Toonami has been Kill la Kill is often considered an action, comedy, and magical girl series, its exact relationship to the magical girl genre is underexplored. By playing with the tropes and expectations of magical girl shows, Kill la Kill provides very interesting commentary that, more than subverting magical girls, celebrates them.

Kill La Kill was the first series produced independently by Studio Trigger, airing in 2013. It would also be Studio Trigger's initial statement, showcasing its commitment to producing high-quality, provocative anime. Kill la Kill centers on Ryuko Matoi, a homeless student armed with one-half of a pair of scissors. She moves to Honnou City in search of her father's murderer who had stolen the other half of the scissors. There, she enters Honnouji Academy, which is ruled with an iron fist by student council president Satsuki Kiryuin.

Kill La Kill Starts By Deconstructing Magical Girls

Studio Trigger's First Solo Effort Takes The Renowned Genre To Its Limits

The series starts off with Ryuko and Satsuki's squads butting heads. Ryuko believes that Satsuki was behind her father's murder, and much of the earlier conflict is rooted in her suspicions. The magical girl elements are rounded off by outfit transformations and powerful weapons, while the school provides a classical setting for a delinquent story.

There's a catch, though. The outfits are made out of special fibers called life fibers. Their magical abilities are drawn from the fact that the outfits siphon the life force of the characters. Making matters worse, they're produced by a powerful group, of which Satsuki's mother is the leader. The suits are part and parcel of a plan similar to the Human Instrumentality Project in Evangelion, by which Satsuki's mother aims to control the world.

Because the suits provide power and are intentionally produced, they act to uphold the social hierarchies of authority and institutional power. Satsuki's gang's suits are specially designed. It's almost impossible to beat someone with a higher-ranking suit. Far from strange, spontaneous transformations for uplifting main characters, the suits are given a narrative purpose within the world of Kill la Kill. They render the characters vulnerable and literally suck their lives away; they're given a grave cost, both in and out of combat. At the same time, they reinforce the world's sociopolitical order.

Elements like these show Kill la Kill's intentions of deconstructing magical girl works. With the premise of getting to the root of her father's murder, the tomboy-ish Ryuko is thrust into a world where she takes on the role of a magical girl. In so doing, she doesn't immediately find a weapon she can use against evil, nor does she find straightforward friendships, but a world where everything is deeper and heavier than it seems on the surface.

Kill La Kill Then Puts The Magical Girl Genre Back Together

Kill La Kill Embraces Magical Girls While Challenging Genres And Demographics Writ Large

In media analysis, deconstruction typically refers to "taking apart" a genre, work, or trope to look at its biases, assumptions, and unquestioned elements. The sibling term, reconstruction, refers to knowingly putting those elements back into play, embracing the genre, work, or trope while being cognizant of their limitations.

Many anime are defined as deconstructions of the genre. The difference isn't that "deconstructive" works are dark while "reconstructive" works are optimistic. For example, One Punch Man both subverts and deconstructs the prototypical shonen hero, but in a way it would be difficult to call "dark". Kill la Kill reconstructs the magical girl genre by choosing to embrace its core themes and tropes.

Although it openly shows the deception and trickery that underlies any human connection, it also shows the power of love, unity, and friendship: common themes for magical girl franchises. There are multiple examples of this eventual triumph: the implied relationship between Ryuko and Maki, the embraced sorority of Ryuko and Satsuki, and the eventual unification of Ryuko and Satsuki's groups in order to fight against the overarching evils of Satsuki's mother and the life fibers.

It delicately weaves together story elements to simultaneously deconstruct and reconstruct magical girls, in a way that is very optimistic even at the same time as it's a searing critique of authority and institutions. Ryuko's trauma and outsider upbringing lead her to avenge her father's death; it turns out that her father (and in turn, her traumatic experiences) had provided her with the very tools she needed to fight back against a society that would render her an outcast.

Furthermore, just as the transformations render the characters vulnerable and are symbolic of the exploitation of girls and women, Kill la Kill presents a silver lining. To lambast Kill la Kill for its fanservice is, in effect, to tell girls and women to be ashamed of their own bodies. Certainly, there are plenty of anime where men are just as naked, but it's never accused of being unessential to the plot or being mere eye candy.

Kill la Kill presciently notes this. Satsuki reams Ryuko for her early embarrassment during her transformation, calling her nakedness minor and unimportant. Kill la Kill reclaims its deconstruction of magical girl transformations by turning exploitation into an opportunity for empowerment. This reversal is essential to the show's plot, and demonstrates a knowing embrace of an aspect of magical girl franchises which has led to raised eyebrows when men express interest in the genre.

Similarly, just like Kill la Kill blurs the lines of magical girl anime (traditionally shoujo) by using themes that are typically reserved for "seinen", Ryuko's tomboyish nature and hard upbringing make her universally relatable: she is a young girl, the target demographic of shoujo, yet endures the harsh reality of "dark", "seinen" themes. Where magical girls are typically intended for girls, Kill la Kill boldly declares this delineation absurd. As it celebrates magical girls, it subtly prompts viewers of all types to consider their relationship to the genre.

Put more elegantly: magical girls as a genre provided half of the scissors; Kill la Kill provides the other, then arms itself, cutting through magical girls, shoujo, seinen, and the demographics and norms underlying anime itself. Without a doubt, this is one part of why Toonami, not known for embracing shoujo, offered Kill la Kill alongside their typical shonen/seinen. It doesn't subvert magical girls by providing themes that appeal to boys and men, but actually shows that the ideas underlying magical girls apply to everyone.