Cutie Honey Universe is the most perfect version of the original Cutie Honey manga ever made and it is a treasure that should be instantly enshrined in whatever Halls of Fame anime may have.
In 2005, I reviewed the 1985 collection of the original 1970s Cutie Honey manga, which I described as “…one of the grimmest, most violent and depressing stories I’ve ever read!” and “On the whole, I really liked it, except when…oh, hell, I’ll admit it. I thought it was brilliant. Brilliant, disturbing, weirder than anything I could come up with on acid, Cutey Honey was, and is, a lesbian manga icon.”
Ans since then, there have been dozens of anime, manga and live-action (both movie and TV) reinterpretations, some of which have been good, like Cutie Honey-a-gogo and the live-action TV series, and others which have been brutally awful, like Cutie Honey Seed.
But we’ve never before see anything like the story in the original manga in anime format. And so I tuned into to the newest iteration of this series, Cutie Honey Universe, currently streaming on the HiDive platform, with no particular expectations. Imagine my delight, then, when we meet Kisaragi Honey, a student at St. Chapel girl’s school, with the most horrific, ugly, sadistic teachers.
…
No, wait, forget I ever wrote that sentence.
Imagine my delight when we meet Jill-sama, a sadistic, lesbian psychotic and her alter ego, Inspector Genet who is everything awful and wonderful about 1980s anime, from her blue eye shadow to her seductive creepiness.
…
Okay, forget everything I just said. Once more from the top.
Cutie Honey is pervy in a wholly tiresome way, with dissolving clothes and T&A and creepy gropey guys as “comedy” and an evil psycho lesbian bad guy and a very likely love affair between Honey and Na-chan and horrible lesbian teachers and extraordinary violence. It’s awful in a dozen ways , as we must surely expect from Go Nagai’s vision.
I love it so much I can barely express it.
This is the Cutie Honey the world has been waiting for. Well, it’s the Cutie Honey I’ve been waiting for and clearly my love and admiration is more important than anyone else’s.
Ratings:
Art – 10
Story – 10
Characters – 10
Service – 10
Yuri – ? TBD, but I have my eyes on 10
Overall – 10
It’s perfect.
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