10 Second Anime - Kill la Kill - Episode 8

Kill la Kill - Episode 8

Satsuki orders up another purge. Ryuko sees this as a vacation. Gamagoori drives like crazy.

After last week's purge of the 2-star suits, Satsuki decides to extend the purge all the way down to the 1-stars. If they can survive the week, plus a sudden death battle royale at the next assembly, they can reclaim their 1-star uniforms. Those who took suits off of other 1-star students will have a chance to keep them.

The Inner Council and Ryuko see this week as a chance for a vacation. Ryuko and Mako take a moped trip back to the old Matoi house to see if she can find anything else about her father's research. She reminisces about how they grew apart after her mother's death and how she found him stabbed with the scissor half she now carries. It wasn't the scissor that killed him, but the house blowing up after Ryuko caught a glimpse of someone with long black hair carrying a blade fleeing the scene. It certainly is suggestive of Satsuki, but the blade didn't necessarily have to be the other scissor half, and just her own. Ryuko finds the basement lab empty.

On her way back, the moped runs out of gas, and Mako and Ryuko get picked up by Gamagoori in a huge pink Cadillac. There's a truce of sorts since they don't have to attack each other during this purge week, but that doesn't stop other students from attacking Gamagoori. They get ambushed by the merger of the Automotive and Airsoft clubs. This means there's 2-star suits trying to take the 3-star suit away from Gamagoori. Bad idea.

Gamagoori flashes back to when he was student council president at another middle school, but couldn't stop the bullying of another student because he did not have external power, whereas the bullies were the children of an influential businessman and the Police Chief. Satsuki shows up wielding her own parents' power, buying out the car dealership and ousting the chief with bribery charges. Gamagoori has followed her ever since.

At the final battle royale at the end of the week, in addition to the scrum in the main field, 5 pillars rise up so that whoever is the king of that hill becomes a candidate for the Inner Council. The Elite Four are already atop their pillars, and Ryuko runs up the 5th one. Since it was probably going to end up that way anyway, they propose to each have a one-on-one fight with Ryuko while they're there. Gamagoori is the first to challenge.

One thing I hadn't noticed before is that all the 1-star students have particular hair styles made to look like old German Stahlhelms, the kind storm troopers wore. More of that fascist/nazi/communist iconography there. Another thing is about Ryuko's father's death. She didn't actually see him die, and since the wound from the stabbing wasn't that serious, he may have had a chance to get out of the house before it blew up. Still fits in with my fanciful theory that he's actually Senketsu. Maybe...

Also, Mako's other superpower, besides her Mako Moment, is the ability to sleep anywhere.