Conditions for Receiving Bounty: Bring the brain of a wanted criminal possessing illegal Somadea to the authorities.
Whether the target is alive or dead...is irrelevant.
The year is 2099. Humanity has advanced, overcoming all injuries and illnesses with the development of the Medical Android Technology "Somadea." However, along with the development of Somadea, crimes misusing said technology have rapidly increased.
Somadea grants physical abilities far superior to those of normal flesh and blood, and by illegally modifying it, Somadea can be misused for criminal purposes. To deal with these Somadea crimes, the government established the Bounty Hunter System. Civilians registered as bounty hunters are permitted to kill illegal Somadea users designated as wanted criminals by the police. In return, they are rewarded with large amounts of bounty money.
In this unforgiving world, Ubu Kamigori makes a living hunting down criminals as a bounty hunter. But one day, when she returns home from a job, she finds the man with whom she has a sordid history waiting there—Mr. Elegance. And so, her destiny begins to unravel.
A tale woven by mechanical girls and the smell of gunpowder smoke, this suspenseful action begins!
(Source: Aniplex of America)
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Comentários
Loadfuzion
To start off, I'm aware that some audiences were surprised as to the short runtime of the "movie". For clarification for future audiences, this is more like an OVA attached to a documentary to suit theater runtime. The actual anime itself is roughly thirty minutes, so if you don't want to sit in a theater for what is effectively an anime pilot episode, I would suggest waiting for Blu-Ray or streaming If you're at all familiar with Yasuomi Umetsu, Virgin Punk is very much a spiritual successor to both Kite and Mezzo Forte, that is to say gorgeous animation, grungy lolita cyberpunk, and a female MCwho knows how to handle a gun. Ultraviolence, nudity, and gun porn is the name of the game, it's what Uemetsu has been doing for decades and he isn't stropping now. In many ways, Virgin Punk feels like a time machine to an era of anime that's since gone by the wayside, both on a stylistic and thematic level.
It's painstakingly animated and every single frame of the episode has a degree of detail that just isn't present in anime these days. The movements of the characters, the details of things like the firearms, clothing, and set design take you back to the OVA and movies of yesteryear. There just so happens to be a reason for that too, unlike the majority of modern Japanese animation, Virgin Punk's key frames and character animation were done with traditional hand-drawn cel animation, with digital rendering and effects laid overtop. Uemetsu wasn't given a deadline, and himself drew much of the movie. This makes it an absolute visual masterpiece, there's not a single sequence you can point to that looks even average, it's total eye candy for people who are into sakuga, especially those are have a preference for the more retro-era of anime. In spite of all of that, I can understand how many of these insane visual details could easily be lost, especially when releasing in a contemporary anime environment with western audiences, at a movie theater no less, around the same time when a movie like Chainsaw Man: Reze Arc is still in theaters. To some, Virgin Punk may stand out visually, but I think many of its visual qualities will appreciated on a surface level.
Plot wise, it's nothing groundbreaking, this thirty minutes was the usual Uemetsu-fare. An orphaned girl put under the thumb of a predatory man who treats her as his pet bounty hunter. She kicks ass while trying to ultimately break free from Mr. Elegance, the man who controls her. Again, it's roughly thirty minutes, there wasn't time for any complex narrative revelations or anything, we're very much given a premise and then sent full force into a cavalcade gun battles and buildup. If you've watched Kite/Mezzo Forte, this will all be somewhat familiar to you, if not then you might be a little taken back as to the sort of narrative edge that Umetsu likes to stuff in stories, featuring often more uncomfortable character dynamics. This is all meant to be the beginning of the story, so much of what can be said about the writing remains to be seen. But for what we have, it's certainly serviceable.
Overall? It was good, pretty awesome, actually. Producing something like this in 2025 could be nothing short of a big undertaking, especially to revisit traditional animation the way they did, and seeing Uemetsu return, if even for a short thirty minute animation is unmistakably cool. Its worst crime is being too short, a problem that is good to have when what is present is actually entertaining. I don't think Virgin Punk: Clockwork Girl will be for everybody, but it makes me happy to see productions like can still be made, and for Shaft to have given this the greenlight that they did. It makes me excited for the future of this production, and I hope they don't make an compromises with the later iterations.
kingpeep
No reviews, so here's one! The main reason I went was Shaft, and I went in totally blind (relevant later). Enter a world where humans can modify their bodies using "Somadea". This can be used to replace a limp arm or turn that same arm into a machine gun. Simple concept, the twist here being that the prostheses isn't allowed to connect to your brain, you feel no pain, no sweat, nothing. We follow Ubu, an orphan who is forced into a bounty hunter life of capturing people who use their Somadea with evil intent. She's pretty good at her job, and without getting too deep intothe twist, the action is exciting. Animation is excellent, all hand-drawn. The score is fantastic. The world-building, through background and dialogue, is beautiful. The plot is intriguing, the characters are engaging, the motive is set, the journey is truly about to begin, and... it's over.
Now I watched the U.S. release of this movie. The site where I purchased the ticket from stated the runtime was about an hour and a half. The actual size of the OVA? Only 30 minutes. Now I won't go much deeper into this because MAL says 30 minutes, and most people will see it online anyway, but I just wanted to add that the additional hour was behind the scenes. While I generally love these types of things, I can't say I enjoyed it much in theaters. It wasn't too in-depth, as I felt Blu-Ray/DVDs are where this content should be, not theaters, and usually, more content is present there. Aside over.
But actual product-wise? I don't feel there is much more to say. They've supposedly been working on this since 2015, and it really does bleed effort, but when the story is about to really start, it just ended. I really enjoyed the hell out of what we got, but man, it's just underwhelming. Online, it says this will be the start of a series, but the way Umetsu, the director, was talking about it, "if we do another episode", I'm slightly less hopeful that a conclusion will ever come.
Is it quality? Yeah! But my score is partially based on the assumption that more comes out. If none comes out, I may retroactively change the score. If more does come out, please disregard this entirely. I really do hope more comes out! Can't wait or will die waiting :)
