Cutie Honey is my latest “guilty pleasure”
By The Eva Monkey on Thursday, December 2nd, 2004
As you may know, after Evangelion Hideaki Anno got into the habit of jumping back and forth between animation and live action film making. After The End of Evangelion, he went on to make Love and Pop, his first and possibly most distinctive live action work. He returned to animation to make His and Her Circumstances, and frustrated with the production he returned to live action with Shiki-Jitsu, which some argue is one of his best works, and certainly his best live action film. Afterwards he was absent from the director’s chair for some time until he took on what is probably the biggest eyebrow raiser of them all.
Cutie Honey.
This is not so odd if you take into account the fact that Anno is a huge sentai fan, and equally large a fan of the works of Go Nagai, a director whom some American fans are familiar with, but few understand the importance of. Go Nagai’s works, such as Getter Robo, Mazinger, Devilman, and Cutie Honey played a very big role in the pioneering of the modern anime industry. Especially when taking into account shows like Getter Robo and Mazinger, you will see just where the influence in Anno’s work comes from. Anno’s first directorial work is Gunbuster, which features quite a few elements drawn directly from Mazinger among others, such as Macross, which he also worked on, which is in itself very similar to Space Battleship Yamamoto, which enamored Anno as a child and put him on the path to the director’s seat.
It is interesting to see just how these trends re-emerge, and just where the influence comes from. And in the case of Anno, he actually got the tremendous opportunity to take the work of a director he admired and respected, and honor the series by creating another chapter of it.
Considering that, Cutie Honey doesn’t seem like such a ludicrous thing for Anno to be doing. And with that, I suggest (yet again) taking a look at both the live action Cutie Honey movie, and the Re: Cutie Honey OAV. Both of which are now available on fan sub, and if you’re curious to see them, you might want to grab them now while people are still seeding them on bittorrent, because who knows if these will get licensed. As I’ve frequently described Cutie Honey as a “guilty pleasure”, I’m uncertain if either of these will make it out of Japan, as it may be a bit too niche interest.
And some random screen caps.
- Drinking
- Determination
- The occasional song and dance
- And the resulting confusion of the occasional song and dance
And some random screen caps.
- Kisaragi Honey
- Aki Natsuko
- Hayami Seiji
- Gold Claw
- Cobalt Claw
- Random Henchmen
- Random Happy Police Officers
- Natsuko flips out
- Penis Man (Don’t ask, just watch)
And I swear this will be the last time Cutie Honey is the subject of a news post. At least until either the movie or OAVs are licensed that is. Tune in next time for something bordering on productivity.