Okay, I'm an OLD friend [the one obsessed with secret agents and misison impossible stuff...the one who gave you the ultra cool Partridge Family CD] and I just rented an animi video. Cause I saw it and thought of you and so I read the back and it looked kinda cool 'cause it said it was a cross between "La Femme Nikita" [my FAV show, but I'm glad it's canceled 'cause how long can you schedule your life around a tv show, that's pathetic, right?] and "The Professional" [yet another cool movie].

ANYWAY...

The video is called "Kite" and I'm about to watch it. I have to admit I think it's gonna be stupid...but we'll see. Anyway, IS this considered a cool animi or stupid?

-- Ultra Spy (ultraspy@email.com), June 09, 2000

Answers

okay, i just watched the video. I thought cartoons were for kids. This was stupid...oh were cool explosions but is it important to see body parts flying around everywhere? Oh, the guns were cool, but what about say, an understandable plot? It was too gross and the characters were two dimensional...oh yeah, they were cartoons! ANyone care to defend the movie? I give it three thumbs down.

-- Ultra Spy (ultraspy@email.com), June 09, 2000.

Ultra Spy, you need to get some shoujo stuff.

Agent M's never actually seen Kite but if it's anything like you said, it sounds too shounen for her. She thinks Agent A's plotting to send you some Weiss Kreuz, which is also very shounen but it's got some plot development, too... [She says this hoping that you will understand that she personally hasn't gotten into it; too much angst for her. She swears that she counted five Relationships Gone Horribly Wrong in the first four eps... however, Agent A rather likes it -- enough that she got the fan subs, anyway -- and she's probably going to kill Agent M for giving you the wrong impression.] Basically, these four really cute guys run a flower shop by day and are asassins by night, etc. And There Was Much Angst.

Agents A and M are also plotting to send UltraSpy one of Agent M's old mix tapes which has Kodomo no Omocha, which, if Agents A and M know UltraSpy at all, will be recieved with much howls of laughter. Also some Gundum Wing [the one that's running on Cartoon Network right now... the Agents haven't got into it yet], some Macross stuff [Agent A loves it, Agent M can take it or leave it], some CLAMP School Dectectives [which both Agents like] and Macross Plus [Sharon Apple is Da Bomb], plus Wedding Peach, which is sort of like Sailor Moon but involves three girls who go through transformation sequences involving, Agent M kids you not, Full Western Wedding Clothing and attack phrases involving "Wedding Bridal Flash" and "St Lily Lipstick Rainbow." Agent M reccomends mass consumption of chocolate with them, herself. Possibly washed down with some JD.

Also, UltraSpy might get into Serial Experiments Lain or Cowboy Bebop. Lain's about this chick who...ergh, you're going to have to watch it to have it make what sense it does, but it's really interesting and Agent M swears the first time she got on the computer after she saw it, she was compelled to say, "Hello, Navi" and expected it to reply, "Hello, Agent M" back at her. Cowboy BeBop is about a bunch of futuristic bounty hunters and is worth watching just for the dog and the music. All the episodes are named after jazz and bebop songs, so you get titles like "Stray Dog Strut" [if Agent M ever gets a Corgi, she is naming it Ein] and Honky Tonk Women.

There's always Card Captor. Which is going to be shown in an Americanised version starting with the preview on June 18, and, to quote the Agents' friend Shirley, makes poor Show-lawn [GEH! Poor Syaoran!] sound like a flaming drag queen, which he is not. Even if he does like Yukito.

Agent M who knows she should be in bed but worked a banquet and has tight muscles everywhere and is going to be killed, KILLLLLED, if she doesn't get more done on her new fic... and for pity's sake, write her sometime!

-- Agent M (fenya@powertie.org), June 10, 2000.

Hmm, first off, did you watch the dubbed or subbed version? ^_^ IIRC, "Kite" is a very violent OAV and its appeal will be to those who like graphic visuals. The basic plot's relatively simplistic and the visuals definitely speak louder than the script. Although the violence was left in, the more graphic sexual scenes were edited from the American version. Some people claim this is why the OAV seems so jerky and noncontinuous, others say the unedited version would just make the video even more unwatchable. Personally, I think (why yes, I really *do* think! ^_^) that, as with all anime in general, if you're a very visual person and this genre is something that you would normally watch as a live action or read as a book, then you would probably like "Kite." For example, the few people that I know who live and breathe "Ninja Scroll" liked "Kite." And if Agent A thinks Weiss and Kenshin are bloody, then she'll understand why I've got some anime titles that I would never send her (or her evil twin ^_^). The TV show "La Femme Nikita" isn't anywhere as graphic as "Kite" even though the basic plot is obviously somewhat similar. I don't know if "Kite" was originally something else (novel, manga, radio drama, etc) but remember that OAVs in general do not have the luxury of being able to go into the kind of depth of character development that a TV series does due to the lack of time . . . but enough of my ranting . . . (and many apologies for any and all grammatical and spelling errors . . . my excuse is that English isn't my native language! ^_-)

-- me ^_^ (Sarasa_chan@yahoo.com), June 13, 2000.