A glance at one of the earliest magical girls, Cutie Honey, the Warrior of Love!

With the announcement Cutie Honey Universe and its PV shown below, it's time to give you a brief overview of what it's all about!

This looks good!

What the hell is a Cutie Honey?

Obviously my waifu.

JK.

Cutie Honey is one of the earliest examples of a magical girl anime and manga series. Most of you weren't even born yet (Including myself to be fair) when it aired on TV in 1973 for the first time. If you're familiar with Takeuchi's Sailor Moon, you'll notice that whenever these cute girls decide to change their outfits, you get to see a very well animated transformation scene that as a young girl (or boy, of course) had you glued to the TV screen.

What I'm saying is that a lot of these quirks and concepts for the magical girl genre can be traced back to Cutie Honey. She's not the first magical girl, as there have been others before her such as Magical Witch Sally by Mitsuteru Yokoyama, but she's definitely one of the more influential and iconic ones.

Cover of the manga.

Honey is also the first female character to be the protagonist of a Shounen manga series (Manga for boys) according to its creator, Go Nagai who also did Devilman and Mazinger Z. That should of course hold some significance for you die hard feminists out there.

The gimmick

Honey's main gimmick is that she plays dress up before turning into Cutie Honey, the warrior of love and beating up the baddies. This is the reason why the series has never really faded away from the anime scene. You can literally draw Cutie Honey in any get-up you want, and it would still be Honey.

In the original manga, Honey only wore a few outfits, but as the producers kept remaking and re-tweaking the series for a new audience, that number drastically increased. Cutie Honey Flash is an excellent example of this.

Originally airing in 1997 to fill the timeslot that Sailor Moon left, Flash was a remake that eschewed much of its over the top violence of the original manga and anime and went for a more family friendly tone. To make up for this change, Toei, the ones in charge, decided to make Honey wear a whole range of brand new outfits every episode.

The many Honey outfits.

The fantastic OP

This opening song has been done, and redone in nearly every iteration of the series and for good reasons. It's cheery, positive, upbeat and most importantly, it's catchy. Once you listen to it, the tune never really leaves you.

Original version from the 1973 anime series.

But is Honey actually a magical girl?

Well, yes and no. Honey does share many tropes you'd expect to find from your typical magical series, but she's not magical as she's actually an android built by Dr. Kisaragi who implanted a special device in her which helps Honey create solid material literally out of thin air. This helps her produce many of her famous outfits that she wears. I'd say she leans more sci fi than magical.

What about the plot?

To be honest, the plot is not its selling point as it also keeps getting massive re-tweaks every iteration that was released over the years. The original one is all about Honey taking revenge on the Panther Claw organisation that killed her father. This organisation is run by a bunch of evil lesbians (No joke) who's plan is to steal the special device inside of Honey for nefarious means. When they're not attempting to assassinate Honey, they're busy filling their pockets with high profile heists.

Sister Jill, second in command over at Panther Claw.

Along the way, Honey will meet new friends and companions who'll all accompany her in her ultimate quest for revenge, such as the cute and lovely Natsuko and the low-life goofball, Hayami Seiji. They also receive changes every iteration.

Originally Honey's classmate in the original, she's now a balls busting cop in RE: Cutie Honey.

The live action versions

In addition to the anime and manga, Honey also managed to find some degree of success with the live action versions.

Mariya Nishiuchi plays a darker version of Honey in Cutie Honey Tears.

Remember what I said about how the plot changes for every iteration? In Tears, the cheery tone of the previous versions is completely phased out for a more serious Honey who's fighting rich capitalist fucks to stop them from polluting the planet. The setting is now completely dystopian as those who are at the bottom of the social ladder get to experience acid rain every day, no thanks to Scrooge McDuck and his pals.

Conclusion

Hopefully now that you've read it, you probably understand a little more about the series. I could have gone on for much much longer, but all I wanted to do is just give you a taste of Cutie Honey and hopefully convince you to check it out on your own.

To sum it up, Cutie Honey isn't for everyone. It's a franchise that clearly values style over substance. For those who can look past that, I think there's a lot to love about Honey. It's silly energetic fun for the whole family.

See you next episode!

None of the images or videos posted here belong to me. If cute anime girls are your bread and butter, leave an upvote or a comment.

Check out my other posts on anime and manga here.