From the moment you see the brokeback pose and the modern-yet-Op Art cover, you know that you’re in for a ride with Cutie Honey a Gogo. And then you look at the credits: Original Story by Go Nagai, Honey’s creator, Story & Art by Shimpei Itoh, creator of Hyperdolls and artist for Taisho Yakyuu Musume, with cooperation from Hideaki Anno, the Director of the 2004 Cutie Honey Live-Action Movie and you know that this manga is going to be out of this world. 

And so it is. 

Cutie Honey a Gogo is a 2007 iteration of the eternal heroine Kisaragi Honey, aka Cutie Honey, a transforming android, who fights against the grotesque and violent Panther Claw, run by Sister Jill. 

This volume has everything I could ever want in a Cutie Honey story. Nat-chan is strong (and angry) and goes a little soft because of Honey, Sister Jill is obsessed, useless authority figures abound, random and pointless BDSM is inserted and, in the final pages, at St. Chapel Girl’s School (woo-hoo!) we get a sweet little bit of Yuri between Naoko and Ayu.  Couldn’t ask for anything better. 

If I haven’t been clear, let me be plain – this is a bluntly violent manga in which there are many casualties, but not as violent the original manga in which no one survives. 

But then, as someone on Twitter noted (but I cannot find the post to credit) Dirty Pair sounds filthy, but it’s not and Cutie Honey sounds innocent, but it’s not. It never has been. When you step into a Cutie Honey story, expect fanservice and death to follow.

Ratings:

Art – 8 Shimpei Itoh was a great choice
Story – 9 For a Cutie Honey story, this pretty much is exactly right.
Characters – 9 Same
Service – Yes, duh. Itoh does a terrific job of translating Honey’s transformation into sequential art
Yuri – Dribs and drabs. Let’s call it a 3

Overall – 8

I’m so glad to see this most excellent iteration of such  a timeless, yet always questionable, series. ^_^