Watching:カイト LIBERATOR
I got my copy of Kite Liberator this past Friday, and though I admittedly went in with pretty low expectations, I was pleasantly surprised as to how much I enjoyed the OVA. I was initially somewhat worried when previews and trailers showed the protagonist battling monsters of all things, a sizable genre step away from the gritty assassin piece that the original Kite was. While the sci-fi elements certainly felt jarring at first, they turned out to be integral cogs in the touching, albeit undeveloped storyline (but hey, there's only so much you can do with 60 minutes). The animation quality is pretty incredible, and Liberator is just as fiercely violent and bloody as the original. I'd go as far as to say that Liberator rivals the first Kite in terms of content, but the fact is that we're dealing with two entirely different animals here, given that Kite was, um, porn, and Liberator is not. A lot of the material is still uncomfortable and almost dangerously edgy - Monaka, our heroine, spends her evenings tracking down and brutally killing pedophiles - but again, sans the sex scenes, Umetsu's latest work simply won't command the type of controversy and infamy that the original Kite did. Overall, it's a pretty spectacular little OVA, but one that is simply begging for a sequel/prequel, whether it be another OVA or a 13 episode TV series ala Mezzo.
Swank packaging. After all these years, I'm still a sucker for slipcovers.
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