Here at the end of Kill la Kill, viewers are forced to confront its most serious question: "What's butts got to do with it?" The show's blatant themes of "exposure" were couched in comedy for most of its run, but this accelerated shift to drama in the second half seems determined to make that obsession with bare flesh less of a laughing matter. That's not to say that comedy has vanished from the series. There are still Nudist Beach jokes. The increased amount of bare skin required for the rebellion is still inherently funny. Still, there's an undercurrent of emotion to all these bare bottoms and breasts that didn't exist before. That's exactly as strange as it sounds, but the series genuinely becomes more appealing and heartwarming as it progresses to its finale, resulting in a unique and unforgettable conclusion with ten times the "oomph" that Kill la Kill started with.

After being confronted with the reality that she is a "monster," a part-human-part-life-fiber experiment created initially to serve her mother, and then given Senketsu to serve her father's goals, Ryuko gives in to despair. What's the point of fighting if you don't know what you should fight for or even who you're supposed to be? Ragyo takes advantage of this and offers Ryuko an escape through sweet submission. This leads into easily the series' most sentimental and vulnerable moment thus far, as Ryuko covers herself with Junketsu and gets lost in fantasies of a "normal" adolescence. She was born a healthy human baby, and raised by a loving mother all her life. She was a good girl in school, not some lonely delinquent. She's going to get married in a pure white wedding dress. Everything is normal. These are the clothes that fit her.

Except they aren't. Mako once again declares that Ryuko would be happier as an exhibitionist, while Satsuki reprimands Ryuko for being afraid to expose her true strength by embracing Senketsu. (Ryuko is more heavily armored and covered up with Junketsu on; it's a slight but noticeable difference.) All the friends and family that Ryuko found for herself by attending Honnouji Academy plead with her to take it off, take it all off, and no matter how silly it sounds, it's played completely straight. Kill la Kill has decided that it has something to say, and the audience has become invested enough in these characters to listen up, even if this message seems like utter nonsense. Maybe it is utter nonsense, and that's the point.

So why nudity? It's pretty simple, as it turns out. Baring it all means baring your true self, even if that self is weird, crazy, and just doesn't fit in with the rest of proper society. Being exposed to the world by wearing Senketsu made Ryuko uncomfortable, but his skimpiness was always meant to be a feature rather than a bug. The less of her body he covered, the more free she was to express her true power and true feelings, joining with his own to become something completely new and inimitable. Not everyone accepted this, but people like the Mankanshoku family, Nudist Beach, and eventually Satsuki's own Elite Four took notice of Ryuko's bravery and decided to fight for her even when she had finally lost her way. Exposing your true self to others is hard, maybe even harder than exposing your junk, but if you never do it, you'll never find the right weirdos to embrace you in all your naked glory. Satsuki and Ryuko were both neglecting honest, vulnerable human relationships in their respective vendettas, but after stripping all that bitterness and fear away, they can finally encourage each other to become the best (and most badass) versions of themselves.

Okay, after they beat the living stuffing out of each other. The important thing is that you always make up before you die of blood loss, right?

It takes many episodes of inspirational speeches, but Ryuko eventually finds her way home again, right before all hell breaks loose and Kill la Kill decides to try topping itself tenfold every five minutes leading up to the final credit roll. There's a good reason for this. If the show's artistry was beginning to weaken in the previous volume, it sinks to tatters at the top of this one. Ryuko's turn to the dark side features the show's most limited animation yet, along with monologues so protracted that you can practically hear the VAs gasping for breath between lines. (Not really though, both the sub and dub are stellar efforts that bleed undying energy.)

Trigger's just biding their time for the final united battle against Ragyo though, where the direction, art design, and animation skyrocket to the peak of their powers with new visual ideas packed into every minute of the final two episodes. The show's successful appeals to emotion keep it afloat when the visuals are coasting too hard, but it all becomes forgotten in the jaw-dropping series of encores that make up the finale. Ragyo was always an enchanting villain, but her presence in the show becomes unforgettable during this final showdown, rife with world-consuming calamity, tons of new outfits, and some sly Evangelion references. It's an ending that makes you want to stand up and applaud, and those don't come along very often.

Notable extras on this release include the requisite postcards, double-sided poster, clean themes, a Mikisugi-narrated recap episode, and the final installment in the making-of documentary, which contains many surprisingly vulnerable anecdotes from Trigger staff, definitely the must-see extra of this collection on the whole. Kill la Kill's English dub continues to be one of the very best in recent memory, as well as one of the only anime dubs that feels as free and loose in its comedy as a native English-language cartoon. (Changing Nonon's repeated barb of "slacker" to more creative permutations like "slackerdoodle" and "slackenstein" as time went on was a particularly welcome adaptive choice.) It's also worth noting that Erica Mendez's turn as Ryuko, which I mentioned being the wobbliest part of the cast in my review of volume one, has evolved to become the strongest part of the dub instead. Ryuko does a lot of screaming in these final episodes, but there's a finesse to Mendez's performance that holds it all together, delivering hurt-angry Ryuko, comedic-evil Ryuko, and triumphant-passion Ryuko with impressive range and even subtlety where she may have been rougher around the edges many episodes ago. It's inspiring to hear an actress grow with their character, and Mendez has clearly broken out of her shell alongside Ryuko over the course of the series.

The last big on-disc extra is the "episode 25" OVA, which is really in a class by itself. Kill la Kill wasn't in need of an epilogue, but this OVA is the coolest thing fans never knew they needed, packed with action, comedy, and the last vestiges of ideas that Trigger couldn't pack into the series proper. Since the main show was all about Ryuko's catharsis, with Satsuki as a supporting player, this OVA gives the elder sister of the pair more closure with a heartwarming expression of character growth that has to be seen to be appreciated. It serves as a worthy and even enriching final coda to a show that didn't seem to need one. After seeing it, the series doesn't feel complete without the OVA and its softer, more feminine take on the adrenaline-fueled finale, so it's great to have it on this release.

In the beginning, Kill la Kill refused to be forced into any one mold. It was a Showa-era action show, but also a shonen battle tournament series, but also a coming-of-age-magical-girl-seinen-hybrid-monstrosity, and yet it was none of those things. Kill la Kill was just comfortable in its own naked skin, streaking out into the world in search of the right weirdos to appreciate it. Like its heroine Ryuko, it embraces its nature as "utter nonsense," and declares this with a scream on the verge of shattering. It accomplished exactly what it set out to do, and while it may not be for everyone, it's wonderfully tailored by the artists who poured their blood into its creation and a perfect fit for animation lovers in sync with its wacky vision. Kill la Kill is one of a kind, and its impact won't soon be forgotten.

Now put on some damn clothes already.