Cutie Honey Universe

Episode 9

It's hard to say why Cutie Honey Universe has so much trouble with running out of steam, but the choice to adapt Gō Nagai's relatively short original manga into a full-cour series like this has consistently taken its toll on the show's pacing. After some stronger weeks, it's time for Universe to fail once again to keep up with itself. The Natsuko hostage-taking cliffhanger from the previous episode is expanded on this week, but with characters within the show commenting on how overcomplicated it seems, it's hard for the audience to ignore how drawn-out this inevitable conclusion seems.

The expansion of the hostage situation gives way to the PCIS detective squad getting something to do for what feels like the first time in a while. We do get some decently interesting procedural scenes showing how the team tracks down the locations of the hostages, but these minimally-deployed characters still feel squandered in their only real active role of the story. When the investigation scenes aren't producing results, they come across as slow and repetitive. Some lame recurring comic-relief gags get dragged out as well, to the point that Akebi and Momomi actually tell Kogoro to read the room.

As usual, there are still some good ideas lingering through all of this. Despite the focus on saving Natsuko, the increasingly-conflicted Tarantula is actually at the center of most of the compelling drama. Her distress at being made to kill off the other Panther Claw monsters is an interesting take on how villainous groups in anime might view their comrades, enhanced by her pointedly referring to them as ‘our friends’ when pleading with Jill. The monster-purging also works to sell the ongoing point of how Jill has slipped past even the standards of the bad-guys around her. Even more insidiously, she's aware enough of Tarantula's codependency on her to openly use it to her advantage. It's a kernel of plot that could be extremely compelling if handled with an effective amount of nuance.

Unfortunately, Cutie Honey Universe's underachieving execution is the best we're going to get. Burying those good points, the writing is extremely sloppy this week, not to mention protracted. Aside from how it affects Tarantula, revealing the other hostages to be Panther-monster decoys still feels like a cop-out. It's a strange choice, given that Cutie Honey Universe obviously hasn't shied away from racking up body counts before. (And as this episode proves, it won't be stopping any time soon.) Tarantula calling Jill out on the needless over-complication of the plan feels less like a genuine point of conflict and more like a tacit admission that Jill's plan doesn't make any sense. Jill's use of her Genet persona as a lure late in the episode mostly just serves to make you wonder why no one in PCIS thought to ask where Genet was until now. Finally, the idea of Tarantula literally being torn apart into two separate entities over her conflicted loyalty to Jill is thematically sound, but the complete lack of explanation for how this works makes it more jarring than anything.

This brings us to that final scene. Natsuko's death has been foreshadowed for weeks now, so the hammer finally falling isn't much of a surprise. This episode's decision to kill time for twenty minutes before getting there is probably the bigger issue. It robs the momentous event of some importance, resulting in a 'Get on with it!' reaction when the audience should just be wrapped up in the moment. In a vacuum, the scene plays out extremely well, with stylized silhouettes, judicious cuts around the most violent elements, and an appreciably dark twist to how Natsuko is finally finished off. But just as Tarantula's kindred relationship with Natsuko fueled her own failed attempt to save her, all the drama around this moment doesn't land well after the show twiddled its thumbs for so long.

So goes the usual story of Cutie Honey Universe. The good parts are certainly present, and this episode even found time for another decent fight scene between Honey and Jill prior to the failed rescue attempt. But those strong moments are let down by extremely mediocre execution at this critical moment. Like Honey's attempt to save Natsuko, this episode got close, but came up tragically short after all.

Rating: C

Cutie Honey Universe is currently streaming on HIDIVE.