Anime Profile: Cutey Honey

Cutey Honey is among the better known anime titles, primarily for its main character. However, the story behind Cutey Honey is actually very interesting. Created by Go Nagai, reputed for incorporating suggestive elements into his works, the original Cutey Honey can be considered the precursor to the "Magical Girl" anime and manga genre, being the first featuring a female character able to transform and fight the forces of evil.

The story focuses around Honey Kisaragi, who had thought she was normal until her "father" revealed to her that she was in fact an android with the capability to reshape her body in any number of ways. From that day on, Honey fights against forces that would want her secret power for themselves.

The original Cutey Honey series (targeted as a shounen or boy-oriented series) ran for 25 episodes but was canceled when the Japanese public criticized its content. It was too overt. There are some things even the Japanese don't like to see on television. In 1992, an updated OVA version of the story (the video format and the changing attitudes made this approach more acceptable) came out. We see it here as New Cutey Honey.

Cutey Honey F (more commonly referred to by the full name, Cutey Honey Flash) is a retake of the original story (created by Yukako Iisaka) with an intent to make it shoujo (girl-oriented), turning Honey Kisaragi from a well-endowed secretary android into a school-age human girl and adding both more romantic potential into the series as well as conflicts more typical of the genre that the original inspired, actually replacing Sailor Moon (which finished just before Cutey Honey F began) as the show to watch.