CUTEY HONEY (Kyuti Hani), by Go Nagai. First published in 1973 and first published in North America in 2018.
PLOT:
Honey Kisaragi is her father's pride and joy. She's a powerful, beautiful android with a built-in device that grants her strength and the ability to change appearance on a whim, but those same qualities make her a desirable target for the group of witches, brawlers, and thieves known as Panther Claw. Honey has to use all of her wits and strength to keep one step ahead of them, all while trying to keep her modesty in the face of perverted teachers and allies.
STORY:
Cutey Honey is by this point a venerable franchise, but after reading the source material it's easy to see why fans tend to focus more on the various animated (and occasionally live-action) adaptations instead of Go Nagai's original version. There are a few good ideas at work here, but they are constantly hamstrung by Nagai's lack of focus.
Cutey Honey is at its best when it focus on its main plot, that of Honey seeking revenge against Panther Claw for her creator/"father's" untimely death. The problem is that Nagai only really focuses on this part at the very beginning and at the very end of the series. The rest of the book is occupied with monster-of-the-week fights with members of Panther Claw, girls'-school shenanigans, or extended ecchi gags. The Panther Claw fights are fine enough as far as action goes, but the other two parts grow increasingly tedious with each new page.
Part of the reason for this is that a lot of the humor hinges on elements that have only grown more problematic with time. The girls' school parts have Honey facing off against a lot of predatory lesbians, be they hideous spinsters, horny sadists, or mannish thugs. This even bleeds into the Panther Claw portions, where Honey's beautiful naked body makes even Sister Jill question her orientation. The extended ecchi bits mostly come courtesy of journalist-turned-ally Seiji, whose tiny old father and younger brother take every opportunity to leer at her. Indeed, there's a portion midway through the book where the two of them molest Honey (disguised as a statue) that pushes not just the boundaries of what 1970s shonen manga could get away with, but good taste in general.
The other part is that Nagai has a terrible tendency to drag out the jokes here for far too long. This is not just true for the elements previously mentioned, but other gags such as Honey getting stuck naked due to a lack of power or a pants-less detective with bleeding hemorrhoids. Comedy lives and dies on timing, and every joke here dies a lingering death because Nagai just can't stop himself, even when it comes at the expense of the plot or the tone.
Tone is another problem here. While Devilman was a grim tale, it was a tonally consistent one (even with the addition of the later Shin Devilman chapters). The dark and dramatic tone built up naturally and consistently, coming to a head in its apocalyptic finale. In contrast, Cutey Honey constantly stumbles between seriousness and goofiness, taking a particular harsh turn in the second half. It never finds a balance until the final few chapters, and by then it's simply too late to matter. Worse still, it doesn't even so much build to a conclusion as it does come to a screeching halt, all to the tune of the Cutey Honey opening. It's a frustrating end to an inconsistent manga.
ART:
Much like Devilman, Nagai's work is a little wonky in the early chapters but gets more confident and refined as the series goes on. What doesn't get refined are the designs for the various members of Panther Claw, most of whom have demonic faces paired with utterly ridiculous animal or animal part-themed costumes. The only who manages to escape this is Sister Jill, which might explain why her scenes with Honey manage to possess a little more menace than others. Meanwhile, anyone who isn't young and allied with Honey is drawn in the gooniest way possible.
I suspect that the dragged-out comedy scenes are the reason why many of the fight sequences are such brief and blandly assembled collections of kicks and flips. This only improves in the last quarter of the book, when those scenes are well past. As far as the fanservice goes, it's more tame than you would expect. While Honey is frequently naked, she's not more detailed than a Barbie doll and her nudity is framed as equal parts comedy and comeliness. The angles are certainly less voyeuristic than you see in modern ecchi manga, even when others are actively peeping on Honey.
PRESENTATION:
Not only is there an afterward by Nagai himself, but also by novelist Hirayama Yumeaki. His essay is brief, detailing not only his history with this particular manga but placing in context with Nagai's other works of the era.
RATING:
While Cutey Honey may be an important work in the history of shonen manga, magical girls, and Go Nagai, it's also a hard one to recommend to modern readers. It's cheeky and audacious, but also messy, incomplete, and dated in some unpleasant ways.
This series is published by Seven Seas. This series is complete in Japan with 2 volumes. Both volumes were published as a 2-in-1 omnibus and is currently in print.
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