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Monaka's cover makes little sense, and we have no motivations for her actions - except perhaps her abandonment by her father after her mother's death. The father's story belongs in a low-budget OVA from 1987, but the awfulness doesn't end there. There's a woeful attempt to blend a sci-fi story into a dark action thriller, and it fails on every level. That complaint extends to the plot, which is ludicrous to an extreme. The character designs have been seen before. Simply put, while there are firefights and other action bits, none of them stand out in any way. Yet on the whole, Kite Liberator is less accomplished than the original or even the Mezzo entries. If you've not seen any of Umetsu's other work, you might be impressed. The CGI used for the space station looks great, for example. On a technical level, there's a certain amount of dexterity here. So who best to take down Pops than Monaka? Affected by experimental space food, he and another astronaut become armored mutants on a rampage of destruction. While she's busy playing deadly vigilante, her dad is up on the space station where's he's been for the last four years.
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But at night, she's an avenging angel who takes on the scum of the city with a gun that fires exploding shells. By day, she works at a maid cafe, a cute little thing harassed by her clientele and protected by an older waitress known for putting hot sauce in the beer of uncooperative customers. In Kite Liberator, Monaka is an intentional Jeckel and Hyde. Truth be told, I wish that Kite Liberator was a real sequel to the original, because it certainly would have been more interesting than this awful mess they baked up instead. I'd also heard that Kite Liberator was virtually unrelated to its predecessor, making me think it might be better. However, having held out hope for Umetsu since being awestruck at "Presence" years ago, I thought perhaps he'd still have some good material left, especially since the TV series Mezzo had some decent bits. As you might guess, I didn't think much of it (though you can read all my thoughts on it here.) Dark and disturbing, Kite had a strong and loyal following despite its compressed plot stolen from better films like The Professional. Kite was fueled by graphic violence and underage sexual abuse that created a stir (and took years to be released unedited in the West).
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Director Yasuomi Umetsu had made a name for himself with his beautiful work from the "Presence" section of Robot Carnival, but the sexuality and ultraviolence on display in his Megazone 23 Part 2 were a foretaste of what lie ahead. Many years ago now, Kite made the rounds as the cool anime of the month.
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