天下制覇

That's a lot of lesbians.

Impressions:

It feels a little weird to say this, but I can't help but feel like it's taking itself a little too seriously. That may be a hard argument to make given basically everything concerning the school part of it, which appears to be a perpetual lesbian S&M orgy made up of potato people. I think it's that Cutie Honey is, by its very nature, flamboyant and over the top, and they didn't hit that with the Panther Claw side of things very well. If they want Honey to be the beacon of hope and life that characters keep announcing she is, she should probably do something other than grumble "You'll pay for that" in every single interaction with and about the baddies. It's all very subdued and almost dour in places contrasted against Re: Cutie Honey's aggressive ebullience and flashiness. Hell, the big fight in this episode takes place in some kind of bizarre speedline dimension where everyone's weirdly floating around. The closing bit of Natsuko being literally tortured for a gag is also something that seems like is going to come back to haunt the show as it inevitably uses her for drama purposes.

It was passable, I suppose. It didn't waste any time on big info dumps or origin stories, so that's appreciated. No origin story here. At least not yet. That invariably comes later. But it's nice to have a hero willing and able to jump into the fray and execute the Uncle Ben mantra. This version of Honey isn't nearly the badass as the last one though, and I'll put a lot of the blame for that on the animation and direction. A badass fight scene could've really helped in a lot of ways instead of the weird floaty spinny crap. I also really hope the Sister Jill/new cop thing isn't supposed to be a cunning twist.