{"id":677,"date":"2014-01-30T15:34:11","date_gmt":"2014-01-30T20:34:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/?p=677"},"modified":"2014-01-30T15:34:11","modified_gmt":"2014-01-30T20:34:11","slug":"the-likable-villains-of-kill-la-kill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/the-likable-villains-of-kill-la-kill\/","title":{"rendered":"The Likable Villains of Kill la Kill"},"content":{"rendered":"

Something interesting happened while I was watching the last few episodes of Kill la Kill<\/i>: I found myself cheering on the villains.\u00a0 As Satsuki and the Elite Four launched their assault on the neighboring schools, I was eager to see them bring down the proverbial hammer on their opponents.\u00a0 At first glance, this shouldn\u2019t make any sense.\u00a0 Having spent a dozen episodes watching our charismatic heroine Ryuko take on this oppressive student council, how in the world did I end up wanting to see them win a battle?<\/p>\n

\"KLKEliteFour\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Like them… OR ELSE.<\/em><\/p>\n

I suspect that this odd turn of events was due in part to Ryuko\u2019s conspicuous absence from the action in the aftermath of episode 13.\u00a0 With the show\u2019s lone heroine busy recovering from her recent defeats and gathering the scattered pieces of her uniform, Kill la Kill<\/i> left its audience in a fascinating predicament.\u00a0 As the Elite Four squared off against the schools from Kobe, Kyoto, and Osaka, we were forced to choose between the villains we knew and their comically over-the-top opponents.\u00a0 The antagonists briefly became the heroes by default.\u00a0 Once Ryuko was back in the fight, things returned to their usual state.<\/p>\n

Still, the protagonist\u2019s absence alone shouldn\u2019t cause the audience to cheer on her enemies.\u00a0 The roots of this temporary insanity go far back into Kill la Kill<\/i>\u2019s earlier episodes.\u00a0 Each time Ryuko has fought with Satsuki or one of her lieutenants, the show has taken the time to fill in a bit of the student council\u2019s backstory.\u00a0 Over the course of the first dozen episodes, we\u2019ve come to understand why each member of the Elite Four is loyal to Satsuki.\u00a0 We\u2019ve also been given hints that Satsuki herself isn\u2019t on good terms with her powerful family.\u00a0 Compared to what the series has revealed about the Kiryuin business empire, the members of the Honnouji student council seem downright honorable.<\/p>\n

Kill la Kill<\/i> has also gone out of its way to humanize the Elite Four.\u00a0 We\u2019ve seen it with Sanageyama\u2019s loss to Ryuko in episode 6, where he was forced to confront and rise above his shortcomings.\u00a0 It happened again during the King of the Hill battle, as each defeated member of the Elite Four sat down on the sidelines as if they were regular students.\u00a0 Seeing a character suffer defeat only to come back stronger will almost always make the audience like that person more, regardless of his or her role in the overall story.\u00a0 They may have started out as an inscrutable group of bad guys, but the members of the student council have slowly established a grudging mutual respect with Ryuko.\u00a0 In doing so, they\u2019ve also managed to change the way we as the audience view them.\u00a0 We still want to see Ryuko beat them in a suitably epic fashion, but that doesn\u2019t mean we can\u2019t find them entertaining, charismatic, or even likable.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Kawaii Overthink is written by Paul Jensen. You can follow his ramblings about anime on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>.<\/address>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Something interesting happened while I was watching the last few episodes of Kill la Kill: I found myself cheering on the villains.\u00a0 As Satsuki and the Elite Four launched their assault on the neighboring schools, I was eager to see them bring down the proverbial hammer on their opponents.\u00a0 At first glance, this shouldn\u2019t make [Read more…]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=677"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":682,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677\/revisions\/682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sharkpuppet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}