Kite

Format: Movie
Type: Fansub (uncensored/censored)
Studio: Green Bunny
Length: 51 minutes
Rating: NC-17

Plot:	3
Characters:	3
Art:	4
Music:	3
Tilt:	4

Overal: 3

Release Date: 1998

In short: Graphic, disturbing, and yet ever-intruging, Kite manages to blur the line between entertainment and filth.

The experience of watching Kite for the first time can best be described as witnessing a car accident: it is disturbing and horrific and yet somehow you just cannot tear your eyes away from the scene. You continue to watch not knowing which is more unsettling, the grotesquery of it all or your own morbid facinaction with it. By the end, you feel somewhat nausious and yet somewhat satisfied - the ultimate bitter irony.

Babe in a band-aid.

Part of what makes Kite such a double-edged sword is its absolute stunning animation. Highly stylized characters populated an equally beautiful world. The level of detail becomes at once shocking though, when the first of a long stream of entirely gorey deaths occur in such a highlighted fashion that you whince lest that aortial jet of blood splash into your eye. No amount of reviews can stifle your reaction to the first murder - which transpires within the first two minutes, no less - and this opening scene sets the decidedly dark mood which dominates the rest of the feature. Make no mistake, the world of Kite is enbittered and pessimistic, and one that takes no prisoners.

The plot itself revolves around the "protagonist" Sawa, an orphened girl taken under the wing of crooked police investigater, Aika, whom trains her in the art of assassination. Those murdered are themselves killers, child molesters, rapists, and it is under these guises that one starts to believe that perhaps Sawa and Aika should be commended for their work. But this is a world that knows no heroes, and as the story progresses it becomes evident that there are no good guys nor any shades of grey; all that is there are a bleak set of characters desperately trying to survive any way that they can, at the expense of everyone around them.

Note the metal spikes.

Design, wrote, and directed by "the man with a lethal mind," Yasuomi Umetsu, Kite is not a movie for the easily unnerved. Even the edited version of the film features enough violence to give Ninja Scroll a serious run for its money, and the unedited director's cut version is the most explicit piece of animated media I have ever witnessed. Unedited Kite showcases the four sex scenes hinted at in the other version with such an intensity that it borders on hardcore porn. These scenes do not excite but rather revulse the viewer due to the nature of the acts themselves - it is made abondantly clear that the girls are being taken advantage of, and in at least two of cases, it could be flat-out called rape. This sexual element mixed with the extreme violence makes Kite a very difficult anime to watch.

Be that as it may, I feel as though Kite actually had a deeper meaning to consider, masked beneath the suface nature of the show. Essentially, the movie asks the question of exactly how far are you willing to go in sacrificing everything to acquire your desires. Although there are other films which encapsule this theme in less offensive packages, Kite nevertheless presents quite an interesting variation of it - not to mention sporting some of the most intense action choregraphy I've ever seen in an anime. So while Kite may to be inaccessable to the majority of anime viewers out there, those that can and do brave the violence and sex will be - as I was - pleasantly surprised. With news that director Rob Cohen (XXX, Fast and the Furious) has acquired the rights to remake Kite as a live-action movie, perhaps this means an entirely new, American audience will be shocked, horrified, and amazed as Japanese and anime audiences have been for over five years.