@The_T @aescling not that you asked me, but
Your mileage will vary with Kill la Kill, it is one of my absolute favorite things ever but I can also understand watching the first episode and being bothered enough to decide to not watch another episode.
As to why I love it so much, it is a visual feast. Most anime praised for their animation have extremely static, flat presentation during scenes without any action, but Kill la Kill tries to make both scenes with exposition, character interactions, and action have equal amounts of visual flair. This is, in general, something very important to me in the media I watch, and most things I end up loving (Cowboy Bebop, Space Dandy, Evangelion, Mononoke, Tár, all of the Wachowski films) have this quality.
It is also a deeply earnest show, and it does this while being extremely over-the-top and campy. It is often silly on purpose, and much more interesting in the emotional and thematic truth of a scene than whether it adheres to internal logic (or the laws of physics). For this reason it can disarm viewers people who have trouble genuinely engaging with something silly that isn't parody or satire.
The show is a coming-of-age tale and is interested in female sexuality and not all of this is presented in good taste. Presenting sexuality as something scary that happens to you, something that is suddenly forced upon you during your formative years, something that are forced to reckon with, is an worthwhile thing to depict in a work of art, and something I find deeply relatable as someone who is not ace. But presenting this with a female character who is filmed in a highly-eroticed way that is meant to be eye candy for the audience is deeply uncomfortable to watch. This is a frustrating thing to me, as the show is deeply interested in fascism, power, and the various ways that revolutionary actions are co-opted by the state, and the show understands that unashamed ownership of one's own body and sexuality will be critical for any revolution that matters. And it muddies this message, one that is often beautifully presented in the show, by pairing it with frequent gross appeals to the male gaze. (This is complicated thing about all of Studio Trigger projects from this era, (Gurren Lagann, Dead Leaves, Panty & Stocking.))
And despite these issues it is a show that makes me giddy to watch. It is just so stylish and indulgent, and it will slide effortlessly from a thrilling action moment that fills me with hype to an absurd joke that cracks me up and then to an emotional beat occurs that lands with such intensity that I want to cry.
It also has a canonical lesbian main character and it gets pretty gay
@wallhackio @aescling it is way too 1 AM for me to read that much text. I will try again tomorrow
Presenting sexuality as something scary that happens to you, something that is suddenly forced upon you during your formative years, something that are forced to reckon with, is an worthwhile thing to depict in a work of art, and something I find deeply relatable as someone who is not ace.
aces have to deal with that shit too! i could totally see her being on that spectrum the way her sexuality is depicted, and now that i think about it, the metaphor works really well as asexual horror imo
@aescling you don't need to do this, you are under no obligation to answer this challenge but:
sell me on it. I haven't seen it but I've never understood what the appeal could possibly be.
But. I am downloading more and more shows and movies and anime to add to my Jellyfin server, so I'm open to suggestions.