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A(nother) 21st century take on an anime fave from the past, former model Eriko Sato gets a flimsy excuse to run around in her underwear and skintight cat suit…
With the world threatened by the menace of Sister Jill and her Panther Claw gang, is there anyone who can save it? Surely not the demure office worker Honey Kisaragi? But ah, actually Kisaragi (Eriko Sato, Funuke: Show Some Love, You Losers!, Carved) is also Cutie Honey, super-powered crime fighter, able to disguise her appearance under hundreds of, well… rather familiar looking faces as it happens.
With high camp style and a ‘Cutie… Flash’, Honey dispatches the villains, as long as she’s fuelled up on junk food, but even superheroes need allies, cue No-nonsense, no-fun cop Natsuko Aki (Mikako Ichikawa, Memories Of Matsuko) and super-cool reporter Seiji (Jun Murakami), on hand to help her track down Panther Claw’s well hidden base, Jill’s tower. (Yeah, mate, maybe you should look under that Tokyo Tower thing?).
Against spider villains and foes who want to serenade Honey with J-Pop before dispatching her, can she really defeat the bad guys?
Even when Cutie Honey originally came out, the thought of taking a vintage 70s anime TV series and turning it into a live-action film wasn’t exactly new –Casshern beat it to Japanese cinemas by a matter of weeks, and the overly energetic ‘making of’ documentary on the DVD admits to it being something of a trend. However, as it’s taken five years to get released in the UK, you could give the film the benefit of with the curve, if not exactly ahead of it.
Brought to the screen by legendary anime director Hideaki Anno (Neon Genesis Evangelion), the film keeps true to the source material – namely what its creator Go Nagai (who also created Devilman and UFO Robot Grendizer, and makes a guest appearance) referred to as the first shōnen manga – or to put it another way a manga aimed directly at titillating adolescent boys. In that respect, with the delectable Eriko Sato cavorting around in her underwear playing with her cat (now, don’t – that’s a cheap comment and you know it) or running around in spandex, frankly the charm goes way beyond a teenage audience.
Unlike the original manga (and an anime series overseen by Anno the same year this was released) those delights are kept pretty innocent. It’s all good, clean fun, even with the suggestion that Natsuko is smitten with Cutie herself. (Ah, yes, the old lesbian hints, eh?) The situations are utterly over-the-top, Eriko’s bubbly performance completely irrepressible. (An early film in her career, it’s interesting to contrast this with her appearance in Funuke. Though both characters are in their own ways oblivious to the real world, the complexities Eriko is now able to bring to the roles she plays are obvious.)
Easily more Powderpuff Girls than The Dark Knight, there’s more than a hint of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers to Cutie Honey. Indeed, perhaps deliberately the film seems a little cheap. Despite some inspired fight sequences which Anno makes look exactly like manga (the bits where they so that freeze frame where the background moves), he doesn’t seem to know how to shoot the real world. It’s often a little flat when it could be more saturated.
And though there are plenty of wacky characters involved, often the humour can’t quite find a level to pitch itself at, never quite making the Austin Powers yeah baby spoof it seems to be heading towards. The conclusion seems straight out of Neon Genesis, all meaningful and poetic – I mean hello, where did that come from?
Yeah, this is enjoyable, but not quite the spectacle – whether in action or comedy – that it needs to be to lift it above the many other recent manga/amine adaptations…
DVD details
Distributor: MVM (UK)
This DVD includes a good master of the film, a lively 'making of' feature (which itself seems more like one of those game shows, stills gallery and plenty of trailers and teasers.
