CUTIE HONEY (2004)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

Storytellers of a particular nationality don't tend to admit any truth in the often-negative stereotypes that persons of other nationalities promulgate. Americans don't want to be seen as chauvinistic, the French don't like to be seen as artsy-fartsy, and Germans don't care to be seen as intrinsically warlike. After watching the 2004 CUTIE HONEY, though, I think some if not all Japanese storytellers may be the exception. From the many anime and manga I've consumed, though, I have the distinct impression that Japanese storytellers freely admit that their culture can be rigid and stratified. This admission allows them to fight back against this negative cultural tendency by expousing deeper human values of love and passionate ambition.

Thanks to its bright colors and hyperkinetic, deliberately artificial battle-scenes, some critics judged CUTIE HONEY to be a superficial confection. I can't judge how well the movie represents the manga source-material of popular artist Go Nagai, having only read a smattering of the original 1970s comics. But HONEY, directed and co-written by Hideaki Anno, obviates that problem by leaping over the original events of the heroine's introduction.

The original story concerned Honey, an android creation of one Doctor Kisaragi. Her creator was slain by the criminal organization Panther Claw, so Honey, drawing on her power to transform into a plethora of specialized fighting-forms, sought revenge upon the evildoers, eventually destroying them and their supernatural leader Sister Jill. HONEY takes place a year after those events, with the only salient difference being that Anno interpolates an ASTRO BOY-like trope about Dr. Kisaragi having modeled Honey on his real-life deceased daughter. Honey (Eriko Sata) earns her daily bread at a tedious clerical job but seems undauntedly cheerful nevertheless. However, Honey receives a call from her (purely figurative) uncle Utsugi, who is being pursued by the agents of a recrudescent Panther Claw. Honey responds to the assault by transforming into her most familiar form-- a pink-haired girl in hot-pink armor and carrying a katana-- and rushes to thwart the villainous Gold Claw and his goons. After a rousing battle Honey defeats Gold Claw, who then flees the scene. An uptight police inspector, Natsuko (Mikako Ichikawa), knows nothing of Honey's earlier deeds and tries to arrest her, but Honey also escapes.

Gold Claw returns to the hideout of Panther Claw, where he consults with three other claw-themed generals of the organization and with a Sister Jill, who for some unexplained reason (at least in the subtitled version I watched) has been reborn in a male form (and is played by Eisuke Sasai). Sister Jill sends another general, the spider-like Cobalt Claw, to assassinate the organization's nemesis.

Cobalt Claw attack Honey in her civilian ID at her office, and Natusko happens to be caught up in the assault as well. Honey slays the monstrous assassin, saving Natusko but draining herself of power. Natsuko, grateful for the rescue, doesn't seek to imprison Honey this time, but takes her to Natsuko's own apartment. Despite the inspector's rigidity, which makes her the opposite of Honey's relentless good spirits, the two women bond somewhat. 

During Honey's travails her uncle is captured, and a journalist who becomes friendly to Honey and Natsuko informs them that many nubile young women have also been kidnapped by the monsters of Panther Claw. (In truth both the uncle and the female prisoners are just the script's way of keeping the tension up; neither are very important to the main story.) Honey has no way of finding the fiends' hiding place, but Sister Jill needs a lot of energy to fully revivify, and she can get a lot more from a super-android than from a bunch of mortal women. Jill's butler lures Honey to the hideout, where she's attacked by the other two super-powered generals, Black Claw and Scarlet Claw. Honey destroys both of these assailants but is drained of her power again. She's still defiant until the butler reveals that he's also captured Natsuko. To save Natsuko and Utsugi, Honey surrenders and Sister Jill begins draining off the android's energy. However, thanks to having learned of Honey's systems and filled with passion to save the artificial woman, Natsuko uses her markmanship to re-activate Honey's power-- striking a button on Honey's choker with a bullet-- and Honey helps the innocents escape while Jill and her entire lair are annihilated. A coda establishes that a deep friendship has formed between Honey, Natsuko and the journalist, and they lay plans to form a detective agency.

Like all the best superhero works in all media, CUTIE HONEY excels in producing all sorts of outrageous imagery. Gold Claw's henchmen launch a fusillade of machine-gun bullets at the avenging "soldier of love," and she knocks all the projectiles aside by whipping her sword back and forth like an impenetrable shield. (Top that, Wonder Woman!) When Sister Jill attacks Tokyo, a giant drill erupts beneath the ground beneath Tokyo Tower, hoisting the building into the sky. (Later, when the drill is atomized, the tower simply falls back into place, neat as you please.) Such wild images would prejudice many critics to think HONEY to be dominantly silly.

However, the script holds a number of subtleties. It's no surprise when the main villain urges the heroine to "rise above common humanity," and the heroine nobly remains true to her ideals of love and empathy. But Natsuko is clearly a liminal figure between hero and villain. She suppresses her humanity for professional advancement in a clear parallel to Sister Jill-- even though the inspector's suppression takes the form of wearing fake glasses to harden her image-- but she's persuaded to be more human by her interaction with a heroine who is not a true human being, revised origin or not. (Honey mentions, in a rare doleful mood, that she doesn't remember her predecessor's existence, though she remains confident that she can "always make more memories.") 

There are also some very clever lines. When Honey is grappling with Cobalt Claw, the monstrous creature tries to bite the android. The irate heroine asks her enemy if she tried to do something like that to Honey's late father, and Cobalt responds, "Do you remember what you ate last year?"

The performers playing the generals deserve kudos for managing to act despite bulky, elaborate costumes (particularly Gold Claw, who has a long scorpion-tail protruding from her helmet). Mikako Ichikawa provides a strong evolution for her character's arc, but clearly the film depends on the high-energy of Eriko Sata, whom I regard as one of the five best actresses to play a superheroine.

As a small treat, the Gold Claw battle is preceded by some humorous inserts of scenes from the 1970s anime series.

ADDENDUM: I read three CUTIE HONEY manga series I had not previously gone through prior to writing this view. One never-completed storyline, CUTIE HONEY A GO GO (2003), was meant as a "lead-in" to the live-action film. Yet Anno takes very little from that series except the characters of Natsuko and the reporter, and the basic idea that Cutie and Natsuko have a feminine bonding session. The parallels between lack of affect in both Jill and Natsuko are not pursued, and Anno does a better dramatic job with the three viewpoint characters. He does not use GO GO's notion-- as far as I know, not seen before-- that Sister Jill is an android produced by the same research that gave rise to Cutie Honey, and he certainly doesn't utilize the extreme violence characteristic of many Go Nagai productions. Anno is credited as a creator of some sort on GO GO, but in the movie he clearly built up the things he liked best in the collaboration and excised the other stuff-- which may be the reason I liked the movie better than any of the manga I've read so far.