![]() What we essentially have here is The Punisher but played by a barely adolescent girl. ![]() Sawa is one of those heroines that you suspect fuels more the creator’s sexual fetishes that it does any desire to create an empowered kickass heroine – see other examples like the heroines in Blood: The Last Vampire (2000) or Kick-Ass (2010). Surprisingly, it took the Japanese several years to get into the act themselves with live-action remakes of Casshern (2004), Cutie Honey (2004), Devilman (2004), YatterMan (2009), Space Battleship Yamato (2010), Kiki’s Delivery Service (2014), Lupin III (2014), Attack on Titan (2015), Fullmetal Alchemist (2017), Gintama (2017) and Tokyo Ghoul (2017), which are far superior to the Western equivalents. The genre was begun several years earlier with the usually low-budget likes of The Guyver (1991), Crying Freeman (1995) and Fist of the North Star (1995) and subsequent to this Ghost in the Shell (2017) and Cowboy Bebop (2021), while there have been plans for a live-action version of Akira (1988) for more than a decade now. Kite now joins a host of other Western films that have adapted anime in live-action, including the likes of Transformers (2007) and sequels, Speed Racer (2008), Blood: The Last Vampire (2009), Dragonball: Evolution (2009) and Ghost in the Shell (2017). Yasuomi Umetsu later solo directed a 60-minuute sequel with Kite Liberator (2007) where the sex content was considerably toned down. In these, she is portrayed as barely adolescent if not underage, which caused upset to many censors. It is these latter that are the cause of most of the cuts – in particular, multiple scenes that show Sawa being raped and/or having sex with most of the characters, including Aker. The crucial difference however is that the anime comes with a high level of stylised violence and copious sex scenes. In many countries, this was heavily cut – the US version runs to only 45 minutes, removing around a quarter of the film’s running time.Īside from a few character changes, both the live-action film and the anime have essential similarities on a basic plotting level – a young girl is directed to act as an assassin on behalf of a detective. The original was first released as two OVA shorts and then compiled together as a single film that runs to 60 minutes. Kite is a live-action English-language film based on the anime Kite (1998), which was written and co-directed by Yasuomi Umetsu.
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