Review of Kite: Liberator

Some years ago I made a review about A Kite where I tackled all of its issues and ultimately stated that is an overrated title. I also said that Kite Liberator was even worse, much worse, and gave it a rating in there, but I didn’t explain why, so here I am talking about this entry now. Expect a lot of comparisons with the original to prove my points.

The first issue Kite Liberator has is being completely unrelated to the original, sure there’s the same gun but that’s not enough to call it a sequel, there’s also a Sawa lookalike but that’s about it, she appears shortly and does nothing of importance. Plus, having no connection with the previous entry leaves the cliffhanger still unresolved.

Other than that, it is completely different in story and aesthetics. What made the original shocking and popular was its crazy mix between porn, psychological drama and neo noir action and this sequel has none of that thus it looses a big part of the appeal.

The only thing which resembles the original is having a young girl as an assassin, but even then is nowhere near as captivating or well made as there’s barely any action up until the last twelve minutes or so. Also her motives are not explained at all here, I may have complained about it in Kite, but at least there was an explanation there of why Sawa has this work, there’s nothing like that here.

Not that innovating is inherently a bad thing, the second Patlabor movie barely resembles the original by keeping the core elements but it is otherwise very different from the original, and is still the best entry in its franchise.

That is not the case with this title, where Monaka’s targets does not pose a challenge, unlike in the original, and the plot scalates to a space horror where people get infected by food in space and comes down to Earth as monsters and starts breaking everything in the streets, what the heck is going on and what does it have to do with Kite? Nothing at all.

It’s even worse when the movie tries to explain everything and takes itself so seriously, is a very dumb action flick and these bits just makes it duller than it already is. The pacing is the exact opposite as it was in the original, if it was very fast there, it is very slow here, because it doesn’t have nearly as much content.

On top of that, the protagonist is just not fleshed out, it’s the same issue as Sawa in the original, whatever her background is, is vaguely shown because the focus is not on her despite being the main character and it’s in the boring space horror and nonsensical action instead. She’s more consistent than Sawa because she does not change her personality every 5 minutes, but her clumsiness, which seemed to be a facade in the beginning, gives her a moe side which clashes too much with her cold behaviour as a hitwoman (is that term right?). The rest of the cast is just there as cannon fodder and constantly breaks the serious tone the movie tries to have with their reactions.

The action scenes are even more ridiculous and over the top than they were in the original. If having two people falling high from a building over a car and making it destroy a bridge, which in turn falls over a truck was an exaggeration, imagine having a monster chasing a girl in the city, being shot with different weapons and barely receiving damage, impaling the girl, then falling off in a similar fashion of the original, having a car exploding right under him and still not getting killed. It’s even worse when Monaka remains unharmed regardless of what happens to and around her.

This movie ends with another cliffhanger and it’s even worse than the one in Kite.

It’s also not as well animated, the character designs are fine is just that they are way too similar as the ones from the previous works of this guy, quality drops are abundant and the motions are jerky, plus the camera jumps around like crazy during action scenes and it often makes it hard to focus on what’s going on. The backgrounds are well made to the most part, especially when it takes place in space, even if they have lots of CGI, the special effects are the weakest part of the visuals.

I don’t have much to say about the sound, the music is fine at times but ultimately forgettable most of the time, the sound effects are weak, voice acting is nothing remarkable and can become very silly at times. Also, I don’t know if it’s just the version I watched or something, but the volume in general is just really low.

Lastly, there’s the issue of timing, A Kite was a success partially because of the time it came out, this movie came out 10 years after and by that time there were hentai with designs by Sei Shoujo which blew Kite out of the water in that department, and there were lots of girls with guns series in the 00s as well, such as Noir, El Cazador de la Bruja, Madlax and Gunslinger Girl, which made the Kite legacy obsolete once this sequel aired.

And there’s even Mezzo Forte which combines both aspects in one, and it even came out shortly afterwards A Kite, acting as a sort of spiritual successor to it, even having Sawa as a cameo, which makes Kite Liberator’s existence even more pointless.

1/10