FGC #507 Kill la Kill –IF

Working hypothesis: in the 21st century, for anyone that is privileged enough to be in a position where their creative output is capable of being excessively monetized, the scariest moments in their life were in high school.

And to the rest of the population, that’s horrifying.

Let’s state something plainly: high school sucks. It seems there was some golden age of high school that inspired Bruce Springsteen and more than a few musicals, but, as long as I have been alive, I haven’t encountered a single human being that considered high school to be the best years of their life. Scratch that, I have met people that “miss” high school, but they are, by and large, currently working at a location commonly referred to as “the sheep grindery”, and they’re generally addressed as “Crazy ol’ Gus who smells like a sheep grindery”. Modern high school is, by and large, less an educational institution for teenagers, and more of a daycare for proto-adults. The average high school student is old enough to be trusted with vehicles, voting, and vices, but they’re not trusted enough to acknowledge that the concept of “home room” is a daily waste of a precious 20 minutes of life. Study after study shows that teenagers need more freedom and more stimulating methods of learning during adolescence… so, of course, high school is little more than a graduated elementary school, only marginally different from the instructive environment that greeted these students when they were five. College at least offers the benefits of some manner of quad!

But it’s not the failures of the educational system that make an impact on most people. High school is often remembered as a fiercely competitive gladiatorial arena where only the strong survive… so much as “the strong” is defined as “has the right haircut”. Pop quizzes and alike may inspire a lifetime of impromptu nightmares about not being prepared, but the real horrors of high school are all social. Does Becky like me? Should I ask her out? If I ask her out, and she says no, will I be ostracized for the rest of my days? Everything in high school is magnified by having to deal with a social circle of hundreds that isn’t going anywhere for four years, so you damn well know that if you accidentally splash water on your jeans the first day, you’re going to be “Pissy Tammy” until college. And your name isn’t even Tammy! Who started calling you that!? What’s more, Tammy, is that high school seems almost designed to make you hate yourself and the things you enjoy. Like playing a music instrument? Ha ha, band geek, good luck having a social life. Loving the gymnastics of cheerleading? Well you better start loving some football players, too, because everyone is going to assume you’re sleeping with them anyway. Sci-fi club? Noxious nerd. Basketball team? Dumb jock. You literally cannot win, and even the most beloved of the quarterbacks spends his nights wondering why so many people are mean to him. Oh, did you just reflexively think, “well, yeah, people are mean to him because he shoves smaller kids into lockers”? Well then, yes, we can see why the very nature of high school leads to stereotypes and a virtual melting pot where it seems like 75% of the student body is against literally 100% of that same student body at all times.

And, yes, that can leave a mental impression.

Today’s game is Kill la Kill –IF. As one might expect, this is a videogame based on the anime Kill la Kill. By and large, the game follows a truncated version of the original Kill la Kill plot, as we’re dealing with a fighting game, and we don’t have all day to wait around and figure out special moves for a cadre of incidental characters. Kill la Kill the 26 episode animated series is reduced to about ten characters and an hour or two of “story mode” so its audience can just have some fun tossing fists back and forth. And what is Kill la Kill boiled down to its most essential story beats? It’s the story of the student body president fighting random, occasionally possessed students, and eventually leading to a final confrontation with her mother. Or, you can choose the other path, where you’re the “outsider” student, and you’ve got to battle all those students and the previously featured president of the class. And that’s it for the plot of Kill la Kill –IF. It’s a fighting game based on being a high school student, and it transforms the usual “high school is a struggle between students, other students, and adults” into a literal struggle that involves weapons and sentient uniforms that may or may not represent conformity. High school is Hell, at least you have a sword.

And the whole “high school is Hell” concept isn’t unique to Kill la Kill by any means. In fact, that very phrase was the pitch for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a television series from two decades ago that combined high school tropes with actual monsters every week. This week: Buffy has to care for an egg as part of that one child-rearing class that only seems to exist in fiction, and maybe the egg is set to hatch an Ancient One in the basement! It’s spooky and relatable! And, whether it was simply because Buffy was popular or writers latched onto the trope almost instinctively, the “high school is Hell” concept has been repeated across practically all media, from books to movies to videogames to whatever the hell Todd and the Book of Pure Evil was supposed to be (Jason Mewes, know that you are appreciated). And, to be clear, the “seriousness” of high school doesn’t just exist in these “hell” versions, either. Whether you’re watching an outright drama or a fluffy situation comedy, the crushing weight of the possibility of being socially embarrassed is often plumbed for pathos. Even something as silly as Sabrina the Teenage Witch (the OG, TGIF version, not the current Netflix iteration that literally involves Hell) frequently derives its 20-minutes of drama from the possibility that the titular Sabrina will be outed as an “other”. The message is clear: high school is deathly serious and vaguely traumatizing. It can and should be compared to eternal torture.

And, honestly, if high school is your idea of Hell, you’re living a pretty good life.

Does high school suck? Yes. But you know what sucks more? Not seeing your family on a holiday because your boss explains he “needs coverage”. Getting exposed to a fatal disease because “the economy has to keep rolling”. Being strangled because you bought your groceries with the wrong bill. People are suffering in horrible ways on a daily basis. When you consider that some people live their lives under constant threat of literal death, it seems disingenuous to worry about a situation where “the prom” is the biggest problem one can encounter. The idea of issues in high school being life threatening is a fun metaphor, but for so many people, high school and beyond being death-defying is not a metaphor in the least.

But if real life is so dangerous for so many people, why has the high school cow been milked so often it is pumping out powdered dairy substitute? The answer seems obvious: if you’re privileged enough to be in a position where your story is being told to the masses, then it is likely high school really was the worst time in your life. Why? Because high school really does suck for everybody.

And that’s a good thing.

You can’t win high school. We frequently revisit the trope of “the queen bee” or “the rich kid” because it presents the comforting lie that someone was the top of the high school food chain, but, in reality, those “winners” often spent most of their time wondering why they were losers. And, while this might be an untenable situation for those of us with some combination of OCD and an unfathomable drive to be liked by all, it does mean that no one student can be the “boss” of high school. You might be first in the class, but you’re not the quarterback. You might be the star of the track team, but you’re still going to sweat more asking out your prom date. No matter how much power you have in high school, you literally will never have enough, because there is always another aspect of the experience that will be outside of your grasp. And, since humanity has something of an issue with letting things go, you’re always going to remember that feeling of powerlessness. You’re always going to remember that hell.

And when you grow into power, when you grow up, get that degree, become the boss, and become the person that has the power to have their own stories told, that’s when you’ll look back at when you were powerless. High school was the one time when power was impossible, so that was the worst time in your life. You’re in power now. You’re the man, man, but remember when you were little more than a scrappy underdog? Remember when it was you against the world? Remember when you didn’t have the power to fail repeatedly yet still succeed? That was terrible! Never mind that there are people today that will never feel that same level of excessive privilege, you have to tell your story about how Debbie always went for that cool jock, and you could do nothing. No one can deny you your prizes now, but at least you can romanticize the times you had to struggle.

And everybody else has to struggle with real life being Hell.

The wonderful thing about high school is that eventually it inevitably ends. Maybe the same thing should happen with privileged men telling stories about high school.

FGC #507 Kill la Kill –IF

• System: Playstation 4, Nintendo Switch, and Steam. Essentially, all the big platforms that host anime nonsense.
• Number of players: This is a high school of two.
• Maybe actually talk about the game for a second: It’s a fighting game that, like Dragon Ball FighterZ, is here to let an excited audience “play the cartoon”. That said, the roster is extremely limited (two angry leads, the four generals, two boss ladies, and two DLC whackjobs), and the gameplay is extremely basic. Or maybe it’s complicated? I have a hard time distinguishing how complicated fighting games are, as, if there’s a dedicated “special” button, I kind of assume it’s more simple than King of Fighters. Regardless, despite some gorgeous visuals, this game feels more like a budget release than something that will enjoy three seasons worth of DLC.
• That old chestnut: Oh, excuse me, there are an additional two fighters on the roster: the two mains, but now they’re both dual-wielding. That’s, like, totally a different character. They play slightly differently!
• Small Favors: Also, considering the source material, it is a minor miracle this game doesn’t employ Senran Kagura-esque clothes-plosions. Everybody stays just as half naked as normal throughout every bout. Hooray?
• Say something nice: This is a pretty basic fighting game, but the story mode does include a few interesting fights against multiple opponents that seem… seamless? No, that isn’t quite right, but the “targeting” for quashing multiple objectives does at least feel vaguely natural. It would be cool to see this system adapted to a game that has more interesting mooks… Or at least some saibamen.
• What’s in a name: Kill la Kill is basically a pun in Japanese, and it boils down to “dressed to kill”. In English, however, it just sounds like someone learned, like, one Spanish word, and then gave up. Localization now!
• Story Time: This game’s plot isn’t merely an excuse to truncate KLK to something a little more fighting game-centric, it’s a dedicated “imaginary story” about student council president Satsuki Kiryuin’s chilling daydreams about destroying the high school hierarchy and her mother. This allows the game a chance to be “canon” (within Satsuki’s mind), but still change the plot and perspective as much as can be allowed by a judgmental fandom. That said, for highlighting a completely invented playground with theoretically no limits on storytelling potential, this tale still boils down to little more than an abbreviated version of the original, so what was the point?
• Favorite Fighter: Nonon Jakuzu is the uber-band geek drum major that attacks with classical music, so it’s kind of hard for me to say no to that. Her official biography says she’s also responsible for the gardening club, so, ya know, good for her.
• Did you know? Erica Mendez is the voice actress for main heroine Ryuko Matoi. Laura Bailey famously played Kaine in NieR. However, hearing Mendez shout at the Kill la Kill cast for being “a bunch of dumbasses” really evokes Bailey’s opening dialogue from the boot of NieR, and, to my gentle ears, it’s difficult to tell the two women apart. I guess there are only so many ways you can shout at anime dumbasses…
• Would I play again: No thank you. This is a fun game for two hours, but feels very slight. I won’t be revisiting this anime high school anytime soon.

What’s next? Random ROB has chosen… Chocobo Racing for the Playstation! Let us race monsters with birds that are known for outracing monsters! Please look forward to it!