A KITE

DESCRIPTION

CAST

OVA ActionKite Liberator
OVA ActionMezzo Forte

REVIEWS

• 

  Decibelle

  20/100
  You can't truly be edgy and fun if edge is all you have.

  However laughable, cliche-ridden, and squickworthy the story is, there's promise hidden in there. A young girl, after seeing that her parents have been brutally murdered, gets taken under the wing of a corrupt detective in exchange for being a sex slave and is made to become an assassin to kill other corrupt people. It's apparent that Quentin Tarantino borrowed the basic premise of a young orphan growing up to kill those who are bad and those who have wronged her for his Kill Bill series. The blood splatter, the fast pace of the action scenes interspersed with the calm, dialogue-heavy (though not as effective or even good in this movie's case) scenes filled, one-liners full of cheese and the like, even jazzy throwback music accompaniment... Tarantino surely must have watched this film, even enjoyed it.

  However, everything is done either A) by-the-books, B) in spite of the viewer and/or C) lazily, making this an incredibly annoying watch. As for as point A goes, the story is full of cliches of the "assassin/revenge" plotline, and it's easily predictable. If you've seen a film or read a story centered around revenge or assassins (like Kill Bill!), then within 10 to 15 minutes you can easily guess where the anime will be headed.

  Point B is what really knocks it down quite a bit. Any substance is replaced with sleaze. As mentioned earlier, the main girl is taken in but in addition to becoming an assassin she's a sex slave to the corrupt detective, and that's not all. Lots of ridiculous blood-splattering, explosions, vomit, hentai, sex jokes, hypocrisy of moral values (and not in a head-turning or unique way; just straight-up stupid character development)... Hell, the jazz soundtrack just makes the "shock" worse. It tries to play it off as cool and edgy, but it just makes the anime feel draggy and idiotic. When people talk about anime being sleazy and filled with sex (as people who know little to none about it are prone to do), they think of anime like Kite.

  The biggest point of contention here for me though, is the laziness part. It's 1998; much better animation existed in many different series like Cowboy Bebop, Pokemon, Outlaw Star, Serial Experiments Lain, Trigun. Perfect Blue and Princess Mononoke came out the year before, and as silly as it is to compare an anime from a totally different genre, Neon Genesis Evangelion had very great animation despite being on a small budget. Yet all the faces look dead-eyed, blank, even creepy. Facial expressions are minimal beyond generic happiness, sad, or angry. Audio for the speaking starts nearly a full half-second after lips start moving (I'm hoping this is just Netflix's fault and not the OVA's), yet all other audio is fine. There are frames where everything freezes, not because of a point being proven or something emphasized, but just to fill running time. Even the voices sound strained and half-assed.

  I could look past the fact that this is essentially a glorified hentai OVA if it were voiced and animated well. I can get past the (quite frankly disturbing) sex scenes and the shameless gore and lack of a strong story if it looked like the people who worked on it cared. But it's obvious that they didn't care, so I can't learn to care after it ends (beyond writing a review for this). The worst kind of thing to feel for a movie is a lack of caring when it so desperately and clearly wants you to care and feel something beyond annoyance and anger. If no one working on this cares, then neither do I.

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• 

  GhostHardware

  58/100
  Great atmosphere and art aren't enough to support a weak story and characters.

  First off, I'll address the elephant in the room here and say that I wouldn’t consider this to be a hentai. The director was quite literally forced to put the sex scenes in by the folks who funded the project and the story works fine without them. That being said, I thought they came across as quite dirty and deglamorized and not for any sort of ‘sex appeal’. I’d still consider this to be a Girls with Guns anime.

  The action scenes and animation are fine, although I did feel a particular fight in a bathroom went on for too long (it ended up being close to a quarter of the total runtime). I really liked the art too, I’ve seen some criticism thrown its way because the characters look ‘soulless’ but it helped the sleaze factor and it added to the atmosphere. That’s probably what I liked most about the OVA, the atmosphere. Its hard to describe but 90’s anime had a cold, empty feeling which is hard to define; the best example I can give is not an anime but the video game Grand Theft Auto 3. Play that, and you’ll understand what I mean. The soundtrack is decent too. Some of the jazz pieces are a bit out of place but there’s nothing I’d call bad here. The ambient pieces are good as well. Its a shame the OST isn’t available to listen to in full. I did like the ending too, open endings are not popular with fans but it actually fit the tone they were going for (well, at least the tone up until the few minutes before it ended)

  Moving onto the bad now and there’s unfortunately quite a lot to talk about. To begin with, I was very confused about the tone the director was going for, because at times it felt like I was watching several different shows at the same time. This is trying to be a serious dark psychological thriller, an 80’s cheesy over the top action film, and a gritty action film ala Luc Besson all in one. It didn’t work. Mixing loud and quiet scenes is fine, but the tone shifting so often was bizarre.

  The next problem is the characters. We are only given backstory on ONE character and even that is minimal. This is a classic case of style over substance but there’s so little in the character development department its tough to truly care about any of the characters. The main hero in particular is a head-scratcher, the director missed a huge opportunity by not doing more with his character. Even character motivations are barely covered: Why is the main villain (the detective) killing off criminals anyway? He's clearly shown to be evil, so why is he doing this in the first place? Why does he care? Why were Kite’s parents killed? And so on... almost nothing is explained.

  Another thing I want to bring up which I hated was instead of just shooting, the characters would monologue, have a pointless conversation or just stare at the enemy while pointing their gun. THIS HAPPENED AROUND 10 TIMES. Holy hell, I wanted to shout at my monitor anytime it happened. I mean these characters are trained killers, just shoot them and move on. I know this is a common trope in action films but it HAPPENED SO OFTEN. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GetItOverWith

  When you take a step back and view Kite as a whole it becomes apparent how bare bones it really is. More character focus, a consistent tone and less reliance on cliché would have made this a classic. Its still entertaining, and I genuinely did like some parts of it which is why its hard to be negative here. But, all in all its mediocre. It’s tough to give it a good rating.

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• 

  BrockAli

  70/100
  The Pitfall of Power in A Kite

  The main purpose of Kite is its stylish noir atmosphere, which it excels at. However, there is a thematic core under all this style: the alluring trap of power. All three male assassins meet their doom endeavoring to quench their thirst for it.

  This theme first rears its head when Oburi's coat is splashed by kids playing basketball. He reveals himself to be far less calm than he thus far seemed when, unable to bear the feeling that he has been trod upon, he makes an unnecessary display of absolute dominance over the kids by sinking the ball from a great distance and shooting a bullet through it as it falls from the net. He is shot by one of these kids in the final moments of the film. But before his sports rage catches up to him, he makes the same mistake when he confronts Akai. The confrontation is completely unnecessary; he could have just left with Sawa in secret. But he wanted to impress on Akai that he could kill him if he wanted. And he wanted Akai to know that Sawa was leaving him and that there was nothing he could do about it. Minutes later, Oburi is lying bloodied on the floor, watching Akai coercively fuck the girl he love.

  While this act of humiliation doesn't directly cause Akai's death, it is the raw epitome of the lifestyle he and Kanie have chosen. Neither of them need to do crime for money; Akai is a high-ranking policeman, and Kanie is portrayed to be skilled with computers. They just want the power. They just want to be the arbiters of death. They just want people to have to pay them if they want men killed who force themselves on underage girls, while they do the same thing with impunity. They live this lifestyle to the fullest for years, provoke Sawa's hatred for years, and are brought down by her.

  Sawa is the foil to all these excessive male displays of dominance, the only one who can serve revenge cold. The humiliation that makes the men in this film snap, Sawa endures as easily as a doll to accomplish her goals. That's the sad thing, though; as foolish as the three men's lives were, at least they lived and died satisfying their wills. Sawa lives passively satisfying theirs, at first just to protect a pair of earrings, and then just to end it all. Although she tells Akai how long she's been waiting to kill him, rather than revel in victory, she just seems to want to forget her past after she's filled him with lead. Throwing away her remaining earring, she acknowledges that her life up until now was a mistake.

  It is because of this thematic core that despite all the goofily over-the-top explosions, falls from skyscrapers, and poorly-transitioned porn, it's hard to come away from this film without a weight in your heart.

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