Honey Honey’s Noteworthy Adventures


Can a European shrimp one and her cat win admire and happiness while being chased one day of the arena by a mysterious thief and 4 ethnic stereotypes within the wild and wacky days before World War One? That’s the quiz asked every episode of HONEY HONEY, the camouflage that saved many of us glued to our cable TV objects within the early Eighties!



HONEY HONEY started as a manga success from the pen of shoujo mangaka Hideko Mizuno – seemingly the entirely female resident of the favorite Tokiwa “manga home home” within the Toshima district of Tokyo (assorted residents incorporated Fujio-Fujiko, Shotaro Ishinomori, and a few man named Osamu Tezuka). She would later scuttle on to critical and commercial success with FIRE! But before FIRE! there modified into as soon as HONEY HONEY. Or as we admire to name it, “The Noteworthy Plod Of Honey Honey”.


Honey Honey and Phoenix share a manga 2nd; Flora fumes

Honey Honey’s manga seemed in “Ribon” in 1966 and ran for several years; Mizuno’s Tezuka influence is obvious nonetheless there’s neat, breezy type to her pen line, transferring faraway from the rounded kiddy notion and in direction of the more ornate type we’ll come to notion as “shoujo”. Despite the undeniable truth that HONEY HONEY is location within the early 20th century it be not slavishly devoted to the interval; Honey’s 60s’ bubble hairdo is roughly a tip, nonetheless the sequence itself refuses to take ANYTHING severely. Provocative in 1981 by Kokusai Eiga-sha and broadcast on Fuji TV, the sketch emulated its big name by making its formula across the arena and onto American TV objects.


Honey Honey younger of us’s guide in step with episode 6

Honey Honey herself is an orphan, working in a Viennese restaurant true attempting to invent ends meet. At some point soon while serving a abundant roast turkey, a white cat leaps into the restaurant and into her existence – chased by a gang of police officers, royalty, and masses of stuffed shirts! Because it happens the white cat took effect to be hanging around exterior the royal palace the effect Princess Flora modified into as soon as bright suitors with her phenomenal current gem, the Well-known particular person Of The Amazon. Frustrated by the constant parade of former-chinned Euro-trash, Flora stuffs the ring true into a fish and hurls it out the window, proclaiming to 1 and all that whoever finds the ring shall rating her hand in marriage. Effectively, must it is advisable to perhaps presumably even be a hungry cat and a fish falls from the sky, you eat every bit of it, including the ring interior. Hence the crowd of well-heeled cat chasers, and the white cat’s mad soar into Honey Honey’s face, and the trajectory of the big roast turkey because it is delivered with higher than dilapidated race. And thus we commence the Noteworthy Adventures Of Honey Honey.



Removed from the conventional shoujo soap opera of tragic romantic misunderstandings, HONEY HONEY refuses to take itself severely. The bumbling, pompous, stereotype suitors, the hair-trigger temper Princess Flora, and Honey Honey’s willful troublemaking as she careens wildly across Europe invent for elegant viewing. Pulp whisk is represented by the Makio “Harlock” Inoue-voiced Phoenix, the mysterious masked thief who swings in to rescue Honey Honey true when he’s necessary most (we’ll be seeing more of his create of persona later in “Sailor Moon”). Is he true after the Well-known particular person Of The Amazon, or does he harbor emotions for Honey Honey? This enrages Flora, who lusts after Phoenix herself and can’t perceive why he received’t come to his senses and point out to her.


Angry Flora, Herr Gustav


Geronimo, Oil Greenback, Pika Pika: The Stereotype Squad

Within the intervening time Flora has to handle Herr Gustav, King Pika-Pika, Sheik Oil Greenback, and Native American tribal leader Geronimo, who whisk Honey Honey across the arena and rarely double spoiled every assorted attempting to win that white cat in declare that they’ll win married to Princess Flora. Honey Honey herself, even though voiced by CANDY actress Matsushima Minori, is not a conventional shoujo heroine. She’d moderately bum around Europe than be a princess, received’t stand for cruelty or injustice, and woe betide someone who dares to threaten her cherished Lily. Paying lip carrier to the Mauve Decade time interval, HONEY HONEY beneath no cases lets historical accuracy win within the formula of notion gags, culminating in a King Kong-referencing final episode total with 1970s skyscrapers.


Phoenix breaks the fourth wall

The whisk begins as Honey escapes Vienna by balloon. Touchdown in Venice, she helps a younger couple dart and finally ends up in Rome, thence to the Swiss Alps and a William Repeat whisk. Then to Munich. Heidelberg, Amsterdam, Brussels. Paris, Orleans, Arles, and the Huge Prix in Monaco. Escaping by boat during the Mediterranean she arrives in Barcelona and hurries to Madrid, Toledo, Gibraltar, Lisbon, and London, the effect she meets both a prolonged-haired guitar community and Robin Hood. 

Herr Gustav’s Dream Wedding (Ring Bearer Phoenix and Flower Lady Honey equipped one at a time)
It’s additionally in London the effect, with the abet of the King, the Well-known particular person Of The Amazon is eradicated from Lily. Hey, that is the end of the camouflage, beautiful? Gross. Kidnaped by Vikings – yes, Vikings – and taken to Norway, Honey learns she is really inheritor to the throne of Priscilla, a minute nation overthrown by the usurper Slag when Honey modified into as soon as an toddler.


The monstrous Slag

Removed from being a thief, Phoenix is mostly a undercover agent working to restore the rightful rulers to the throne of Priscilla. Kidnaped by Slag’s ninja-type raiders, Honey is taken to his secret castle in Russia. Escaping with the abet of a flying saucer (ancient as a proof for the Tunguska Explosion in Siberia) Honey travels to Moscow and south to Constantinople, the effect both she and Phoenix are equipped into slavery. Phoenix is sold by Princess Flora, and Honey is left to turn out to be the most fresh addition to a sultan’s harem.


I Dream Of Honey

It’s miles rarely so heinous for Honey because she gets to costume admire Barbara Eden and abet with magic programs, and she gets a flying carpet which takes her to India and Japan and Los Angeles and within the kill to the camouflage’s climax in Recent York. By the time the sequence ends three assorted groups are chasing after Honey Honey for three assorted causes and when the camouflage wraps with to take into accounta good ape hiking a skyscraper retaining Princess Flora, we take all of it in hunch.

I don’t assume any one saw this coming.

A range of boy cartoons are watched by girls, nonetheless HONEY HONEY could perhaps even merely had been the first girl sketch watched by boys, in The united states at least, after the camouflage by some capacity made it into English and onto Pat Robertson’s CBN cable community. Dubbed by “Sound World Corp.” alongside with LEO THE LION, HONEY HONEY modified into as soon as broadcast within the crucial Sunday noon timeslot that, except it is advisable to perhaps presumably even be sports, is not noted by all. The offices of “Sound World Corp” for the time being are occupied by a chemical firm. At the time I took effect to search around out LEO within the TV listings and the household VCR modified into as soon as sitting sluggish ready for any individual to re-traipse STAR BLAZERS. Why not test it out? I modified into as soon as pleasantly stunned to learn LEO modified into as soon as the sequel to KIMBA THE WHITE LION (the first episode I saw helpfully featured a flashback to Leo’s younger days) and, relaxing within the afterglow of my viewing discovery, made up our minds to look at out HONEY HONEY. I knew of an anime called CANDY CANDY, perchance this modified into as soon as a re-titled English dub? No sir, HONEY HONEY modified into as soon as its own factor. Before all the things I did not give it noteworthy attention, nonetheless after a few weeks the anything else-goes type and Perils Of Pauline melodrama had its hooks in me.


Western-type Flora and Slag threat Honey within the manga

Comparing the long-established comics to the TV sequence, we discover the anime begins faithfully nonetheless takes a fascinating left turn someplace within the course of Europe. Blazing its own race, the story is normally dicated by the writers and frequently by the camouflage’s early cancellation – an prolonged American sequence moving Hollywood, Aged West cowboys and Indians, and Chicago gangsters modified into as soon as excised. The storylines the effect Honey Honey becomes a judo champion in Japan and Honey’s adventures on the Fleshy additionally received axed. Happily, the manga’s long-established ending among the many jungle tribes of Africa additionally did not flooring to embarrass us all on television.
The Expansive Honey Honey Dynamite Scramble

The animation itself is a mixed discover. Kokusai Eiga-sha (“Movie World Company”) produced animation utilizing a big diversity of sources moving a big diversity of capacity ranges, from initiating students to seasoned veterans. A list of their sequence reads admire a secret history of Jap animation – the J-9 sequence BRYGAR, BAXINGAR, and SASURAIGAR; the admire-hunting oldschool astronaut sequence ACROBUNCH, highspeed robot sportscar GALVION, Mission Outer Home SRUNGLE, ecological catastrophe robot sequence BALDIOS, Greek mythology comedy LITTLE POLLON, motorbike racing drama FUTARI DAKA, robot boy comedy DOTAKON, and their very own version of Microscopic Females, FOUR SISTERS OF YOUNG GRASS. Adore most assorted Kokusei Eiga-sha sequence, HONEY HONEY is now accessible for distribution from Enoki Movies. HINT HINT EVERYBODY, RELEASE THIS SERIES ON DVD ALREADY.
episode 22 Honey

HONEY HONEY itself is conventional Jap animation television; clunky in parts nonetheless zippy when time points in time and price range allow it to flourish. Episode 22, “Snowbound Fortress”, modified into as soon as the excessive-water designate for the camouflage; persona designs are kawaii-ed up, animaton becomes fluid and expressionistic, and things true win cartoonier typically.
Yes, it be fascinating.

After its CBN broadcast HONEY HONEY vanished into the mists of time. Sony Home Video reportedly launched the first four or five episodes on VHS, alongside with assorted 80s titles admire Unfamiliar George and “Video 45s”. I’ve entirely viewed evidence of the first episode myself. Extra than two decades later the Sony liberate stays the entirely legacy of HONEY HONEY within the united states (it modified into as soon as more current in Europe, as are all Jap cartoons). In Japan the camouflage did not clutch an viewers; seemingly a shrimp too former long-established for a 1981 viewers, who doubtlessly asked the quiz now we rating asked, why is a 1966 manga JUST NOW getting a TV anime camouflage? What’s the take care of that? As anime fandom grew within the united states few remembered HONEY HONEY; except you had been paying a amount of attention to overall cable on Sundays within the course of the Eighties it merely did not register. Even LEO THE LION received a few public-domain home video releases in later years, nonetheless no one wished to handle HONEY HONEY. “Sound World Corp” disappeared, my letters of inquiry unanswered.


As a topic of truth I end own this cel.

In this generation of total availability, the effect all the things has DVD field objects or torrents, it stays an elusive quarry. But in a formula, that suits the sequence completely – we’re nonetheless chasing HONEY HONEY.



Episode handbook: all these are from the American titles and all these are translated or transliterated from the Jap. Within the event you rating every episode of the sequence in English with the title cards intact, please fall me a line.

1. The Cat Ate the Diamond
2. Worthy Ado About Water
3. Seek Naples and Flee
4. SOS Alpine Specific
5. The Pink Arrows of Berne Woodland
6. Hamelin is Stout of Cats
7. The castle of Stunning Cats
8. Windmill Vane Phoenix
9. Finest One Can Be our Solar Princess
10. Cinderella Tonight
11. The Witch Home of Orleans
12. Circus Rooster
13. The Blue Typhoon of Monte Carlo
14. Cathedral Bells Ring
15. Smile, Madrid
16. Fortress of Gibraltar
17. World’s Simplest Sponge Cake
18. Lily’s in Noteworthy Ache!
19. Honey Speed! 20 o’clock
20. Secrets of Honey
21. Honey Kidnapped
22. Snowbound Fortress
23. The Expansive Science Fiction Scramble
24. Prince Possibility
25. Lily Sold
26. Magic Departure
27. India Flying
28. Flora’s Expansive Flowers
29. Hi there, Goodbye, Recent York (final episode)


special bonus: Honey Honey in Hollywood! Establish of residing the cameos.

Honey additionally visited Japan. Location off warning: white girl in kimono

-Dave Merrill

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