Recap: After defeating Gamagoori, Ryuko goes on to fight Houka Inumata, Honnouji Academy’s information and tech specialist.

Gee’s Thoughts: Things are getting pretty crazy as Ryuko moves onto the next challenge, resident tech guy Inumata. Compared to Sanageyama and Gamagoori, we’ve seen relatively little of Inumata and Nonon’s powers and personality so this episode was a welcome sight. That is, if Inumata’s fight wasn’t relegated to a 10 minute scene. While he does get a nice 4:3 ratio flashback like all the others, it seems Inumata’s motivation basically boils down to, “I wanna hack stuff and get the most data.” That said, his sudden surrender in the face of Ryuko’s overwhelming power may simply be another ploy. Still, now both Gamagoori and Inumata are without a uniform. It’ll be interesting to see what Satsuki is planning, and indeed, it is quite obvious she’s up to something.

All that said, Inumata’s fight will make for some truly glorious gifs and reactions pictures in the future.

Nonon jumps into the fray right afterwards, and we finally get to see the self-proclaimed “closest” to Satsuki in action. Predictably, her uniform’s transformation involves music. A little less predictably, it transforms into a tank, and then later into a goddamn plane. Yeah, anyone expecting another fanservicey outfit like Ryuko or Satsuki’s is going to be disappointed. Personally I like it as it does a good job of implying a lot about Nonon. Based on her flashback, you see a girl who’s always relied on her “friendship” with Satsuki to get ahead. Even in the present, she uses that arbitrary qualifier to claim superiority over the other Elite Four. And yet, based on Satsuki’s reaction to Nonon’s lofty claims, it would appear that it’s a rather one-sided relationship. Whereas Gamagoori earned Satsuki’s respect, Nonon simply earned her place by being one of the first people to pledge loyalty to Satsuki. When Nonon inevitably loses, it’ll be interesting to see how well she takes it. The end of this episode implies it will not be a pretty sight.

Elsewhere, resident sexy teacher Mikisugi gives our old mohawked friend Tsumugu a call about Ryuko and Senketsu’s increasingly rapid uniform evolutions. I like how this element of the episode brought back old tensions about the dangers of kamui. If Kill la Kill is anything like Gurren Lagann, I suspect the rapid advancement of the kamui is similar to the dangers of the spiral nemesis, and that going too far could end up killing Ryuko or causing her to lose control, whether Senketsu means it or not. It’s a subplot to certainly consider, as Ryuko has now shown not just one, but three different transformation abilities in the last two episodes. With the tournament still ongoing and Nudist Beach appearing to mobilize in response to Ryuko, it looks like Kill la Kill is going to keep up the hectic pace next week.

Zigg’s Thoughts: A strong episode, albeit one that focused more on action and perhaps passed up a few chances for character development. I enjoyed the unpredictability of Inumata’s sudden surrender, which fits in well with his ‘tech guy’ role and helps subvert the gauntlet formula they’ve been going for. It does feel a little bit like a time filler however and I do hope we get more of him later – as Gee mentions his motivation seems a touch shallow and we’re not given a great deal of insight into his character. Since the Elite Four have been defeated rather than killed, I have to imagine they’ll still be playing prominent roles in the story, just in a slightly altered capacity.

As for the Nonon battle, it’s a surprisingly similar pattern. I enjoyed the unpredictability of her transformed state – being absolutely certain she’d go for ‘crazy magical girl’, the resulting music tank, complete with awesome recorder missiles, was a very cool alternative. Again though I was a little frustrated by how the character aspect was sort of pushed to the side. We see that she’s been with Satsuki the longest and that clearly their ‘friendship’ is a decidedly one sided affair, but I wanted them to put more flesh on the bones of that. Nonon’s been easily the most interesting of the Four to me so far, given her childish sense of superiority and repeated boasting of her connections – let’s get some insight into how she became that way, more than just a brief flashback. Having said that, there’s still next episode for a truly spectacular friendship rejection/emotional meltdown combo. I jsut kind of wish this didn’t have to happen in the middle of a battle. Given the obvious chance at a decent story here, a focus episode like Sanegeyama got would really have given more a chance for the narrative to breathe.

Still, that’s not really KLK‘s style, and the breathless sequence of ridiculous transformations continues apace here. Mikisugi’s questionable activities certainly tip the balance more toward the mysterious Nudist Beach being antagonists rather than allies, but I’m not yet prepared to write them off as straight baddies yet – it seems the situation could be a lot more complex than that. Having said that, they’ve certainly got an agenda beyond just aiding Ryuko, and that’s encouraging. Kill la Kill‘s doing well at the high octane fights for now, but there needs to be something lurking at the end of this shakedown that’ll make them worthwhile.