Cutie Honey - The Best Magical Girl Live-Action Movie Out There
Cutie Honey [2004] is the quintessential live-action movie, shot like your favorite anime. Complete with gravity-defying fight scenes, campy villains, an iconic theme song, and most importantly a lovably ditzy android on a mission to save Tokyo- all while wearing heels, it’s the magical girl genre at peak perfection.
The movie's beauty lies in the fact that it doesn’t take itself too seriously, with gags hidden at every corner and unabashed fan service. Yet somehow, it manages to be a masterpiece with innovative cinematography, merging everything you love about action superhero films with the flair of throwback anime like Sailor Moon.
The movie focuses on the bubbly Honey Kisaragi, an unremarkable Office Lady by day with the power to transform into other people at a moment's notice. Her powers stem from her mad scientist father using the latest technology to fuse her consciousness into the body of an android after Honey’s original human body died in a car accident as a teenager. As an adult, Honey is klutzy, friendless, but still optimistic, rising to the occasion of avenging her father’s death by the notorious Panther Claw gang with the help of straightlaced police woman Natsuko, after his killers strike again, this time abducting Honey’s uncle and wreaking havoc all over Tokyo, through a series of suspicious kidnappings targeting high school girls.
The passion project of Hideaki Anno, better known as the creator of the franchise Neon Genesis Evangelion, Cutie Honey achieved the seemingly impossible idea of shooting a live-action movie using methods found in anime direction. Anno used a new process coined “Honeymation”, where the entire movie's storyboard is separated into poses the actors had to match precisely frame by frame, then fused together mimicking the pacing and high-speed cuts of cartoon battle sequences.
Cutie Honey is a pioneer of the manga-turned live action movie category, by staying true to the fun and imaginativeness of classic animation, while giving us the perfect movie that’s “so bad, it’s good” viewing experience that can fix even the gloomiest of days.
