Summary: >

Sawa is a pretty young girl attending college. She plays the innocent school girl part pretty well, which comes in handy when covering up the fact that she deals out vigilante justice with exploding bullets. For years she's worked with a detective who was like a guardian to her. But then something happened which changed Sawa: she made a friend. And her friend also happens to be under the guardianship of the detective. Things all start to take a strange twist when Sawa has to choose between her friend and her guardian. But one thing is for sure; whoever she doesn't side with won't live for long.

Thoughts: >

I was pretty much totally unaware of this video until it was practically under my nose, and people pointed out that it had gotten rather good reviews. After watching Kite I was a bit confused. As far as action goes, Kite delivers. In fact the extent of battery and bloodshed (per person) is something to be reckoned with, and the high action scenes are delivered with exceptional quality.

As for the story... well I can't agree there. Overall Kite gave me the impression of being cold, and rather heartless. There is hardly enough emotion all the way through to fill a thimble, and the plot itself wasn't overly engaging. I personally found the ending to detract a LOT from the show. Overall I wouldn't recommend it. Kite to me seemed like the sort of thing you can find in movies all the time in the U.S. now days. I suppose I'm from the old school of anime fan where you like to get some sort of feeling from watching a show. However if you are looking for a lot of violent action, with a fair plot, Kite won't disappoint you.

Update: - So a long while after I watched this show I found something interesting about Kite. Like a huge amount of the show was cut out. Kite was originally a two part OAV series. For American consumption, it was merged into a single volume and quite a few scenes were cut. How much? The original version I saw was 45 minutes. The "Directors cut" is 60. Yes they cut 15 minutes out (25%). And what did they remove? Sex. A lot of sex - pretty much the entire 15 minutes they cut out was sex. I haven't actually seen "the directors cut" which was released in the U.S. - therefore I'm not exactly qualified to say if that might still be edited in some form. What I did see was the raw Japanese version, which gave me a bit of insight on things.

In a nutshell, Kite is pretty much the perfect merging of sex and violence. It's like an extremely violent action show interlaced with a porno - but with an actual story. That's where all this gets weird. You see the sex actually does play a part in Kite. It's not just that they have sex, but there are other things that happen during the sex scenes, conversations at times, and flashbacks that give you insight into what in the hell is going on. You cut 15 minutes of that and it's a small wonder the show seems so puzzling. The story actually sort of emerges instead of this disjointed picture of people getting the crap kicked out of them with weird cut scenes. The sex is pretty graphic (I wasn't kidding when I mentioned the term porno). Was it necessary? I donno... I mean with peoples heads exploding left and right, why stop there ya know? =P - I'd also like to mention that Sawa suddenly makes a lot more sense as a character. You can see why she seems so detached. Well I'll leave it at that. It doesn't take a super genius to figure out which version is which. One you have to be 18 to buy, and it's more expensive. The other one doesn't have any sex. Overall I'd say that it might be worth checking out... if you want something rather extreme.

Screen Caps: >