If one ignores the action scenes (which, although good, are surprisingly sparse for a "girls-with-guns" anime) she neither says nor does anything interesting for the entire time, rendering her a depressingly passive lead character and making much of the OAV boring to watch as well. The last part in particular is a disquieting experience, for although it is neither as sexual nor as bloody as the rest of the OAV, it is one of the most sociopathic moments I have ever seen in film, and it brought down my already low opinion significantly.įrom the get-go, Kite suffers from weak dialogue and poor characterization, and the core to that failure is the fact that Sawa, our heroine, has not an inkling of personality. A dark movie is not necessarily a bad one, but Kite takes grimness to unbearable extremes, becoming so violent, depressing, and devoid of humor and human joy that it becomes almost unwatchable. The short answer is that those who cite works such as Princess Mononoke and Bokurano as the most depressing anime in existence will now have a new contender to think about. She starts to meet up with him when not engaged in her missions, but will Akai and Kanie have enough heart to let them alone? Oburi turns out to be amiable enough, however, and Sawa even takes a liking to him after one of their joint operations. If he were a pleasant person, I wouldn't give him this sort of trouble, but he's not, so I ultimately don't feel guilty about it. I don't think that any still picture can truly capture how scary Kanie looks, for his stiff, off-kilter movements are really what creep me out the most (and personally, I think that his eyelids must have been ironed off when he was a child, since I don't ever recall seeing them move). Now why don't we all give a nice greeting to Mr. He uses Sawa to do his jobs, which consist of her hunting down and killing society's most rotten citizens (corrupt businessmen, pimps, pedophiles, and the like), and while he makes some vague statements about these killings somehow bringing her closer to the truth behind the death of her parents, it's plain that he just likes to watch people die.Īkai's various hypocrisies aside, this universe seems to favor his sort of scum, because we soon meet another "guardian", Kanie, and his respective ward, a boy named Oburi. He has a distorted sense of justice, and like virtually every other character with a distorted sense of justice, he decides to turn his energy towards vigilante action.or rather, to proxy vigilante action, for the lazy bum refuses to even fight his own battles. Kite is the story of an unlucky teenage orphan named Sawa who lives under the "guardianship" of Akai, a corrupt policeman (and if you have noticed the quotation marks and are thinking dirty thoughts, you are probably on the right track). And in truth, the edited version of Yasoumi Umetsu's infamous Kite, an undeserving "cult classic" remembered mainly for its copious amounts of graphic violence, wallows in the disturbing world of pornography as long as it can without being classified as such, dragging the unfortunate viewer along with it and sending her into a pit of despair that only the most exhaustive marathon of Ghibli movies could ever save her from.īefore I begin to lambast too many things at once, I must first tackle the plot. Yes, I will admit that I am exaggerating, but the synopsis really does read like that of a porno. Sawa's parents were murdered when she was young, and she was adopted by policeman Akai, who assigns her to dangerous missions."Īnd I thought that Netflix said it didn't carry XXX films. "College student by day, vigilante by night, Sawa protects the innocent and coldly kills criminals in this intense anime. I quote from the description provided by : Green Bunny, the studio that produced this anime, typically only creates pornographic titles this and Umetsu's later Mezzo Forte are the only mainstream titles it has worked on. This version also combines the two episodes into a single "movie". Notes: This OAV exists in two formats, the first being a "director's cut" that includes several explicit sex scenes and the second being the edited version (which I have reviewed here). Related Series: Kite: Director's Cut (Alternate Version), Kite: Liberator (Sequel In Name Only), Mezzo Forte (Same Universe)Īlso Recommended: Mezzo Forte (Same Idea, Better Execution), Ghost in the Shell, Kiki's Delivery Service (As An Antidote) Distributor: License by Media Blasters expired.Ĭontent Rating: R (Graphic Violence, Sexual Situations, Implications of Rape and Underage Sexual Activity, Mild Profanity)
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