kill la kill is one of those things where it's just like. yeah ok there's things to be said about the sexualization of high school girls and the rampant imagery of such a thing in otaku culture and that's probably not a good thing, i get it. i am not going to act like the show was made out of pure benevolent feminism either; there are a lot of bits where trigger very clearly tried to have their cake and eat it too, and while i don't think this is necessarily a bad thing because sexualized art and horny design is just as artistically valid as more strait-laced storytelling, i could not tell someone they're wrong for being made uncomfortable by all of the gratuitous ass shots of satsuki.
but if you change basically any single "problematic" facet of the show i just feel like all the intended themes don't work nearly as well. you can't make the characters not high-schoolers (the fascist imagery of japanese school uniforms is brought up by satsuki herself in the second episode) and you can't make senketsu and junketsu more modest (proud bodily autonomy and free-spirited nudity is thematic empowerment against the fascist antagonistic forces that want to garb themselves in clothing and only use sex as a nonconsensual means of humiliation and control). like it's so embarrassing to say "no dude you don't get it they look like that because of the story" but in kill la kill's case that's entirely it. they can't not look like that or else it's a completely different show thematically! ryuuko and satsuki are some of the best characters ever and are so refreshing for women in any sort of action fiction. please watch kill la kill.
