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I'm wondering if other people feel this way about Ryuuko. I felt like her arc was backward, and by the end Satsuki was the more interesting and compelling character.
Like she comes in as this cool lemon-eating badass who seems like she's gotten by on her own merits, self-driven, self-motivated, continually improving because of her willpower and inner strength. But as the series goes on she seems more and more dependent on waifu fibers, first with Senketsu and then when we/ she finds out she's [spoilers]. Whereas Satsuki at first seems like a coddled rich kid who is handed everything she could want including power, but by the end I realized she is what Ryuuko seemed like at the start - self-made in terms of strength and determination. She was incredibly strong even without Junketsu, whereas Ryuuko may not have succeeded at all, even against normal human opponents, without her natural advantages and Senketsu.
Maybe all Trigger shows have this problem. TTGL involves finding a mecha that gives them their main advantage. I understand it's powered by determination, but they still stumbled across an existing machine to convert it that way. I've only seen the first season of LWA, but Akko seems the same way. She never really succeeds at being a witch, and she kind of lucks into unlocking the magic words or whatever, especially thanks to stumbling on the Shiny Rod and getting to keep it. And I know she is wonderful in other ways and fixes things in her own special way, but there's still that theme/ message of failure - that some things just can't be overcome.
