Kyûtî Hanî

I remember seeing posters for this in the weeks leading to the cinema release, and well ... Cutey Honey's outfit is pretty darn cute .. I have a figurine on my window that I got with a box of fizzy candy - much to my girlfriend's ire.

Next to ninja's, cute chic's in revealing armour highly rate with me, so I was instantly intrigued. I was familiar with the source material, and the the director (of Evangellion and Nadia fame) and I knew that this film had a very unique visual style, but I still wasn't prepared for what I witnessed when I finally put the disc in the slot and hit play.

This film IS Live Action Anime to the Nth degree! It lives and breaths anime craziness, and over the top silliness. Honey's facial expressions are something straight out of an SD anime. From the opening scene this film is an anime joy - yet live action.

It's a nutty film, and it had me chuckling constantly. I would love to show this to friends of mine, but I know they'd look at me strangely and try and lock me away. Cutey Honey won't be appreciated by everyone, but I think that anime fans, with an open mind will really dig this film.In the back of my mind a voice told me that I was not supposed to like this film, but try as it did, it couldn't pull me away. I was hooked .. right until the end.

It's strange that .. on first look, and without proper perspective, this film look bad. Everyone over-acts, and there are more butt and cleavage shots than you can shake a stick at - very much an exploitative fan service vehicle. Many viewers I assume would get so many bad Power Ranger flash backs that it'd hard for them to keep watching.

Watch it in the right context however and you will see genius! Well maybe that is taking it too far, but Hideaki Anno and the team that worked on this film should be praised for creating the closest live-action rendition of anime I have ever seen. It has all the ingredients, crazy over the top expressions, a VERY cute scantily clad girl, and ultra-surreal bad-guys, including bondage'ish outfits and an androgynous male villain.

It's all there. Until I find out later down the track that the film contained subliminal hypnotising messages, I will say that I really liked this film, but that I still can't really work out why I did so much. Cutey Honey is for anime fans, and I think anyone else would struggle a little to accept this film's wild personality.

Killion

Saw Cutie Honey at the Leeds Film Festival on Saturday... not sure if James Maruyuma had been paying attention until the last half of the movie, because people breaking into song for no particular reason and "metaphysical" (actually psycho-sociological but nevermind) thoughts about love and opening your heart to people are there throughout. The film is 95% very very very silly, with a couple of curveball moments where things get a bit more serious, then right back into silliness and fluffiness again. The film is shot and edited in a very anime-esque way, with extensive use of CG to enhance the stylisation and "cartooniness" that's already quite abundant from the costumes and overacting. In fact, so much effort has been spent making the live action film feel like an animated film that one sometimes wonders why they didn't just animate it ;) The answer is, of course, the super-cuteness of Sato Eriko (though I was actually more partial to Ichikawa Mikako's super-repressed detective character, make of it what you will).

Overall, very very camp and silly fun with a fluffy message about the power of love n' stuff. Not the stuff classics are made of, but worth seeing if the opportunity arises.

Not to degrade the movie, but if you can't get over a "Power Rangers" feel, then pass this title by. However, if you enjoy humor, weird costumes, crazy action, and insane levels of Cuteness, then this may be the movie for you. Based on an old anime (manga too?) by Go Nagai, this live action version is quite amazingly a live action anime. I was never a huge fan of the original animation, but this move almost makes me want to go back and recheck it out. The movie is fast-paced, and action-oriented. It has decent character development (but don't look for anything too deep) and best of all, it was just silly. If it weren't for that last factor, the movie would have completely sapped an hour an a half from my life. The cast was great, considering the roles, but the thing that stands out is the way they were able to combine the live action with a very cartoony style (watch as Honey dodges all those missiles in the beginning, it a whole new style on it's own.) It was very entertaining, and it was definitely an example of camp gone right.

I saw this film at the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal, right after Blueberry. Holy smokes, this movie is totally awesome!!! Why can't north Americans make cool movies like this? It's super happy and action-packed, and it even makes fun of itself = it's perfect!!! For this vein of movies, Cutie Honey is the best I've ever seen!!!

If you have a vague idea what this movie is about, you'll be blown away by the extremes and humour presented on the screen. It's not serious. But a most excellent treat indeed!

All the acting is superficial, there's a constant(but not tumultuous) music track throughout, all the photography is extreme and the story itself is completely retarded. A lot of the humor comes from making fun of stupid little "cutesy" movies --> also, the sexism is exaggerated too: Cutie Honey behaves in a ... "special" way: always innocently making sexy poses wearing only underwear, etc... All the action sequences are completely over the top, super loud, and mixed with cartoons as well.

For what it is, it's unbeatable.

Let's put it clear from the beginning, the film is an exercise in style, and the style is anime. If you like anime, this is THE FILM you'd love to see, characters, timing, acting, dialog, cameras, lights, sound...An fan's dream, a film made by a man who loves anime for all the people who love anime. When I found that Anno, the man who made Neon Genesis Evangelion, was in this project, I thought it would be great. When I finally saw it, I found it was better, I kept a smile all time long. If you don't like it, well, try something else. If you don't like blues, you'd protest about repetitive riffs and metrics, long guitar solos and so on. Each kind of art has its codes, and if you share them you understand and appreciate it. For me, this is a masterpiece of live action anime.