Dressed to Kill – Kill la Kill versus the Fashion Industry

Through the conflicts of its characters, its focus on clothing, and particularly through its handling of its primary villain, Kill la Kill explores and denounces modern society’s intense fashionista culture.

We’re introduced to the clothes-based caste system of Kill la Kill almost as soon as the first episode commences. Before we’re even shown the main character, Matoi Ryuko, we’re shown the always-taller-than-everyone-else Gamagoori Ira, the student in charge of maintaining discipline at Honnouji Academy, the main setting of the piece. He disturbs a class on the rise of Hitler by kicking in the door, and announcing that he’s discovered a plot to unbalance the Academy!

“I’m on official business!”

The crime? The theft of a Gokuseifuku, a special school uniform that grants the wearer incredible powers. Gamagoori taunts the culprit to wear the uniform, and as soon as he does, his pig-like physique slims to Bruce Lee levels of fitness and he launches into a Dragonball-esque flurry of motion. His attacks, however, are wasted on Gamagoori, who also wears a Gokuseifuku – but his, as he says, is a Three-Star Uniform, and the attacks of a One-Star Uniform-wearing student like the culprit ‘won’t even touch me!’

“However, my uniform… is a Three Star!”

The naked, mutilated corpse of the thief is left hung out in front of the school as a warning to others, and we’re introduced to the central conceit of Honnouji Academy: the clothes you wear literally define your place in society. Weak, ‘useless’ students do not wear Gokuseifuku, and their families live in a lawless slum at the bottom of the mountain the Academy crests. Students with a bare minimum of talent wear One-Star Uniforms, and their families live in the metropolitan area above the slums. Two-Star Students are the heads of the various school clubs, and their families live in luxury. The only Three-Star Students we see are the major characters, the “Four Elites” who sit on the Student Council, and while their lives aren’t revealed, the head of the Academy itself – Student Council President Kiryuin Satsuki – lives in an enormous mansion she appears to have to herself. While the Four Elites are unique, each one using a Three-Star Uniform designed perfectly to suit them, other Gokuseifuku-wearing students aren’t so lucky. Two-Star Uniforms are worn by the heads of the school clubs, and uniquely tied into that club – specifically for boxing, or playing tennis, or knitting. In other words, Two-Star students are defined solely by their talents, not by their personality – they are reduced to the clothes they wear. It’s even worse for One-Stars, who are all identical males who exist to be beaten up or used for menial labor by the other characters. Starless, however, are all unique and vibrant, as they lack Gokuseifuku to be constrained by, and the most unique characters – Matoi Ryuko and her rival, Kiryuin Satsuki – wear specialized combat uniforms called Kamui that leave them practically naked.

“Life Fiber Synchronization! Kamui Senketsu!”

This theme – of being worn by one’s clothes, instead of wearing one’s clothes – is repeated throughout the series, and ultimately forms the basis of the plot. In Kill la Kill, it ultimately transpires that humans were created by an alien organism called ‘Life Fibers’, which bonds with life-forms on the planets it lands on, propagates, and ultimately takes over the planet and causes it to explode, flinging Life Fibers across the galaxy in search of new planets. Gokuseifuku use Life Fibers in their construction – up to thirty percent, for Three-Star Uniforms – and the Kamui that Ryuko and Satsuki wear are made entirely out of Life Fibers.

The theme runs far deeper than this, however: at the start of the show, Ryuko can’t use her Kamui, Senketsu (“fresh blood”), effectively, because she’s overly embarrassed by its revealing nature, causing it to drink her blood too quickly and weakening her combat ability. Satsuki, on the other hand, immediately masters her own Kamui, Junketsu (“purity”), driving Ryuko into a corner. When Ryuko challenges her about her ‘exhibitionist’s dream’ of a uniform, Satsuku replies ‘Nonsense! This is a Kamui’s ultimate form, with unlimited power! The fact that you are bothered by the opinions of the riffraff only shows how petty you are! Know that I, Kiryun Satsuki, will stop at nothing to fulfill my ambitions! I will show neither shame nor hesitation in baring my bosom to the world! My actions are purity itself!’

“My actions are purity itself!”

This, and Mako’s Hallelujah Chorus interlude, give Ryuko the revelation she needs: she’s been letting Senketsu wear her, through her embarrassed focus on the revealing outfit, instead of wearing Senketsu. Conversely, Satsuki, with her overwhelming personality, dominated the power-hungry Junketsu in an instant, and while Ryuko is the subject of many a lecherous gaze in the first few episodes, nobody ever looks at Satsuki as an object of lust – her irrepressibly strong attitude completely eclipses the outfit she’s wearing; no man can see her as anything but Lady Satsuki, Honnouji Academy’s ruler. A key difference between them, however, lies in how Ryuko and Satsuki view their Kamui, and is foreshadowed as early as episode three: when Ryuko wears Senketsu, she declares it ‘Life Fiber Synchronization’, but when Satsuki wears Junketsu, she declares it ‘Life Fiber Override’. This clear difference goes on to become one of the most important parts of the endgame – the fact that Ryuko wears Senketsu as her skin, not her clothes, becomes incredibly important.

There are a few more notable instances where a character’s clothes come to dominate their personality. In episode 7, Ryuko decides to abuse Satsuki’s meritocracy to her own advantage by forming the ‘Fight Club’ with Mako – by constantly winning, their club rises in the rankings, and as they do, the lifestyle of Mako’s family improves accordingly. However, their luxuries ultimately tear them apart. Mako’s mother becomes a socialite; her father, a playboy; her younger brother, a disaffected dilettante; and Mako herself comes to wear the Fight-spec Two-Star Uniform of the Fight Club President. In effect, they’ve let their position in life dictate who they are, instead of letting who they are dictate their position in life: their clothes are wearing them, and, in the process, destroying the intimacy and relationships of their once-close-knit family.

“Observe, Matoi Ryuko! […] They’ve become slaves… pigs in human clothes!”

Ryuko herself suffers from letting her clothes wear her more than once – first in episode 11, when confronted with her father’s killer, she completely loses her head and with it, her ability to properly synchronize with Senketsu, causing the pair of them to mutate into a bizarre chimera creature that attacks everything around it in a blind rage. The second time, however, is worse: brainwashed by the villains, Ryuko is worn by Junketsu – which, as it transpires, is a tool designed to bring about the end of the world – and it uses her body to go on a one-man rampage, nearly killing all of Ryuko’s friends in the process.

“Stand back! It’s my job to put down… someone overwhelmed by a Kamui’s urge to destroy.”

This brings us to the villains: REVOCS, a global fashion company, and its villainous CEO: Kiryuin Ragyo, Kiryuin Satsuki’s mother. But where Satsuki gives off the golden light of the sun – referencing Amaterasu, the Shinto goddess of the sun – and is willing to revise her opinion of humans when shown a person of merit, Ragyo emanates a rainbow light – rainbows are connected with the Christian God – and believes that all humans, herself included, are simply sacrificial pawns to Life Fibers. Ragyo controls the Original Life Fiber, an enormous mass of red fabric, and her clothing company is in fact simply a step in her plan – to set up the Life Fiber’s destruction of Earth and consequent spreading through the galaxy. Simply put, she slowly buys out every other fashion and clothing company on the planet, so that everyone is wearing REVOCS-brand clothing. Each article contains a single Life Fiber, which, when activated, causes the clothes to wear the human inside them, becoming a lifeform of living clothing, called ‘COVERS’, which is both a soldier ant, for combat and a breeding ground, using the human inside to breed more Life Fibers.

It is for this reason that the resistance, Nudist Beach, is, unsurprisingly, made up of nudists: ultimately, avoiding clothes is the only way to avoid becoming a COVERS.

The first of the terrifying COVERS arrives.

While brand-name power has always been a powerful thing to have in the marketplace, Kill la Kill discusses the extreme end result. In the last twenty years, we’ve seen a significant rise in the promotion of fashion, particularly once it was discovered that “fashion fixers” were TV-marketable, as well as significant lowering of the age range for which sexualized clothing has been seen to be appropriate. Some chains, such as Dolly Girl, focus solely on selling sexualized clothing to girls under 10 years old. And where money speaks, social classes are formed – the brand of clothing you wear can, in many social circles, influence your position in the pecking order. The corporations know that; that’s why they pay so much for advertising. At all levels, from the rich socialite to the primary schooler, people will pay good money for the respect they’re given for wearing expensive clothes – in other words, people become defined by the clothes they wear, not by their personalities or abilities.

Like the victims of the COVERS, they become worn by their clothes, simply a body carrying a brand-name around.

While, in the past, an expensive price tag was seen as a mark of quality of fabric or design, in modern times being expensive is seen as a desirable quality in and of itself. Many fashion companies, such as FCUK, Tommy Hilfigger, and Pierre Cardin make their money by simply slapping their brand name on an article of clothing that is unremarkable in terms of material or design, and their brand-name power allows them to charge outlets (and for outlets to subsequently charge consumers) three to four times the price of an otherwise identical article lacking that brand name. This exploitation of a social fear – of being disrespected or shunned for not wearing expensive clothes – is effectively a license to print money as far as the fashion industry is concerned. How many years will it take for Kill la Kill’s setting to become a reality? Satsuki’s Orwellian Academy, where the individual is defined by their clothes, is already occurring in schools, in workplaces, in society – with a subtle class divide based on the expense of one’s clothes. And worse, how much longer until fashion companies make the logical next step, and begin simply asking you to pay them to be allowed to advertise for them? Selling their brand name instead of their clothing, so that the humans wearing them are simply carriers for a brand name – just like how REVOCS-wearers became hosts for the COVERS army?

The future.

Ultimately, Kill la Kill rejects the notion of being worn and defined by one’s clothes. Confronting Ragyo, who has fused with far too many Life Fibers, in the final episode, Ryuko and Senketsu declare: ‘True, we’re neither human nor clothing, but at the same time, we’re both! We are everything! People can’t become clothing; people are people and clothing is clothing!’ And, seizing the satellite that controls the Life Fibers that have activated all over the planet, they manage to destroy the COVERS and the Life Fiber shell the planet had become contained in, ending the crisis – and, with Ragyo’s death, ending REVOCS.

In the ending sequence, things have largely returned to normal, and people have gone back to wearing safe, non-REVOCS clothing, but there is an important change. While Ryuko reverts to wearing tomboyish clothes and the bomber jacket she wore in the first episode, Mako and Satsuki have begun wearing clothes and hairstyles that are vastly different from anything they wore in the show: while Satsuki initially wore a man’s military uniform and, later, Junketsu, in the epilogue, she wears an unabashedly feminine sundress and blouse. Mako, who was never without her uniform skirt and sailor uniform, instead wears a far-removed tracktop and hotpants.

Satsuki has yet to adjust to everyday life.

Even so, the girls wearing them haven’t changed. Unlike the former students of Honnouji Gakuen who defined themselves by their clothes, and the resistance army of Nudist Beach who defined themselves by their lack thereof, the girls choose to define themselves not by the clothes they wear, but by their personalities and abilities.

People are people, and clothing is clothing.

“People do not live for the sake of clothing!”

This piece was originally submitted as my final non-fiction assignment for the first semester of my Diploma of Professional Writing & Editing at Swinburne University.