#Anime a kite 2014 professional

Yes, the masochistic tropes of anime are present even here in an American production, with our heroine Sawa undergoing abuse at the hands of a myriad of men, and some women, but then when Sawa is constantly the victim in the film, then that’s the likely outcome really. Of course this is based on an anime so instead of the strong-willed heroine of Leon, we get an objectified vixen as the hero – one who it seems can only fight in her underwear and tends to get the shit kicked out of her a little too often to be considered even remotely good at her “job”.

#Anime a kite 2014 professional

Take Mathilda, the 12 year-old wannabe assassin from Leon, The Professional age her a few years get her addicted to drugs then stick her in a quasi-post apocalyptic setting and that’s essentially Kite. Sawa and Aker have sworn to avenge her parents’ deaths, by taking out the head of the cartel, a mysterious man known only as The Emir… Her father’s ex-partner, Inspector Karl Aker (Jackson), is a renegade cop who believes that the only way to eradicate the problems of a corrupt and failed state is to take the law into his own hands.

Now 18, Sawa is a human time-bomb intent upon eliminating members of the flesh-cartels whom she presumes murdered her family – men who exploit the defenceless children of a collapsed society for the pleasure of high-paying, foreign clients. Set in a vast multicultural and decimated urban landscape, post-financial collapse, Kitefollows Sawa (Eisley) – a young girl orphaned in her early teens when an unknown assailant brutally murdered her police detective father and mother – who lives a a secret double life as a covert assassin. In fact this US film adaptation is the first time the franchise has been legitimately available in this country. It has also been released in Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Russian, Czech Republic, Slovakia and the United States – where it remains popular yet the original OVA and its sequel, have never had a UK release. Banned in certain countries across the globe due to its scenes of rape and revenge, in Japan it has sold nearly a million DVD units. Yasuomi Umetsu’s (chief animator for Arms Corporation who has also worked as a designer on Akira, Spriggan, Elfen Lied and Casshern) original anime Kite was, when first released in 1998, a highly controversial graphic story of hard, gory action and illicit eroticism.

Jackson, India Eisley, Callan McAuliffe, Carl Beukes, Deon Lotz, DeVille Vannik, Zane Meas, Lionel Newton, Jaco Muller, Terence Bridgett | Written by Brian Cox | Directed by Ralph Ziman