Cutie Honey: Tears

Lore & Background

The film is set in a near future where abnormal weather and a virus have reduced the human population. Artificial intelligence was created to help humanity but now the rich dominate the poor, who suffer on polluted streets under toxic rain. Dr. Kisaragi, a man from the upper area, creates an android named Hitomi Kisaragi using the brain memory patterns of his deceased daughter. He brings her to the lower areas at the cost of his own life.

Reader's Guide

Cutie Honey: Tears is a live-action adaptation of Go Nagai's classic manga series. The film updates the story with a dystopian setting and themes of class division and artificial intelligence. It stars Mariya Nishiuchi as the android Hitomi Kisaragi, who fights alongside journalist Seiji Hayami and resistance leader Kazuhito Uraki against the evil android Jill. Principal photography ended in December 2015. The film was released in Japan on October 1, 2016, by Toei Company. It features a cameo by manga creator Go Nagai.

Did You Know?

• The film is based on the manga series Cutie Honey by Go Nagai.
• Mariya Nishiuchi plays the title character, Hitomi Kisaragi, codenamed Cutie Honey.
• Principal photography ended in December 2015.
• Go Nagai appears in a cameo role.

The Android Girl and Her Vengeance

Honey Kisaragi is introduced as an ordinary sixteen-year-old student at Saint Chapel School for Girls, a Catholic institution where she plays the role of class clown, pranking teachers Alphonne and Hystler and teasing her friends. That unremarkable existence shatters the day the Panther Claw organization murders her father. In the aftermath, Honey discovers a truth that redefines her entire identity: she is not human at all but an android built by her late father, with a hidden mechanism capable of condensing atmospheric elements into solid matter. By shouting "Honey Flash!" she channels that device to become Cutie Honey, a red-haired swordswoman who wages a personal war of revenge. The antagonists are Panther Zora, the organization's ruler who covets the device to manufacture an infinite supply of jewels, and her younger sibling Sister Jill, who commands the Japan division and harbors an unrequited crush on Honey. Supporting Honey in her crusade are Danbei Hayami, his journalist son Seiji, and the young Junpei, a family dynamic that grounds the series in domestic warmth amid the spectacle of combat.

Seven Faces of the Heroine

One of Cutie Honey's most distinctive narrative devices is the multiplicity of her disguises. Beyond the primary sword-wielding Cutie Honey form, Honey cycles through a roster of alternate personae, each with its own visual identity and combat style. Hurricane Honey is a biker who holds the title of Japan's top female racer. Misty Honey performs as a singer with a husky voice and a cross-dressing flair. Idol Honey works as a foreign airline stewardess. Flash Honey operates as a reporter whose camera flash blinds opponents. Fancy Honey is a high-fashion model who wields a long-stick cigar as a weapon. Before each transformation, Honey delivers a rapid-fire recap of every form she has assumed in that episode, then declares "But my true identity is…" before the iconic "Honey Flash!" call. A hallmark that made the character instantly recognizable and controversial is that the shift between forms briefly strips her of all clothing. This trademark of nudity, combined with the sheer variety of disguises, set the series apart from other heroines of its era and became a defining visual signature of the franchise.

From Shōjo Dream to Shōnen Spectacle

The genesis of Cutie Honey traces to a 1972 pitch from a Toei Animation producer who proposed a hero with seven transformations, drawing on precedents like the Bannai Tarao mysteries and Warrior of Love Rainbowman. Go Nagai shaped the protagonist as a female android, channeling influences from his earlier works Harenchi Gakuen and Abashiri Family as well as Maria from Metropolis. The working title was Honey Idol, and the character's name nods to the 1965 American television series Honey West. Originally conceived as a shōjo property, the series was slated for the monthly Ribon magazine and a Monday 7 p.m. slot on NET that had previously hosted magical girl shows. When that timeslot was reassigned to Miracle Shōjo Limit-Chan, Cutie Honey was pushed to Saturdays at 8:30 p.m. on the Majū Kaijin Daihenshin block, the same programming home as Microid S and Devilman. The shift forced a complete retooling into a shōnen series, making it the first magical girl property aimed at young boys. Despite solid ratings, the anime was canceled after just twenty-five episodes, with concerns over its salacious content cited as the primary factor.

A Franchise That Refused to Fade

What began as a brief 1973 manga run in Weekly Shōnen Champion has blossomed into one of Japanese pop culture's most enduring franchises. The Cutie Honey universe now encompasses numerous manga series, three anime television adaptations, two OVA productions, two drama CDs, three live-action films, and four stage plays. The 1973 anime, though short-lived, is retrospectively classified as a magical girl series, and its opening theme song has achieved a level of cultural penetration that transcends the show itself. The melody is widely recognized across Japan, even among people who have never seen an episode, and it has been re-arranged and re-sung for virtually every subsequent live-action and animated adaptation, with the sole exception being Cutie Honey Universe. The character's appeal to younger audiences was formally validated in April 1997, when a Bandai survey placed Cutie Honey at the top of the "Favorite Characters" list for both the three-to-five and six-to-eight age brackets among girls, a testament to a legacy that has outlasted its original creators' expectations.