ElMariachi wrote:Now it's me, or is the scene in REVOCS an
huge reference to Evangelion?
You missed the biggest homage of all though: REVOCS, a sinister multinational god-building think tank answerable to apparently no one, is actually a mere front for COVERS...an even more sinister multinational god-building think tank answerable to apparently no one.
Finally got around to ep13 and wow, this was great. KLK's first cour definitely mostly felt like Inferno Cop or PSG in that you could throw it on in the background and kind of pay attention and enjoy it, it was a good cartoon and worth watching but pretty insubstantial, looped back around on itself pretty deliberately: one can tell the first cour was scripted on the idea "so there's this hardass delinquent girl and this hardass fascionista girl and they want to
fuck fight, time for shenanigans". And "shenanigans" is mostly how it turned out, you don't get the kind of tight, deliberate character-based plotting one saw in say Gurren Lagann. It's not as if it's bad thing, plenty of stuff was accomplished and the world well and truly built, the Big Four are all a bit bland except Gamagoori but who cares, they're the miniboss squad. Jesus did not weep over the lack of depth of Thymilph the Furious. Indeed that's the point, miniboss characters are appendages of the boss not persons in their own right and this goes double for KLK where the boss is the center of an authoritarian cult of personality which encourages dehumanization of those who participate in it. They're fun to look at and entertaining to various degrees. And they have shenanigans. Job well done, Trigger.
ep13 was just good TV though. Senketsu's relationship with Ryuuko is taken from the stuff of comedy that it was in the first cour into the realm of the angsty and then the tragic without missing a beat. More to the point without feeling terribly maudlin. Imaishi has a remarkable ability to remain detached from material that could easily be really really sappy. This episode has probably more empty space in it than every other episode until this point combined - Ryuuko can sit depressively in bed and do nothing like a champ - but it never drags. Shit's moving behind the scenes. If this sounds familiar it's probably because Eva pulls the same trick, creating tension and unease by allowing its protagonist to increasingly retreat from the world and stagnate while the world continues apace, getting more and more lethal and psychologically vicious behind his back. Of course one can't imagine Ryuuko remaining zonked out for the next eleven episodes, but one is good enough, really. She'll be back: one only wonders if Senketsu's inevitable resurgent form will be more revealing or less.
Absolutely love the Aikurou=Adam Ragyou=Eve theory though I think it must be at least slightly off the mark. Aikurou surely couldn't have created Junketsu, he's no kind of super-scientist. But I don't think that the original sin thing is just metaphor either: nudity and sexuality have been so strongly linked to power in this series. Gamagoori flogs himself with his dickwhips to let his uniform turn him into a literal phallus, for god's sake. To activate a kamui means to bring yourself closer to nakedness; to use its power means to accept that near-nakedness without shame. NYUUDISTO BEECHI suggest that nakedness IS power, straight up. At some point it should probably have to be explained why this is so, what's so good about being naked? The Eden narrative provides a useful explanation for this: nudity is the ideal, created state and clothing a rejection of it that paradoxically produces the sin and shame it is claimed to prevent. The idea is the same as spiral power kind of: power manifests as this kind of raw, generative animal vitality best expressed by nudity or, failing that, teenage girls in frilly talking sling bikinis.
