To commemorate Cutie Honey's 50th anniversary, I wanted to post trivia for all 25 episodes. We'll start this week with the first episode: "The Black Claw Grips The Heart."
Screenwriter: Masaki Tsuji
Art Director: Mataharu Urata
Animation Director: Shingo Araki
Director: Tomoharu Katsumata
In the early drafts Honey Kisaragi was originally Honey Tachibana. Honey’s finalized surname name, “Kisaragi” (如月) is a traditional name for February in the Japanese calendar. It refers to the seasonal “changing of clothes.” The name "Honey" comes from the American TV series Honey West.
Honey was voiced by Eiko Masuyama, who would reprise this role a few times over the years, notably in the Re: Cutie Honey audio drama and the Playstation game, Little Witching Mischiefs. She also had a guest spot in Cutey Honey Flash as Dr. Kisaragi’s old friend, Dr. Mitsuko Kanzaki.
St. Chapel Academy is located in Okutama, a mountainous area that’s about an hour and a half away from central Tokyo. St. Chapel itself was most likely inspired or at least named after the real life royal chapel, Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, France. The hymn the students sing during Mass in these early episodes is “Come, Thou Almighty King.”
The freckle-faced girl who stands next to Honey during Mass is her best friend and roommate, Natsuko Aki. Although she’s almost never referred to by her full name but rather “Nat-chan.” Her first name is in reference to natsu or “summer” while aki means “autumn.” In the original manga she is depicted as having pigtails rather than a bob cut and doesn’t have freckles. Natsuko’s anime design was modeled after an unnamed girl who appeared briefly in the Devilman manga.
Natsuko was voiced by Rihoko Yoshida, who’s best known for voicing the titular character in Little Witch Megu, Maria Grace Fried in UFO Robo Grendizer, and Michiru Saotome in Getter Robo. Yoshida would also voice Panther Zora in the 1995 PC-FX video game, Cutey Honey FX. Noriko Watanabe (Sister Jill, Mami) also voiced Natsuko occasionally for whenever Rihoko Yoshida was unavailable.
Honey’s goofy teacher Ms. Alphonne Louis Steinbeck III is based on a male character from Go Nagai’s Kikkai-kun manga. That same Alphonne also served as the basis for Akira Fudo’s teacher in the Devilman TV series.
Ms. Alphonne was voiced by the late Noriko Tsukase, who had previously voiced Mr. Alphonne’s wife and son in Devilman. Although Ms. Alphonne appears in every other animated Honey series, this is the only version where she is voiced by a woman.
During the early production stages Seiji Hayami was known as Shun Kazami and was described as "falling in love with Honey, despite knowing she’s an android." He would also have a goofy little sister named Zuuko, who would question if she was really related to her handsome older brother. When the series details were finalized, Seiji became more of a comic relief character and his romantic chemistry with Honey was downplayed.
Seiji was voiced by Katsuji Mori, who would go on to voice Dr. Kisaragi in Cutie Honey Universe.
Katsuji Mori revealed he had ad-libbed Seiji's lines during Honey's first transformation. Originally, Seiji had no dialogue in that scene.
Honey's motorcyclist form is called "Hurricane Honey" which is possibly an homage to Shotaro Ishinomori's Cyborg 009. The lead character, Joe Shimamura, is sometimes a professional car racer who goes by the nickname "Hurricane Joe."
Seiji refers to Hurricane Honey as kaminari musume (カミナリ娘) which translates to something like “thunder girl.” He’s actually referring to the kaminari zoku (カミナリ族) or “thunder tribes”, Japanese motorcycle gangs who were known for their loud and rowdy modified motorcycles.
Black Claw’s name comes from the original series proposal, which described Panther Claw’s soldiers as being color coded. Potential opponents for Honey would’ve included Black Claw, Scarlet Claw, Cobalt Claw and Gold Claw. Each would have possessed a specific skill or element, for example, “Scarlet Claw” would’ve possessed fire powers. For whatever reason the whole color coded aspect was dropped but “Black Claw” was still used as the name for Honey’s first real adversary.
According to Cutey Honey Roman Album published by Tokuma Shoten in 1981, Honey's childhood memories are artificial. They were produced by Dr. Kisaragi because he wanted Honey to have childhood memories like any other human girl.
Dr. Takeshi Kisaragi was originally known as Dr. Seiji Tachibana in the original series proposal. In the original manga Dr. Kisaragi looks noticeably younger, has black hair, no glasses and a goatee instead of a mustache.
Originally, Honey was only going to transform once or twice during the first episode. Tomoharu Katsumata (director for episode one) requested that Honey use all of her main seven forms.
Some of the choreography from Honey and Black Claw’s fight is based on sequences from the Abashiri Family manga, specifically when the lead character Kikunosuke battles against teachers from Paradise Academy.
Junpei is based on Kichiza Abashiri from Go Nagai's The Abashiri Family manga. Kichiza is the youngest son of the Abashiri family and is a master of explosives. Junpei was voiced by Kazuko Sawada.
It’s probably worth noting Honey and Junpei are the only two characters to appear in every episode of Cutie Honey.
Today's update was written in memoriam to Shingo Mori, the Frieden's helmsman, tragically written out of history due to the Excellence Team's careless meddling with the timeline.
He shall be remembered for his incredibly few lines of dialogue, his notably Usso-like hairstyle, and his baffling ability to adequately helm a spaceship after a lifetime of knowing only landships by simply taking a cursory glance over the operation manual.
Hello, lovely people! Today we are bringing you brief character introductions for the main cast of “The Songbird Guild”! If any of these characters catch your interest, let us know -v-
Kotori Mori
Kotori is your typical anime protagonist. She’s strong, sometimes reckless, and has deep ambitions that drive her every move.
Kaida Hikari
Genteel, at times to the point of being stiff, Kaida is the most put together of the Songbird members. She is physically and mentally strong, but lacks self-confidence.
(keep reading for the rest of the characters!)
Brie Butternuggets
Brie is quiet and mellow, but not necessarily shy, just laid back. He wants food on the table, a place to sleep, and the people he cares about nearby.
Gigi Monail
Gigi is a nerd on many topics, including history, magic, and technology. Once she starts talking about a subject she’s interested in, it’s hard to get her to stop.
Ai Hikari
Spontaneous and reckless, absolutely nothing Ai does is ever thought through. She wants to protect and spend time with her sister Kaida.
Shingo Akemi
Shingo used to be a fighting member of The Songbird Guild when it first started, but then a leg injury prevented him from continuing. Nowadays, he does most of the guild’s clerical work instead.
Thank you for reading all the way to the end! Love, the Yurisoft Games.
So the other day I read the first volume of a manga called Magilumiere: Magical Girls Inc., which is set in a world where, kinda like MHA with superheroes, magical girls are a common sight, and being a magical girl is treated like a normal job. Basically, they function as exterminators for these monsters called kaii, and there are multiple companies, of all sizes, that employ magical girls for this purpose.
Anyway, the manga was really cool, but we all know that magical girl transformations (especially techno-magic ones like in this series) look best animated. So naturally, I looked it up to see if there was an anime adaptation. And there is - just not yet. This manga only came out in 2022 in Japan (and it's running in Shonen Jump+, no less), under the title Magilumiere Co. Ltd (Kabushiki Gaisha Majirumie in Japanese) and it only started being released in English by Viz in March of this year. And while an anime version is planned, it's not due out till Q4 of 2024. So I have to wait.
The cast and staff seem pretty good, though. The anime is being made by J.C. Staff (the studio behind many well-known animes, like Azumanga Daioh, the A Certain Magical Index franchise, Saiki K, Food Wars, Revolutionary Girl Utena, and Shakugan no Shana), alongside Studio Moe, which seems to be a pretty new studio with not that many credits. The composer, Makoto Miyazaki, also did the music for One Punch Man and Spy x Family. The script writer Shingo Nagai has also written for Symphogear (so he's no stranger to mahou shoujo). The director, Masahiro Hiraoka, doesn't seem to have much directorial experience (most of his credits on ANN are for artist work, most of which seem to be tied to Studio Moe, which as I mentioned, doesn't have very many credits), but I can overlook that. (Interestingly, a lot of his artist work has been in CG art, including CG for both HeartCatch and Suite PreCure, which makes me think the transformations and maybe attacks will involve CG, though I guess that's expected nowadays).
The cast is interesting too. The two main girls, Kana and Hiromi, are being voiced by Fairouz Ai and Yumiri Hanamori respectively. They previously appeared together in Tropical Rouge PreCure as Cures Summer and Coral respectively (and just last year reprised those roles in the movie PreCure All Stars F), although interestingly here Coral's actress is playing the energetic Hiromi, while Summer's actress is playing the much more reserved and intelligent Kana, which if you know Tropical Rouge is a complete opposite of their Cure characters. But then they have range - Fairouz is also the voice of Jolyne from JoJo and Alisa in Pokémon Concierge, while Yumiri has also played Hayasaka from Kaguya-sama (a character with a varied personality, apparently). So I'm not worried.
The two characters above are the resident programmer at and the boss of the titular Magilumiere. (Yes, the boss is a middle-aged male cosplayer. He's just weird like that). The programmer's name is Kazuo Nikoyama, and rather hilariously given his design, he's going to be voiced by Daiki Yamashita, the same actor who voices Izuku in MHA (I guess the resemblance to Izuku may not have been a coincidence 😂). As for the boss, his name is Kouji Shigemoto, and his planned actor is Rikiya Koyama (Kogorō Mori/Richard Moore in Detective Conan/Case Closed, Jōichiro in Food Wars, and Emiya in the Fate franchise).
Rounding out the currently known cast is nice-guy office worker Midorikawa, who is going to be voiced by Ryota Ohsaka (Keiji in Haikyuu, Sadao/Satan in The Devil is a Part-Timer, and the Japanese voice of Cat Noir).
Anyway, sounds like an interesting series! Unfortunately, Volume 2 of the manga doesn't come out in English until June, so I'll have to wait for that too.
Hiya! I’m Alex; welcome to the chaos! Stay for a bit, won’t you? ☕️
This is predominantly a SMAP blog, but there’s also a lot of Yakuza and Judgment series found here…I reblog what I like mostly animals and art and other various things…a lot of things untagged, abound
I do mostly post about Kimura Takuya, specifically, as he is currently a very persistent special interest, so if that’s who you’re here for, you’ve come to the right place! (But I do post and reblog about the other SMAP members individually and as a group)
Blog is completely unfiltered so preferably don’t follow if a minor; also, I don’t have a DNI other than the “typical” (terfs, homo/transphobic…)
I also run a SMAP sideblog specifically for their 80’s and 90’s eras, but I reblog from there quite a bit (tagged “sideblog reblog” if you want to filter them out) sideblog link
I tag spoilers but they are abound, so please make sure you have “[fandom/video game name/etc.] spoliers” filtered
Actually Important Posts aka past/current pins: my legacy (i mess up the year one time…), smapxsmap chohan skit (a must-watch in this home), one of SMAP’s most chaotic events (actual gremlins), tsuyopon’s laugh (he so cute)
Update 10/6: all 5SMAP posts/reblogs will only be tagged as ‘smap’ rather than all the guys individually; I’ll leave posts with all of them tagged alone though
Here’s a map to help you navigate this mess (disclaimer: I do forget to use these tags sometimes [a lot of the time] and this isn’t inclusive to all my “organization” tags):
Guaranteed tags to see my posts:
Scans I’ve Uploaded (actual content, photoshoots, etc., may or may not have fandom tagged)
Shop/Live Photos (specifically, but also under “scans” tag)
Other Original Posts (Concert Gifs, Memes, etc. basically anything I post that’s fandom-related but not scans,
you’ll also find posts that I didn’t tag the fandom in)
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Kamen Rider Ryuki
Instagram
Weibo
The Man
SMAP (collective…or practically all together)
Only care about SmapxSmap?
JDrama Content
All the Parallels
Do you stan Goro-chan, too? 🥰
Shingo really has the best smile ever…
Nakai kept the boys in line (not really)
Tsuyoshi is really just the SMAP punching bag…im kidding…kind of
Never forget Mori-kun (also you should watch him race; he’s so fucking cool)
Yakuza
Judgment/Judge Eyes
Lost Judgment
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I’ll update this with new links as they come up; last update: April 8, 2024