[Re: Cutie Honey ] - 1: Heaven
Cutie Honey is a franchise which originated from a manga in 1973 created by your pal and mine Go Nagai. It stars Honey Kisaragi, an android with the power to transform into the heroine 'Cutie Honey', along with many other different forms, for the purpose of battling the bad guys. As this is a Go Nagai creation the transformation process involves Honey losing all her clothes.
This manga has spawned numerous adaptations over the decades but I have no familiarity with any of them. After hearing nothing but praise for the three part OVA
Re:Cutie Honey produced in 2004 by Gainax I thought that I'd give it a shot.
While this OVA series is technically directed by Hideki Anno I couldn't detect a single hint of his style in this first episode. ANN lists Anno as the Chief Director rather than as a specific episode director or storyboarded. This first episode, Heaven, was directed by Hiroyuki Imaishi although anyone familiar with his work wouldn't have to go to ANN to find that out - his style oozes from every facet of the episode.
Exaggerated but simplified character designs, hugely exaggerated character poses and expressions, a breakneck pace, bold colour design, a light hearted tone which features crude humour - the list goes on and on.
For those unfamiliar with the name, Imaishi was a Gainax regular who worked on a huge number of shows over the years. He directed
Gurren Lagann, Dead Leaves and did a fair bit of work on
FLCL which are the titles that I imagine most people are familiar with. If you like his style then you'll love this because it's pure, unfiltered Imaishi. There's not even the slightest attempt to make the world of this series a realistic or believable setting instead it's a bright, flat cartoon world where physics and logic have been throw under the bus in exchange for action, gags and general silliness.
I find that this approach works because he fully commits to it. Cutie Honey and the villains she faces are so over the top that it only makes sense to make every aspect of the series just as ridiculous. If one or two elements were silly and stylised and the rest weren't then it wouldn't work nearly as well. As a result of these stylistic decisions and the energy of Imaishi's direction there's never any chance to get bored or to stop paying attention because something interesting is happening all the time.
There's lots of experimentation with layout, sets, camera work, editing and just about everything you can think of. He clearly worked fairly hard to ensure that there weren't many standard, boring shots and instead he's constantly pushing the boundaries and showing you something new, even in fairly low-key scenes where characters are just talking to each other.
I am on record voicing my dislike for the OVA
Dead Leaves, also directed by Imaishi. These two works are somewhat similar in their approach but the reason I prefer
Re:Cutie Honey to
Dead Leaves is that
Dead Leaves is too indulgent for it's own good. I dislike how there wasn't any time to breathe in that work, or how little attention was paid to fleshing out the characters in an interesting manner.
Re: Cutie Honey isn't a treatise on the human condition but it does do a good job of setting up the major characters in a manner which I would consider acceptable for an action flick. Nothing too complicated, but enough to let you form some attachment to them.
I understand the second episode in this OVA series isn't as good as the first so I'm not really in a rush to check that out any time soon.
