigger one must look into their roots in Gainax. To understand Kill la Kill, perhaps it is best to look into one of Gainax’s greatest works, Gurren Lagann. Much like Gurren Lagann is a loving send up of the Super Robot genre, Kill la Kill is a love letter to a few genres of its own; most notably Magical Girls, ecchi and battle shonen. Most importantly, however, Kill la Kill is more than the sum of its parts.

A fair warning before we get any further — Kill la Kill is ecchi. For viewers who are uncomfortable with sexualized characters in sexual situations, this is not a show they should watch. There are plenty of elements that I find gratuitous even as someone who is a big fan of the series. If that isn’t something you can deal with, it’s best to give up before you even get started. If you’re still with me, you can expect a series that delivers high quality action, some of the better music in anime, and gorgeous (at times) animation.

What stands out to me about the show the most are the absolutely gorgeous character designs and the aforementioned action scenes. Kill la Kill slams on the accelerator in episode one and never stops going hard. It is probably the only show to make me emotional over a piece of clothing by the end of the series. In much the same way Gurren Lagann is surprisingly touching, Kill la Kill left me simply emotionally drained — suprising especially for a show that’s premise is “Alien fabric is trying to take over the world by making us wear clothing.”

Originally posted by lifefibersync

When examining anime for the list, I try to look at three separate categories: quality, impact in the animation industry, and impact on the fan community, particularly in the West. In my opinion, Kill la Kill absolutely nails the first two of those categories. With apologies to Attack on Titan S1, The Devil is a Part-Timer, Chihayafuru 2, and WaTaMoTe, I feel like Kill la Kill was the best anime to come out of 2013 by a decently wide margin. It didn’t have the absolute biggest impact on the western anime community of the year because Attack on Titan was a cultural giant — and it’s hard to cosplay characters that are half nude most of the time — but Kill la Kill was a significant player in the western fan community as well. One could even argue that it had a decent sized impact on the anime industry by paving the way for Trigger to become a successful studio. While Kill la Kill wouldn’t be a first-ballot inclusion into the 101 Anime to Watch Before you Die list, it is safely in the upper tier.

- Austin ( @austinsanimeabode​ )