''Cutie Honey'' on DVD

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DavidCMatthews's avatar
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As I've noted elsewhere, I was introduced to the wild and wonderful world of anime in 1987, a year that would have a profound effect on my life.

I became a fan of Japanese animation very quickly, seeing in it as I did a culture of animation that saw the technique as a means of storytelling as legitimate as live-action for drama, comedy, science fiction and fantasy, not just as "entertainment for children". (In fact, I was shocked at first at the kind of material the Japanese thought was appropriate to show to children!) Most of the anime I saw was second- and third-generation copies of VHS tapes recorded off Japanese TV; the incredible market for anime in the US and elsewhere outside Japan was still a decade or two away, and anime fans were few and far-flung.

Two of the series I became series I became very fond of (perhaps because of their female protagonists? yes, definitely because of that) were Urusei Yatsura and Cutey Honey. As the home-video market developed and evolved - and as anime fandom grew to the point where US video distributors saw they could make money marketing these "strange cartoons" - I began to hold out hope that these two series would find their way into the American market, and I could finally add high-quality versions of them to my collection. (If they could keep the Japanese audio and add English subtitles, instead of dubbing, so much the better.)

AnimEigo fulfilled my desire for Urusei Yatsura; over a period of several months they would release UY in DVD sets (50 in all) that collected 20 episodes each on 5 discs each set. The OVAs and feature films would follow, and I have every bit of UY* produced in my collection.

But I began to despair that the other series I wanted, Cutey Honey, would ever see the light of Region 1 DVD. Even in anime fandom, Honey is a niche; its age (1973) and the relative crudity of its animation doesn't recommend it to fans of recent, lushly designed and animated productions. Until the other night...

For some reason, I looked up Cutie Honey on Wikipedia... and saw that "On November 26, 2013, Discotek Media released a DVD boxset of the complete series in North America." 2013... almost four years ago! How had I not known about that?! But in the hope that maybe there'd still be a few copies left in the market, I went to Amazon.com, did a search for "Cutie Honey"... and was rewarded with "Cutie Honey - The Complete Series", "The Original 1973 TV Series". 4-disc set containing all 25 episodes, Japanese audio with English subtitles... perfect! And all for about $30!! Needless to say, I snatched it up!

And I'm enjoying it. Picture and sound are great, especially considering the series is now almost 44 years old. (and a vast improvement over the third-generation copies I'd been watching over the years!) And the series itself, and the characters, are as weird and wonderful as ever!

*unless there's been new material released in the past few years that I don't know about...
© 2017 - 2024 DavidCMatthews
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My favourite anime from back in the day is Escaflowne, followed closely by Fushigi Yugi,  Rurouni Kenshin and 12 Kingdoms.

More recent favourites are Yona of the Dawn, Fairy Tail, Shiki, Rage of Bahamut and Alderamin on the Sky.

Personally I feel that there is too much anime today, and really good shows are getting lost in the shuffle.  I rather have fewer choices and better written shows, than more shows at a lesser quality.