Honourable Mention: Cutie Honey

This was a 2004 live action film directed by Hideaki Anno and I received a mail from Leila suggesting I track it down and watch it as it was worth an honourable mention.

Cutie Honey itself was less a manga and more a franchise dating back through various media from 1973. This filmic version was madcap – and a guilty pleasure as Leila described it. However it did have moments that dragged and the pacing was inconsistent. It had elements that were reminiscent of Power Rangers (or vice versa to be fair) and a wonderfully madcap sense of humour.

In the film Cutie Honey (Eriko Satô) is up against the sinister organisation Panther Claw and, like herself, the four generals of Panther Claw have all been enhanced. We are concentrating on Cobalt Claw (Sie Kohinata) who is actually more a spider like creature (at one point opening zips on her fetish costume to reveal extra arms). It was pointed out to me that in look she was somewhat like the spider like creatures we came across in Death Trance - which is true.

However the fang and fetish look is rather vampiric and she does bite Cutie Honey on the neck in a vampire norm way. She is also defeated via heat – okay so it was the heat of Cutie’s own hatred manifested by the nano-technology built into her, but nonetheless it was reminiscent of the vampiric weakness to fire. Was she a vampire… most probably not, but the vampire archetype influenced (possibly subconsciously) her look it would seem.

The imdb page is here.