Just the Ticket #194: Cutie Honey Double-Feature (Anime Spotlight #60)

Article by Sean Wilkinson,

a.k.a. The Ticketmaster×Animeister

Believe it or not, today's ambitious crossover was the result of some cerebral flatulence I had while watching Godzilla Minus One a few weeks ago. In my mind, I kept referring to the Oxygen Destroyer from the original Godzilla as the Airborne Element Fixing Device (which is the name of the Kisaragi cyborg's transformation choker in the Cutie Honey franchise). So, once I made that connection and correction in my brain, I figured that since I already knew about the Cutie Honey live-action movie from one of Bob Chipman's YouTube videos (where he gets a few minor details wrong and basically gives away the plot and bizarre highlights of the entire movie, so I'm glad I hadn't watched it in five years until after I saw the movie first), I'd review it for myself. But then I saw that there was a second live-action Cutie Honey movie, and here we are with a Sunday Double-Feature, which I have done a number of times that I can count on one finger, as of today.

So let's close out Anime August with a Flash!

Directed and co-written by Neon Genesis Evangelion creator Hideaki Anno, and based on the manga by Go Nagai, 2004's Cutie Honey is a tokusatsu film starring model and idol Eriko Sato as the titular naive, sexy, ass-kicking, food-powered soldier of love who's also a literal office droid and terrible at her job. There is an English dub track for the film, but I gave it five minutes before switching to Japanese with subtitles, and enjoyed the delivery a lot more.

The opening sequence, where Honey attempts to rescue her adoptive uncle, Dr. Utsugi (anime and film scorer Masaki Kyomoto) from Gold Claw (Hairi Katagiri, Shin Godzilla, in gaudy, mannish makeup) and their Panther Claw goons, is essentially a Cutie Honey anime episode rendered (mostly, as some animated sequences are used) in live action, and not only is it nostalgic, it's gloriously excessive and captures the essence of a Gainax fight scene pretty perfectly.

Aside from that, the movie seems more concerned with treating its female lead like her ass is the star of a David Fincher music video and her fanbase have a gluttony fetish (seriously, there is an overabundance of fisheye cinematography in Cutie Honey 2004, and the only thing the director could have done to make the movie feel more of its time would be to film the fight scenes through a cheese grater).

Making the film enjoyably absurd and grandiose, we have Lord/Sister Jill (Eisuke Sasai, Godzilla Minus One, also in gender-obscuring makeup and breastplate, and dubbed with a female voice on the English track) who is a magical tree monster that feeds on female Soylent Green to sustain her "beauty" and needs Cutie Honey's I-System (the movie's name for the AEFD, and a pun on both A.I. and the Japanese word for love) to make herself immortal, her butler (the legendary Tōru Tezuka) who looks like a baby with an Agent Honeydew haircut and a Dick Dastardly mustache, an unnamed lounge singer (probably because the character's name is White Claw and they didn't want to get sued by the beer company, but I'm just joking) who performs an exposition theme song in English for some reason, the aforementioned Gold Claw, a twin-tailed, skinsuit-wearing bondage spider lady named Cobalt Claw (Shie Kohinata, Shark Skin Man and Peach Hip Girl), an aristocratic laser-breathing geisha named Scarlet Claw (voice actor Mayumi Shintani, FLCL), and the best and only genuinely threatening general, Black Claw (Mitsuhiro Oikawa, La Grande Maison Tokyo), a singing swordsman with his own army of orchestral violinist goons. And keeping the movie grounded (relative to a physically attractive but childish magical girl cyborg seeking revenge against the nanomachine-powered demonic alien tree monster who killed her father for the secret to immortality—it's love, by the way, because Japan) are charismatic reporter/NSA agent Seiji (Jun Murakami, 69)

and his strict police chief ex-girlfriend Natsuko (Mikako Ichikawa, whom, like half of this movie's cast, was in Shin Godzilla). They're fun and complex for secondary leads in a smutty 90-minute Japanese superhero dramedy.

The pacing goes to hell after Honey (a sign that almost every character in this movie—and the anime and manga—is a moron, since Honey doesn't change her name between forms, yet most have no idea that Honey Kisaragi and Cutie Honey are the same person, and that goes double for this movie because unlike the anime, her hair color doesn't change, either) gets angry and microwaves Cobalt to near death with her powers, leading into decent character stuff but a mess of second-act moping, barely-there romantic tension, and dated cop movie tropes that all seemingly get resolved with a night of drunken karaoke and the trio being invited to a final showdown at a giant, golden CGI drill-tower that emerged beneath Tokyo Tower. 

The CGI and green screen effects (after the extra AF opening fight) are Power Rangers-meets-SyFy Channel Original Movie terrible, but the musical numbers were enjoyably campy and the sword fight between Honey and Black Claw was pretty competent and visceral. And the ending (Honey, Seiji, "Nat-chan," and her two subordinates planning to open a detective agency together) hints at brand synergy with the Re: Cutie Honey OVA series that came next, unlike the majority of Cutie Honey anime and movies, which reboot things more often than not. Which is fitting because that's how much I enjoyed this movie.

B-

As for 2016's Cutie Honey Tears, I have two words for you.

And yes, it is as bad as that sounds. Which is why this was the point in the review where I got distracted by YouTube, and came across this henshin video for a 2010 series titled Manpuku Shoujo Dragonet,

and felt compelled to talk about it because it's batshit (or more literally, dragon shit) insane. The transformation visual has each heroine get eaten by an energy dragon, at which point they transform after doing an intricate dance in the dragon's digestive tract. Then the dragon that just ate them flies into their chest and a CGI tail prairie dog's it out of a Death Star exhaust port in their ass. I'd say no one could make this up, but someone did, and the results are infinitely more entertaining than whatever is going on with Cutie Honey Tears.

2016's Cutie Honey Tears was directed by Takeshi Asai (whose only other work has been in short films, including an anthology segment and a video game intro) and stars Mariya Nishiuchi (the live-action adaptation of Yamada-kun & the Seven Witches) as Hitomi Kisaragi (this movie's Honey Kisaragi, because gritty reboot, remember?), an A.I. android powered by the Elemental Condenser (so I guess points for being more accurate with the device's name?) and created by the late Dr. Kisaragi to save the world from Jiru's (this movie's somewhat underwhelming take on Sister Jill, played by Nicole Ishida of the Secret×Heroine series) A.I.-dominated fascist surveillance state that has toxic weather, a massive class gap, and hard drive-headed soldiers known as Sodoms (because in 2016, we needed our fiction to be as realistic as possible and a constant reminder that we were being...well, I'll let Vanna finish this one).

I guess it's possible that Cutie Honey Tears could be vaguely inspired by the New Cutie Honey anime, but the futuristic setting seems to be the only connective tissue there. The production value and fight choreography are certainly better than the 2004 film, but Tears lacks the charm of its predecessor, opting instead to feel like a direct-to-video Resident Evil knockoff, right down to Jiru using nanomachine tech to make herself into a gender-swapped Wesker. The dynamic between Hitomi and this movie's take on Seiji (Takahiro Miura, the live-action Attack On Titan films) is kind of cute (pardon the pun) for a moment, but there's far too much run-and-gun with cyborg butt-soldier fodder on dark, industrial sets for anything but the final fight scene with Jiru to be of any interest, and even that lacks stakes because Hitomi can regenerate after absorbing an entire toxic weather system. At least the end credits song is a slow jam banger?

D-

That wasn't meant to be a "the best part of Cutie Honey Tears was when it was over" jab, but I'm glad to be done with this ambitious month so I can move on to regular content again.

Please check out yesterday's Time Drops to see me easing back into that groove, and as always, remember to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, leave a comment at the bottom of this post and any others you have opinions about, help out my ad revenue as you read because my airborne elements need fixing, and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content.

Animeister,

Out Of August.