Kill la Kill Review

Trigger's first series is a piece of sustained noise. A girl with half a giant scissor blade attacks a school where uniforms grant power and a student council enforces the ranks, and the show moves faster than anything around it, built out of hard cuts, screaming typography, flat color and deliberately cheap animation that suddenly turns lavish for a single punch. The direction never lets a scene settle. Satsuki is why it works, a villain with an argument and a plan who is more interesting than the heroine, and the reveal of what she has actually been doing reframes the whole first half.

The costume premise means near constant nudity, and the defense of it, that shame is the enemy, is thinner than its advocates claim and puts many viewers off entirely. The last third stacks twists until the stakes stop registering, and the supporting club presidents are jokes rather than people. As spectacle, and as a statement of intent from a new studio, it is hard to beat.