KLK

Satsuki is fearless, and her will is absolute. When it comes to her ambitions, she lets nothing stand in her way. Not even fear of death can stop the great Satsuki Kiryuin.

Satsuki gambles with her life every time she wears Junketsu. The first time she put him on, she had no idea if she would survive. Her father had it locked up for a reason, and Satsuki is no fool. She seems to be in a massive amount of pain the first time she puts him on, but she forces him to bow to her will. After that, she wears him into battle again and again. In episode 16, Soroi tells her that its very unsafe for her to keep going like this, but she says “I am well aware of the risk I take. Although, given that Matoi wears a kamui, I have no choice but to wear Junketsu to fight her”. It isn’t until episode 22 when Junketsu is tamed, so the whole time she’s been fighting in excruciating pain because Junketsu has been trying to consume her. Yet, she is still a worthy opponent for Ryuko.

Another time is the Sports and Cultural Grand Festival. After all the preparations are complete, she summons the Elite Four to her chambers. They toast and smash their glasses. They, too, are not afraid to die. Ragyo and Nui are formidable opponents, and know that their lives will be in jeopardy. However, their loyalty is greater than their fear. Satsuki knows better than anyone what Ragyo and Nui are capable of, but she doesn’t let that stop her. Ragyo mercilessly beats her, but as long as Satsuki can stand, she keeps fighting. Unfortunately, she loses that fight, but she still isn’t completely beaten. When she has the chance, she blows up the stadium. She was only in her underwear, so it’s a miracle she survived.

This scene really stands out to me. Satsuki is going along with Ryuko’s plan and is trying to buy her some time, but if you look at her face, you can see that she’s expecting to be stabbed. However, Ragyo grabs her by the face and tries to demoralize her. It’s not that she wasn’t intending to kill Satsuki, but she couldn’t resist pouring more salt into her daughter’s wounds before she did. She was under the impression she just killed Ryuko, and she just had to make sure Satsuki felt as terrible as humanly possible before she killed her. Thankfully, Ryuko’s plan works, and Gamagori is there in time to block Ragyo’s blow.

The most wholesome moment where she risks her life is when Ryuko is falling back to Earth.  She drops the “high and mighty” persona and is only fueled by her protective older sister instincts. Ryuko is merged with Life Fibers, so she could’ve hit the ground and been okay, but Satsuki isn’t taking that chance. She doesn’t want her baby sister to experience anymore pain. Without thinking twice, she runs and catches her. What’s so special about that you ask? Well, I did a little research, and the average meteor that enters Earth’s atmosphere travels at speeds ranging from 25,000 mph to 160,000 mph. That’s insane!! 

I know I talk about this moment a lot, but it just really gets me. When Satsuki and Ryuko first met, she thought nothing of her. Nothing at all. When Fukuroda asks to finish her off, Satsuki doesn’t hesitate to give him permission. But after learning who Ryuko really was, she becomes the most important person in her world, and would die to protect her, and that is beautiful.

In the OVA, Satsuki’s will is gone. Ragyo and Life Fibers are no longer a threat, so she feels she has no purpose. She doesn’t put up a fight against Rei and even considers suicide. She doesn’t kill herself because if she did, Mako would die. After her will to go on is restored, Rei lunges at her with a kinfe, and Satsuki doesn’t even flinch. She grew up with Rei, so she probably had faith that she would do the right thing. Ryuko was also there, so I’m sure she would’ve intervened if necessary.

Got my Christmas present for myself today!!

Finally, after being in love with Kill la Kill for nearly five years and dedicating over 550,000 words to writing about it, I finally, finally own the complete series!

And I have my favorite episode at last!

And I can watch it with Japanese subtitles!

I no longer have to search for the right time stamp on Subtitle Edit to get the Japanese script!

(Of course, I mean no shade to Subtitle Edit and the subtitle files because they’ve been a great help over the years, but it’s nice to have working subtitles right on the video.)

And oh my gosh, the menu screens are so much more amazing than the American ones? Which just have a still image of the volume cover and that’s it? These creatively edit together footage from the featured episodes.

I ought to make some GIFs of these like I did for DARLING in the FRANXX because holy wow, they’re really neat.

And there’s also audio commentary from the staff and cast? And these fantastic art books that came with each volume? 

Just lookit some of this art. It makes me appreciate Kill la Kill even more.

Like. Mako’s poses are so expressive and fun!

These two are the cutest!

They get entire pages for their adorable friendship scene, and goodness gracious, it’s so beautiful. Look at all that detail and care put into these shots!

And while I’m talking about beautiful…

And there’s just so much life in these drawings! There are six whole pages dedicated to Ryuko throwing the chair and taking Senketsu off in episode 16, and heck. There’s a whole lot of powerful movement happening. (And I feel like all the focus the moment gets in these books just strengthens my old argument about how this sequence is incredibly important to the show.)

And some of these facial expressions! They’re gold!

And, I mean, this team made a sailor uniform so expressive and endearing!

Just. The way Senketsu’s sailor ties droop when he’s sad. Ow, my heart.

And speaking of “Ow, my heart…”

You ever think about how Ryuko was so devastated at Senketsu’s loss that it literally knocked her unconscious?

But these smiles, though…

Animation key frames from Kill la Kill OP 1. It’s really cool to see this sort of thing come to life in a very real way.

[GET THE FULL PDF HERE]

In 2013, my friends introduced me to the new hit anime Kill la Kill.

I hated it.  

In 2016, I stuffed a bunch of the 100,000+ words I’d dedicated to writing about the show into a hefty book.

What happened?

Who knows, but you can now read the result! Just over two years of love and enthusiasm fill up these 350-some pages of 80+ essays, all split up into ten sections: Character Relationships, Comparisons to Other Media, Design Choices and Symbolism, English Dub Script, OST, OVA, Ryuko and Senketsu, Specific Moments, Tag Essays and Quick Posts, and The Discourse. As may be obvious from such a list, the heart of much of this writing is—just as the series itself—Ryuko and Senketsu, but I’d hope there’s a little something here for every Kill la Kill fan.

Thank you to everyone who has supported me over the years. I couldn’t have put this together without all the encouragement I’ve received. Everyone who’s sent me asks and inspired me to keep yapping—you’re the reason this book exists! I’ve grown so much as a writer because of this community and through putting together this collection, and I cannot express how grateful I am for that.  

Special thanks too to h0saki, who has provided scans from various Kill la Kill books, and to mikiryuko, who has provided fans with translations of un-localized Kill la Kill material, as well as all the anonymous contributors who have provided similarly. I couldn’t have done many of the essays here without your work!

While essentially a masterpost of the posts I’ve made concerning this series, this book is also a little more than that in that it features revised and updated writing, additional commentary, and, well, it’s all put in one nice, handy, convenient place. However, it’s far from everything, and does not include all the many great conversations I’ve had, so if for some strange reason anyone’s ever thirsting for even more Kill la Kill talk, there are still always the analyses pages on my blogs.

Thank you for taking a look! I hope you enjoy.

Full content list under the cut! These all link back to the original essays (if there is an original essay), but please note that the ones in the book are cleaned up and include additional commentary.

✄ For a newspaper ad, Kill la Kill scriptwriter Kazuki Nakashima wrote a short introduction for Ryuko from Ryuko’s perspective. In the introduction, Ryuko reveals that she’s been alone for as long as she can remember and “only [she] could protect [herself].” She then talks about Senketsu, noting that it’s strange that she’s wearing him (perhaps especially because she’s been alone so long and has never particularly trusted anyone else?), but finishes by saying that how Senketsu makes her look doesn’t matter so long as she comes out a winner: “That’s the spirit of Ryuko Matoi.”

✄ Ryuko is very much depicted as a Japanese delinquent (and she describes herself accordingly in episode 8). Her initial outfit and Senketsu are clearly modeled after sukeban, “girl boss,” a term used to describe the culture of the rebellious schoolgirl gangs that began appearing in Japan in the 1960s and 1970s. These all-girl groups would modify their school uniforms, wearing Converse sneakers, cutting their blouses short, and so on. Interestingly, even prior to Kill la Kill, when Ryuko more resembles a “typical” high school girl, she still wears different-colored socks than the other girls, much like sukeban would.

✄ Ryuko’s appearance also takes some cues from Sukeban Deka, a series from which Kill la Kill draws a ton of inspiration from (perhaps most obviously, the first ending sequence of the series is a straight-up homage to a Sukeban Deka ending sequence). Particularly, take note of the red glove.

✄ Ryuko’s initial jacket, too, is associated with rebellion and delinquency. The jacket is known as a sukajan, which was initially a specially-embroidered “souvenir jacket” that American soldiers brought home from Japan after World War II. However, in the 1960s, the sukajan became a symbol of defiance, representing a rebellion against the growing popularity of the American “preppy” styles in Japan. Sukajan were then connected with gangs and criminals.

✄ Even Ryuko’s speech is indicative of her delinquency and rebellious attitude. Ryuko (I believe) uses ヤンキー語文法 (yankii (yankee) speech), a crude, disrespectful manner of speaking (which the English dub tries to convey with Ryuko’s considerable potty mouth, her tendency to cut the “g’s” off her verbs, her usage of words like “ain’t,” etc.) Here is an excellent discussion of yankii speech (and its similarities/differences to yakuza speech), which also references this blog post here that delves further into yankii speech.

✄ However, Ryuko is also depicted rather sweetly even at the start. In the first episode, she steals a delivery bike to make an escape, which is fitting of a delinquent. Later in the episode, though, she returns the bike back to where she’d taken it with a note reading, “My deepest apologies for borrowing without permission.”

✄ The “JK2″ sticker on Ryuko’s guitar case is meant to say that she’s in her second year of high school. As Japanese high schools begin at the tenth grade, Ryuko is then an eleventh grader (an American junior), and she still has one year of high school left. As revealed in the OVA, Ryuko (and Mako) will attend Rinne-Dou High School in Kanagawa for that last year. (Interestingly, Gamagoori attended Rinne-Dou Junior High before transferring to Honnouji Academy.)

✄ The other sticker on Ryuko’s guitar case is of Kuri-chan, the main character of a classic, 4-panel manga series of the same name. Kuri-chan is apparently Ryuko’s favorite mascot character.

✄ At the Complete Script Book Event in 2014, it’s revealed that Ryuko doesn’t go to university after graduating from high school, getting a job immediately upon graduation instead. It’s said that “it’d suit [Ryuko] to be a babysitter or something like that” because she “probably can’t do jobs that force her to work with customers, but she is good with kids.”

✄ In episode 7, when Ryuko throws her bath bucket at the Mankanshokus, you can see that she uses Timotei shampoo (and rinse).

✄ In episode 6, Ryuko is shown brushing her teeth with a bunny toothbrush. The Kill la Kill artbook SUSHIO CLUB LOVE LOVE KLKL has a page dedicated to the “Toothbrushes of the Mankanshoku Family” that includes illustrations of Ryuko, Mako, and Mataro’s toothbrushes. (Ryuko’s is the bunny, Mataro’s is the eyepatch cat, and Mako’s is the bear (?))

✄ By episode 5, Ryuko is shown using a personalized bowl with her name on it while eating dinner at the Mankanshokus.

✄ At Anime Expo 2014′s Kill la Kill panel (6th post from the top), it’s revealed that from what Ryuko saw of her father’s killer, she deduced that the killer had to be a high school student of around 17. As such, Ryuko spent six months going from high school to high school before finally getting to Honnouji Academy. 

✄ The series suggests that Ryuko becomes so convinced that Satsuki killed her father that she reworks her memories to change the Nui-like silhouette she remembers to a figure that more resembles Satsuki instead. 

✄ As a series that loves wordplay and puns, Ryuko’s name is surely filled with meaning. Folks who know much more than me have written about this, so I’ll point to this post and this post that discuss some Ryuko name meanings. I will say, though, that one of the most prominent meanings I see behind Ryuko’s name is “abandoned child” (which no doubt refers to how Ragyo literally threw Ryuko away), since the 流 (ryuu) of Ryuko’s name is a kanji that represents ideas of “washing away” and “forfeiting.” (And the 子 (ko) represents “child.”) That said, though, it was explained at the Connichi Kill la Kill panel in 2014 that “Before my body is dry” is Ryuko’s theme because the kanji 流 (ryuu) represents “fluid” and 子 (ko) represents “child” and Ryuko “is a child who is easily influenced by others and thus loses her way quickly.”

✄ Though Ryuko is widely understood as a big lemon eater, she’s actually only depicted with lemons three times within the series and in official, non-concept art (as far as I’m aware): as a part of her introduction in episode 1, in the first opening sequence, and on CD art for the first volume.

✄ In contrast, Ryuko is shown eating/with croquettes many, many times throughout the series (episodes 2, 5, 7, 22), and the disc art for the final volume (9) even depicts her holding up a croquette.

✄ In fact, as revealed at the Complete Script Book Event in 2014, Ryuko’s favorite food is actually gameni, a dish of chicken and vegetables.

✄ That same event also revealed that Ryuko’s least favorite food is konnyaku, “because it reminds her of Uzu,” whose family owns a konnyaku business (and who is kind of obsessed with konnyaku himself). Funnily enough, though, Ryuko seems to enjoy eating konnyaku in the second Drama CD.

✄ In the first Drama CD, Ryuko claims that she’s excellent at cramming, but when it comes to cramming for a big group exam coming up at Honnouji Academy, she ends up sleeping for nearly a week in the library instead of studying. Listen to her dramatic apology to her teammates from about 3:47 - 4:00 here.

✄ The first Drama CD also features Ryuko “correctly” understanding that Satsuki’s eyebrows aren’t truly thick.

✄ In Track 3 of the second Drama CD, Ryuko and Senketsu make a daring escape through Guts’s butt.

✄ The third Drama CD features a bizarre plot where a sentient Life Fiber bug, Minomushi, creates a white T-shirt body for himself that Mako finds. Minomushi then drains Mako’s energy, transferring her consciousness into his T-shirt body (which Mako can then control). (I think.) (Yes, Kill la Kill is batshit.) The Mako/Minomushi T-shirt proceeds to attach itself to the Elite Four, resulting in a bunch more batshit scenarios where Mako speaks through the Elite’s voices. When Mako speaks through Uzu, Ryuko gets super creeped out when “Uzu” tries to treat her like Mako would, dodging “Uzu’s” hug and telling “Uzu” to not call her “Ryuko-chan.”

✄ In the fourth Drama CD, which takes place immediately after Ryuko learns of her Life Fibers and her relation to Ragyo, she falls unconscious desperately trying to convince herself that she’s human. 

✄ The lyrics for many of Kill la Kill’s vocal pieces suggest that they are about Ryuko. Though nothing has been officially confirmed (as far as I am aware), it seems clear that “Before my body is dry” is a duet between Ryuko and Senketsu, “Till I Die” and “Suck your blood” are songs from Senketsu to Ryuko, “I want to know” is from Isshin to Ryuko, and “New World Symphony” and “Light your heart up” are from Mako to Ryuko. I’ve also heard conflicting information that “Ambiguous,” the show’s second opening, is either entirely from Satsuki to Ryuko or half Ryuko to Senketsu and half Satsuki to Ryuko, and I’d make a case that “Sirius,” the first opening song, is one from Ryuko to Senketsu. The first ending song, “Sorry, I Can’t be a Good Child,” I would also argue to be from Ryuko’s perspective.

✄ On the disc art for volume 8, Mako is shown pushing Ryuko and Satsuki together (perhaps because Ryuko is shy and needs a little help to be sisterly with Satsuki?)

✄ Akira Amemiya’s illustration of Ryuko and Senketsu having fun at the beach (which first appeared in the 49th issue of Nyantype magazine in late 2013) later became two official cards for the Kill la Kill card game and a figurine, which might maybe imply that “Senketsu’s Date with Ryuko” is a canon event.

✄ Similarly, there is a plethora of animator art featuring Ryuko that isn’t officially canon to her character but is still fun to consider. For instance, character designer/animator Sushio draws quite a bit of post-series Ryuko/Mako, animator Kengo Saito once created a comic in which Ryuko works part-time at a clothing store, and something that never fails to get my heart aching is Sushio’s depiction of little Ryuko celebrating a happy Christmas with her father.

i will protect this smile

I just- Ryuko, when she smiles out of genuine happiness, just has the purest smile ever, like, oh my god i’m crying right now my baby is happy she feels loved this is everything i’ve ever wanted also just the warmth she looks at Mako and Senketsu with melts my heart every single time and will probably write a rant about it later-

i love my dorky emo cinnamon roll daughter and i love this show

Long time coming, think over a year now but its finally done!

Better late than never eh?

I heard about the Kill La Kill game that was just announced and it reminded/inspired me to finish this piece that LIS derailed over a year ago. This time digital!

⋆ gif request meme ⋆