I made a post about this Anime before I saw any of it yet. Perhaps you can say I should have finished the show before making the follow up, but right now after finishing episode 23 I want to chronicle how positive I currently feel about the show before it's third "season" has the chance to potentially spoil it.
The first arc, which was the first 13 episodes, I already had a positive opinion on, but had few specific thoughts to analyze, it simply was about what I was optimistically expecting when I made the pre-viewing post.
I then waited awhile before returning to it, and watched the next ten episodes and it's movie in the last couple days. I knew the movie premiered the same day as episode 18 aired and so decided to watch it between episodes 18 and 19 even though I expected it to not really matter much like the Sailor Moon, Pokemon and PreCure movies.
So far the movie is the only thing about this Anime I'm willing to call a disappointment. It's not bad, but I was watching this show under the meta knowledge it was something made to fill Sailor Moon's void, so I was expecting it's ambiguously canonical filler movie to at least feel on par with the three Sailor Moon movies even if it wasn't as good as they were. Instead it's something that could have been a two part episode of the show, except it'd be disappointing then in a different way because there is literally nothing else in the second arc that I consider skip-able.
The second arc revolved around the character of Seira Hazuki/Misty Honey. This is the first incarnation of Cutey Honey to include any kind of "Evil Counterpart" or sister for Honey. And I also feel this story-line is the only time I've seen the Dark Magical Girl Rival trope play out in a properly Shoujo Magical Girl Warrior show, so that makes it quite interesting to begin with and in my opinion pretty damn well executed. And I was more then satisfied by the Yuri Bait it inevitably provided.
This show as I was hoping lacks the overbearing Otaku pandering style fan-service typical of this franchise, but it is still Sexy in the way a lot of Shoujo Anime are. Seira in particular is quite shockingly in my strike zone.
I talked before about the creative staff this show shares with the 90s Sailor Moon Anime. It might be the most important staff position not held by a Sailor Moon alumni was the Musical Composer Sahashi Toshihko.
The 90s Sailor Moon Anime had an iconic theme song and some other good insert songs like Ai No Senshi. But the actual score was mostly forgettable elevator music, even the people least forgiving of what DiC did are inclined to admit it gave the show better Music. But the Music on Cutey Honey Flash isn't just better then that Music but actually very good. And oddly enough I think perhaps musically anticipates Sailor Moon's future. One of the songs used for Transformation scenes sounds to me a lot like the Sailor Venus transformation theme on PGSM.
This show is also interesting to compare to Utena. For one thing the classic 70s Cutey Honey Manga and/or Anime is clearly among what Ikuhara wanted to homage, that teacher who nags Utena in the pilot is clearly based on Miharu Tsuneni. This version being designed to be a more Shoujo incarnation of Cutey Honey is almsot built around playing strait the same tropes Utena was deconstructing. And yet it was airing for the same number of episode at close to the same time, it started out a few weeks ahead but had more weeks off allowing Utena to catch up and then pull ahead. So it's kind of the perfect case study to watch along side Utena.
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