Let's conclude our Cutie Honey 50th anniversary trivia with the final episode: “A Poison Flower Falls to Hell.”
Screenwriter: Masaki Tsuji
Art Director: Urata Mataharu
Animation Director: Satoshi Jingu
Director: Osamu Kasai
With the exception of Junpei’s girlfriend Mami and the nameless Panther Claw subordinates, all of the (living) characters in the series appear for the final episode.
The scene of Honey and the Hayami family preparing for the trip was not in the original draft script.
The suspenseful drumming that plays before Eagle Panther attacks the truck was lifted from Go Misawa’s soundtrack for Devilman.
The storyboard originally depicted Pochi riding with everyone else in the back of the truck. This was corrected for the finalized episode, with the principal from Paradise Academy appearing instead.
Honey's final "Honey Flash" animation was recycled from episode 22. Only the background was changed.
In the original draft script, Honey transformed into Hurricane Honey and drove the truck towards Eagle Panther. She wouldn't have transformed into Cutie Honey until after the commercial break.
Honey has always lovingly addressed her father as “papa”, but in this episode she refers to him as the more formal otousama or “father.” This was probably done to demonstrate to the audience how much she has grown from her battle with Panther Claw.
In the original manga, Sister Jill’s headquarters was called maboroshi jyou or “Castle of Illusion.” In the anime, it's the "Panther Chateau." The name was probably changed to avoid confusion with Cutter Claw’s “Castle of Illusion” from episode 10.
Jill’s headquarters in the manga looks like a traditional European style castle, while the anime version evokes more of a haunted house.
The dreamlike landscape Honey falls into is modeled after the surrealist works of Salvador Dali, specifically one of his most famous works, The Persistence of Memory, which depicts melting pocket watches. The floating lips could possibly be based on Man Ray’s Observatory Time: The Lovers, a painting featuring a giant pair of lush red lips in the sky.
The second half of the episode features a few references to one of Toei Animation’s earlier films, The Little Prince and the Eight-Headed Dragon.
Released in 1963, the film tells the story of Susanoo, the youngest son of the gods who created the Earth, and his journey in finding his mother. The stylized film featured the talents of animation veterans such as Yasuo Otsuka, Yoichi Kotabe, Isao Takahata, and Kimio Yabuki.
References to The Little Prince and the Eight-Headed Dragon:
The human shaped fire that attacks Honey is animated almost exactly like the Fire God that Susanoo faces.
The phantom serpents are a dead-ringer for the eight-headed dragon. The only difference is the coloring. In the film their colors are similar to Maleficent's dragon form from Walt Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. It’s worth mentioning in the original storyboard the illusions were meant to look like generic snakes.
After the Panther Chateau crumbles, the gloomy skies clear up and Honey finds herself in a flowerbed under a blue sky. This is similar to the end of the film, in which the defeated dragon turns into a field of flowers and the dark skies become bright and sunny.
The serpents with humanoid faces were voiced by Nobuyo Tsuda, the same actress who plays Hystler and Panther Zora. The coloring of the human faces slightly resemble Jill's human disguise from episode 14.
The bone-chilling organ music that plays during Honey and Jill’s confrontation is Fugue in D Major, BWV 580 by Johann Sebastian Bach. The rendition featured in this episode was performed by French organist Marie-Claire Alain.
In the original script, Sister Jill actually destroyed the Silver Fleuret. In the actual episode, she just takes it away from Honey.
Originally, Naojiro was going to rally up the Paradise Academy students (and possibly the faculty) to raid Sister Jill's castle. In the final product, only the Hayami family attempted to infiltrate the castle.
In the original script, Honey would've found Zora's crystal ball in the flowerbed. In the actual episode, Honey runs over to Seiji, who is hypnotized and holding it.
The reunion scene only featured Honey and the Hayami family but originally it would've included the Paradise Academy students and Goemon.
While the animation director for the finale is Satoshi Jingu of Anime Room, the key animation for the second half of the episode was handled primarily by Yoshinori Kanada. While he was relatively unknown at the time, he would go on to be a very influential figure in the animation world, working on titles such as Dino Mech Gaiking, Birth, Princess Mononoke and others. Kanada’s style is particularly noticeable during the “Honey Special” sequence and Honey's reunion with the Hayami family.
Although this is the only instance where Kanada is listed in the credits, Kazuhiro Ochi has confirmed he did in fact work on the other episodes that were animated by Anime Room (6, 13, 24, and 25).
Supposedly, the final episode was originally going to be handled by Shingo Araki and Hiroshi Shitara, but both men were too busy working on Majokko Megu-chan.
The original storyboard describes clouds around a mountain changing into the form of Panther Zora during the closing scenes. In the finalized episode, Zora simply appears in the sky.
Despite getting pretty good ratings, Cutie Honey was canceled due to concerns over salacious content. According to Go Nagai’s autobiographical manga, Gekiman! Cutie Honey Hen, nearly everyone involved was blindsided by the cancellation. Toshio Katsuta in particular was quite surprised, since Honey made better ratings than its predecessor, Microid S. Katsuta was actually quite confident Honey would last three or four seasons.
Because of the series' abrupt cancellation, Katsuta and Nagai both agreed to have Honey defeat Jill at the end of the series, while leaving Panther Zora’s fate being left to the interpretation of the fans.
In an interview printed in the 1981 Cutey Honey Roman Album, Go Nagai talks a little bit about what Honey and Zora were up to after the finale. He says Zora began harvesting animals from the Amazon and transforming them into androids, probably in preparation for a battle against Honey. He also says Honey is destined to only fight Panther Claw, so she'd probably ignore any unrelated criminal activity. I guess we can assume Honey got a little downtime after her victory against Sister Jill?
In the original storyboard, the final shot of the series was described as "a valiant silhouette of Honey emerges from the fog." It's worth mentioning the storyboard depicts Honey Kisaragi rather than Cutie Honey.
And that's all our trivia for Cutie Honey! I hope you enjoyed all the interesting tidbits I've collected over the years.
Special Thanks:
@brickme, Ayumi Shinozaki, Josh M., Charlie from Skaro Hunting Society, Phix Cabral, Jonathan Castleman, and Albireo710.
I've updated the trivia for the last episode of Cutie Honey. A huge thank you to albireo710 for sharing images of the original storyboard and draft script.
Fun fact: The official English scripts called referred to this as a "human-powered car." I believe the Discotek DVDs used that same translation. For the blu-ray release properly I translated it as "rickshaw."
I finally had some time to draw! I was inspired by this glorious piece of art. I was originally going to have Honey sitting on Naojiro but I kept running into issues with his anatomy.
My birthday was last week, and it was absolutely terrible, so I really tried to pick myself up. I find that doing a random drawing makes me feel a lot better. I decided to do an illustration of Kisaragi Honey, since her birthday was on the 8th.
blakekathryn
andulkaphoto
ellievsbear
vaporwave
romaincrisis
gummygunk
snowghoul
