A Kite

MAL rates this as an 'Rx - Hentai' but I would say that it is still an Rx, but not strictly a hentai. It has scenes of full penetration sex, and nudity, but it serves only to further the plot and help you understand the characters. Take this into mind that this is not a hentai, but has the graphic sexual content of one. Story: - 8/10 - Very Good The story in this OVA is rather hard to describe without giving many spoilers, but essentially it is about a teenage girl who is involved with a crooked cop after her parents are murdered, who makes herand another boy kill people who have done wrong. Doesn't sound special, does it? Seems we have seen things like this before, right? Wrong. This OVA provides so many subtle plot twists and turns that until the end of the show, you have no clue what is going on. Let me continue to warn you though, it is very, very graphic. Art - 10/10 - Outstanding Even by today's standards, the art in this is beautiful. The characters are well-designed, the layout of the rooms and city is good, and the backgrounds are detailed to the point of insanity. This OVA is about ten years old too boot, which makes the art even more impressive. Blood and gore is used heavily, but not in situations that it wouldn't be appropriate, and it is semi-believable considering the weapons the people are using for the killing. Sound - ?/10 - ??? I can't comment on the sound, as I watched this on my computer, and my sound is broken. I would imagine that it would be good though. See other reviews to see how the sound is. Character - 7/10 - Good The characters in this OVA are actually rather good considering it's length. The line between hero and villain is stepped on many times. The character development in this series is very good too, as I have said before, it keeps you guessing who-did-what the entire show, and keeps you on edge. There are not many characters though, but the ones that are, they are put together nicely and have believable personalities. Enjoyment - 10/10 - Outstanding I haven't enjoyed an Anime this much is a long time. Too bad it is only 2 episodes. I would probably re-watch it if I had time, but it is rather memorable. Overall - 8/10 - Very Good Once you watch Kite, you will not forget it. It is an anime that is truly unique from it's counterparts, in a way that some thought to be impossible. A final warning is that this anime contains rape, blood and gore, full nudity, sex, mild cursing, and sex scenes involving characters whose age is hard to determine. I would say that this series would be alright for people who are looking for an anime that pushes the envelope on what is publishable. For the weak of heart - stay away, you will be revolted beyond belief.

"A pencil looks better in my hand than a gun does." -Sawa Preface: Well, I'll be honest, the pencil probably should have been in the hand of a writer who was a little more focused on characterization, but was instead passed off to a guy who knows how to write brutal, over the top action and hit you with the shocker. Exploitative, violent, and outrageous- this one is a cult classic among the ranks of your Violence Jacks and Mad Bull 34's. Art: 8 To have appeared in 1998, the time at which animation had started the gold rush towards computers and getting away from the pencils andpens, Kite looks pretty good for one of the holdouts of hand-drawn anime. The blood and gore effects are appropriately squishy and splatter like so many bugs on the windshield. Kite has these fun little guns with timed explosive bullets that also lead to interesting results... Head explosions, bodies ripped apart by gunfire, stabbings, severed limbs, meat fountains, it's all here. There's even a flying head sent off to the metro by an explosion. Sound and Voice Acting: 6 Sound consists mostly of some groovy Books-A-Million jazz muzak, gunfire, explosions, and groaning. Not a whole lot to say, there's really not an incredibly nuanced, detail oriented script with dynamic, emotional performances in this one. It's competently handled, nothing special. Of the two versions I saw, the re-release in DD 5.1 is vastly improved. Characters: 7 Tiny cast in this one. Emotionless, repressed Sawa takes center stage. She is presented as a tragic anti-heroine, her parents were murdered and she was taken in by sadistic cop/forensic investigator Akai, who turns her into his personal killer for those people he believes have escaped justice. (If you've seen the Showtime series "Dexter", they totally ripped Kite off.) The other two named characters are Oburi and Kanie. Oburi is a young man, approximately the same age as Sawa, who also moonlights as a contract killer. Kanie is the assistant to Akai, and sets up the hits. Story: 7 Kite is a fairly basic revenge narrative with a couple of good twists thrown in at the end. It's quite short, so there's not much I can say here that won't spoil it, but it depicts the tale of ambiguously teenaged hit-woman, Sawa, and her killings at the behest of her psychopathic, abusive guardian, Akai. She deals with his abuses while attempting to discover the killer of her parents, while at the same time undertaking dangerous assassination missions for seemingly little reward. Carrying her anger and desire for vengeance forward, she'll stop at nothing to even the score, and reclaim her life as her own. Enjoyment: 8 I really did like this one, it hit me with some shock and disgust I haven't seen since Violence Jack, with violence, blood and gore to match. About 152 gallons of blood are spilled, various visceral dismemberments, and overall over the top and stylized, but brutal action. As a quick action flick, it succeeds in giving you what you asked for: guns, child murderers, and a dose of filth. (Note: I heavily disagree with the hentai tag, here. While containing explicit scenes, that does not form the basis for the story of Kite, it's merely a tool used to provide character background and add another layer of in-your-face) Overall: 7 Kite is a decent late night film that's worth watching if you like mildly disturbing, violent, cult classic anime. The twists were good, the ending was satisfying, and it's got crazy gore effects, what more can you ask for? Recommend? If you're seeking some gruesome dismemberment and straight up, unfiltered violence in the vein of 80's gorefest exploitation OVAs, look no further. NOT FOR KIDS! Kite: brought to you in part by studio Arms, the makers of Elfen Lied!

This is an interesting one. Whilst commonly just referred to as a hentai, Kite is a lot more than that- it's more like a crime thriller/assassin drama that has a lot of (surprisingly fitting) sex in it. It belongs to the large family of hyper-violent oversexed OVAs the 90s birthed so many of. Unlike most of those, however, it's actually fairly good. The story is fairly simple. Sawa, a girl with a mysterious and bloody past, is an assassin, trained to kill without mercy and leave no signs of her presence. She's also involved with a ring of killers and criminals, and is in a somewhat one-sidedsexual relationship with the boss. She later meets another trainee killer, Oburi, and without giving too much away, things go down south. It's a fairly minimalistic story, but it gets the job done and it's by no means bad. The characters are...fairly forgettable. You have your quiet, emotionless killer girl, your corrupt gravelly voiced boss, your naive everyman who gets himself in hot water...the usual suspects. Nobody really stands out, although they at least seem to behave fairly convincingly. The animation is surprisingly good. It has that nice look to it that only hand-painted cels do, and the animation is smooth throughout. Everything is nicely detailed and the fights are something to behold. Even the sex scenes looked decent, which is surprising as they seemed fairly shoehorned in for the sake of "eh, we need to sell this thing, let's put some bonking in it". The music was forgettable but good. It wasn't memorable but at no point was I thinking "this music is getting on my tits". The voice acting was pretty decent- there's actually some English voice acting in the Japanese voicetrack, and against all probability it's actually good. The sex scenes are OK- honestly they seem to be played more for drama/"This is a gritty, depressing place" than titilation, as is often the case with these OVAs. Honestly you could take them out and be left with a decent assassin movie. They don't really detract from it though, so eh. Overall, Kite is a decent movie, especially compared to most other boobs and blood 90s OVAs. It's not very long and it's fairly enjoyable, so if you enjoy sex and violence and want to experience an obscure bit of OVA history I'd give it a go. It was never released outside of Japan uncensored, but a completely uncut version is easily found online. Overall: 7/10

Short and to the point. The Action as is the best part of the anime well done and animated (aside from one or two parts). The art is the second best part of the anime it holds up even in 2011 with its nicely detailed world and characters. If you're a fan of the late 90s art style you're going to love the nostalgia factor. Sadly it misses out on what I believe would have made the anime great, the relationship between the two protagonists. At just 56 minutes it's barely enough time to allow the viewer to see the two protagonists connect with eachother. They waisted valuable minutes on sex scenes instead of relationships building. The soundtrack is mostly poorly chosen saxophone based jazz pieces which, in my opinion, are not worth hearing. Overall it gets a 5 out 10 for failing in the end to succeed in one of the anime's main selling point, how two teenage hitmen grow their relationship through the hardships of having two live on the edge of society.

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