Dressed to kill
A review of Kill La Kill
Approaching Trigger’s Kill La Kill critically is a daunting task. It has been a divisive series since its first episode and the scrutiny it has been placed under by fans even now, weeks after its last episode has aired, means that there are so many arguments and debates that there is an unspoken expectation to fall on one side of the fence. Is the series feminist or misogynist? Does it have character development or just caricatures? It is a narrative wasteland or stylistic grab bag? Better or worse than Gurren Lagann?
That last point is one of a number of elephants in the room when it comes to this series, thanks in no small part to it being plastered over the initial marketing material, sharing the same director - Hiroyuki Imaishi - and a multitude of staff including writer Kazuki Nakashima. Studio Trigger’s inception is well documented, but suffice it to say that the production team and only their second original creative effort after Little Witch Academia means that Kill La Kill started with the most fearsome of challenges: expectation.