Audience reviews
12 · Sample from the first available page, separate from the total number of ratings.
Logical_Leo
Condensed form of Nacho Libre, which is a great movie (actually for some reason it is really low on rotten tomatoes... if you like the style of humor it is the tale of a great man though). The plot is 95% the same as Nacho Libre (except for the role of the female nun and minor details), with the same scenes occurring in this short movie. If this was an original OVA, 6-7 is justifiable because it actually would have done a great job at creating a short engaging plot with unique visuals. As it is, it is essentially just a 10-minute movie recap you can find on Youtube. That said, I did find it entertaining and funny at some moments.
Read at the sourceNaneo
There is not many dialogue in here. So most of the time you are served with the creative artstyle. We can see visually a love inside their heart and body, it is represented beautifully. I can safely say that this anime artstyle is really unique and the characters design too. Looks like an old anime where every character personality match with their body appearance. Though, I give you a warning if you have an epilepsy because the fight scene is filled with rapidly color change.
The rest is average really. Like their voice is average, music, BGM, and the story. Its not good and its not bad either. The story plot didn't really stick to me because I got confused about what is going on. And the MC backstory didn't either, they barely make anything understandable except for his fetish and objec…
Read at the sourceMoomochi
Out of 100 Nobles watching…
90 were impressed!
10 expected a little more substance
Kick-Heart is a neat little crowd-funded short by Production I.G. which came to me by way of a YouTube AMV as all nice animations I never knew about tend to. I make a habit of stopping to see the source on these sorts of things so when I saw that Kick-Heart was around 12 minutes I went and watched it right away.
Kick-Heart was a delightful little short, and serves as a reminder to an industry that is ever more concerned with efficiency and costs just what a traditional style passion project can look like. CG assets just cannot capture the energy of something like this animations complete disregard for clean line work. There is an energy in Kick-Heart conveyed through traditional techniques that is refreshi…
Read at the sourcebufi_
The story had potential, but there are just too many loopholes for it to be actually good; it's just a 12-minute movie so it makes sense, but even so that doesn't mean I'm gonna rate it higher overall. However, for the story I'll give it a 7/10, which is more for the potential than the execution.
The story is about 2 pro wrestlers, a sadistic woman and a masochistic man, who have 2 matches and who happen to encounter each other outside the wrestling ring without knowing. Its main theme would be the power to resist temptations to protect what's really important; we get to understand that from the second match, in which the man participates wishing to use the money for an orphanage. Lady S, who is actually a nun at the said orphanage and knows the man and that he's a masochist, requested th…
Read at the sourceWhiteWolfKiba
I know that director Masaaki Yuasa is loved here on MAL but I was still shocked to see how many 8's and 9's this short by him was getting. Kick-Heart wasn't very good, guys. The short was only about 12 minutes long but I'm still giving it a 3/10. The story is bare bones: a masked wrestler is also a masochist who falls in love with a female opponent because she beats him up. Yeah, it's awkward. Don't watch this in mixed company. He literally gets turned on by watching her slap the shit out of his tag partner. Did I mention their names are Masked M and Lady S? S&M, get it!? Ugh, it's so bad. The anime is also pretty gross, like there's a part where M gets stuck inside the fat body of S's tag partner and he sees dead bodies and sludge in the folds of her fat? Kick-Heart features Yuasa's trade…
Read at the sourceproxime
Despite having a run time of just under twenty minutes, Kick-Heart manages to pack in a lot of, well, heart. The story practically flies by on high speed rails, yet it's paced exactly at the speed it should be--fights go fast and scenes transition from place to place quickly, but Kick-Heart knows when to slow down and allow the viewer to breathe--such directing could only be possible from Yuasa.
And while the story itself isn't anything too interesting, the art, sound, and animation design is just brilliant. Characters feel as if they're full of boundless energy, emotions flamboyantly on display at all times. It's nothing short of visual porn just to sit back and experience it all.
In any case, there's really no reason not to watch something so short, yet so fantastically well done. Don'…
Read at the sourceGundroog
Fun little short. I don't think it gets mentioned too often despite being one of the most recent of Yuasa's works and that's probably fair. Kick-heart doesn't have the same emotional impact his other works normally carry, instead the focus seems to be more on style and animation which are done extremely well.
The story is simple and a lot of things are left up to the viewer to fill in. You could try spinning it in a way that would make it look like some point is being made or some theme is being explored, but that's just self-wank. The only thing that matters, is the premise of a masochist wrestler falling in love at first sight with his female opponent. Unbeknownst to him she's also a nun at the orphanage he grew up in.
What really matters is how this story is presented. The art is ver…
Read at the sourceBouncedOnMyBoysD
When the main gripe one has with a piece of media is "I want more of this" is it really even a downside? Surely this is a good thing, right?
I mean, yeaaah, but still I would love to see a lot more of these characters, the ending really implies a further narrative, I would adore to see a full slice of life romcom with Romeo and Juliet juggling their lives as M and S along with a blooming "romance"
This being said, I adore this short, everything from the aesthetic of luchadors and nuns to the insane proportions and how they actually affect fights in fantastical ways to the themes of BDSM being framed like love at first sight.
Basically, watch it and pray with me that we someday get a full series. Someday!
Read at the sourceliteraturenerd
Overview:
Masaaki Yuasa has a reputation on MAL SO high that it's actually difficult to find parallels. Old school, film snob magazines like Sights and Sounds will talk about François Truffaut, Federico Fellini, Andrei Tarkovsky, Ingmar Bergman, and Jean-Luc Godard in the same way that MAL and 4chan talk about Yuasa. That should give you a hint of just how highly he's regarded among part of anime community. However, there is ONE Yuasa anime that nobody talks about. The one black mark on his record that MAL apparently hates. Kick Heart is that anime!
Plot:
Kick Heart is a 12 minute, psychedelic romp about a masochistic luchador who is in love with a nun and lives at an orphanage as a priest. Basically, Yuasa was eating shrooms while watching Nacho Libre and decided to make this brilliant…
Read at the sourcemegafat
Japan can come up with some weird and wonderful things. This is a country where people can pre-order their Christmas dinner months in advance from KFC, have hotels with rooms that are slightly larger than coffins, and have mascots for literally everything, such as bottled water, train lines, and even prisons. And it's not like the west doesn't have it's fair share of weirdness either, just take a look at wrestling. Throughout the history of wrestling, there have been wrestlers such as Doink the Clown, Xanta Claus, who is an evil Santa Claus, and Perry Saturn, a man who fell in love with a mop that had a face on it. So naturally there would be some crossover. A demonstration of this is Kick-Heart.
Kick-heart came out in 2013 and is a short film produced by Production I.G. It was fully fund…
Read at the sourceLainsbearsuit
With a total of one episode at approximately 12 minutes long, this show is more than worth the time you will put into it. Do you like professional masked wrestling? Do you like characters with secret identities? Do you like S&M? Well, you should still give this show a try.
This show (or episode I should say) actually manages a plot in its short run-time. I've personally seen shows that can go six episodes without developing anything plot-wise, so seeing a show with an extremely brief story, that still makes itself humorous and interesting, was very refreshing.
The animation quality is good, and it fits perfectly with the tone of the show. The sound quality is even better, with a dub that actually sounds like effort was put into it. Hell, by the time you finish reading this you could've…
Read at the sourceopernlied
Pain and pleasure. They are two sensory feelings that are central to the experience of living as a human being. Although they are typically distinct from one another, it is certainly something else when the two feelings merge: something that may seem strange to some, enticing to others, or perhaps strangely enticing to the rest.
Masaaki Yuasa, the acclaimed director of titles such as Mind Game and Yojouhan Shinwa Taikei, drew the idea for the main theme of Kick-Heart from this concept of pain and pleasure. He watched a French man getting tortured, and then amused himself at the thought of what it would be like if that man experienced pleasure simultaneously. Also noteworthy is that he also drew inspiration from Tiger Mask, which is where the idea for pro-wrestling came from. Eventually, Y…
Read at the source