Kite (1998)

“Stand back, there’s been a terrible accident.”

A lifetime of TV and movies taught me how crime works. Thanks to Forensic Files, I know every possible clue a killer can leave behind that will get them caught. Unsolved Mysteries explained how a professional hit is a point-blank bullet to the back of the head. The detectives in Zodiac pointed out that after the killer shot the cab driver in that same manner, he was soaked head to foot in blood.

Now Kitehas introduced me to a murder tactic I’d never considered before. Within the first five minutes, schoolgirl assassin Sawa pops her latest target, a beloved television personality, with a few rounds. But these are not regular bullets. The casings explode after they enter a human body, and this guy erupts like he swallowed a raspberry jelly bomb.

Granted, Sawa has pretexts to help her slip away after these blood-soaked hits. She’s quite young, for one thing. Her gun is also painted up like a plastic child’s toy, meaning authorities are less likely to suspect it’s a real weapon.

But exploding bullets. Yes, they will get the job done; holy shit, do they ever in this movie. The problem is they’ll leave behind more cleanup than a dozen Ted Bundys in a sorority house.

Here I am, asking too many questions again. I’m forgetting it’s not about whether Sawa will attract a forensic team’s attention. The violence is the point. It’s about the thrill of filling small spaces with gore.

Sawa lives with a homicide detective named Akai, who adopted her following her parents’ brutal murder. Along with his partner Kanie, he moonlights as an assassination broker, assigning Sawa the alleged scumbags she takes out.

Akai is also a molester. Through suggestive flashbacks, we learn he’s used Sawa for sex since their living arrangement began. This makes Akai a hypocrite on top of a rapist, since Sawa’s targets include (other) rapists and child molesters.

Oh, but don’t worry about watching this in countries with laws against this sort of thing. The back of my old VHS copy assured me Sawa is in “college.” Yeah, that old line of bullshit. It takes me back, though, to those La Blue Girl tapes I bought in the high school cafeteria. “How could a mere [eighteen year old] understand any of this sensual, tentacled pleasure, Miko Mido?”

At least Kanie doesn’t get touchy with the [college girl]. But one might assume that based on his appearance, what with his creepy, yellow, rolling Marty Feldman eyes. Akai’s silver hair and goatee don’t help him in that department, either. This is one of those anime where the bad guys do not hide their nastiness behind angelic faces. They are scary looking swine, unable to pass for anything else.

Akai and Kanie have another assassin on their payroll, Oburi. He’s older than Sawa, but still a teenager. So I’ll go with nineteen and a half. That works. Amid the murder and exploding bullets, Sawa and Oburi start a friendship. Theirs isn’t a will she won’t she relationship per say, but rather a shared comradery of their circumstances. They view their world of violence with a kind of passive indifference, because when you’ve made enough exploding Strawberry Passion Awareness Frutopia out of folks, it’s just another day.

Oburi begins to pity Sawa and her plight, developing contempt for his handlers at the same time. He’s the only person in her life she can talk to that’s not using her as a gun or a sex toy, and he’s pretty sure he knows who killed her parents. I will not spoil this reveal, except to say it isn’t difficult to guess. His concern makes Akai and Kanie wary of him, setting up the conflict that fills the rest of Kite’s 50-minute running time.

One problem I have with Kite is its ambiguity with Oburi. We’re given no backstory at all on him. I never learned why or how he started working for these people. Have they kidnapped him? Blackmailed him? He keeps bringing up a “deal” he made with Akai, but after two viewings, I never figured out what that deal was.

Meanwhile, the action scenes are well-done, especially a sequence with a botched restroom assassination that turns into a bloodbath. For a feature like this, where I was trying to decide whether it was art or schlock (the answer is “yes”), the production values are higher than one might expect.

There’s a theme being conveyed under the buckets of blood. The excess violence, while excessive, drives home the point, that turning two kids into killers is fucked up. The gory mayhem is one link in a chain reaction of events, returning to the underlying idea of corrupted youth. Sawa and Oburi belong in a high school drama show, getting involved in petty teenage conflicts they learn and grow from. Instead, they’re killing people with exploding bullets at the behest of a couple shitheads.

Furthermore, Kite fades out with an unhappy ending to Sawa and Oburi’s arc. This doesn’t surprise me. I’ve noticed this happens in a lot of anime, i.e. the depressing darkness we’re left with at the end of Urotsukidōji. The ending you need, not the ending you want. The finale also ties in with the story itself, of evil people ruining lives. Such an impact doesn’t fix itself. Still, it would’ve been nice to give the better people in this situation some semblance of relief.

But art reflects life, sad as it is. The world outside my TV screen is a shitty place, and stories like Sawa’s happen all over, all the time. Maybe there aren’t exploding bullets, but there are, for sure, monsters like Akai. Because of the world’s said shittiness, I prefer my escapism to entertain me instead of making me miserable. But if the narrative insists I be miserable anyway, I ask that it leave me with something to think about. Kite gave me something to think about, although I might space out my future viewings.

Final Rating: ***