VIRGIN PUNK Clockwork Girl

📖 SYNOPSIS

In 2099, death has basically been solved thanks to android prosthetics called Somadea — replacement limbs, full-body transfers, the works. Naturally, people found ways to weaponize it, so now the government pays bounty hunters to bring in criminals using illegal Somadea mods. Alive or dead, doesn't matter. Ubu Kamigori is a 14-year-old orphan who wants to become a Somadea engineer, which is a pretty normal dream until two bounty hunters — Elegance and Maggie — show up at her orphanage and kill the director for running illegal Somadea operations under everyone's noses. That's the kind of world this is. Ubu gets pulled into bounty hunting from there, and the movie doesn't shy away from how messy that transition is for a kid.

This is a Shaft production, so the visual style is doing its own thing — there's a deliberate 90s grit layered over modern animation that gives the whole cyberpunk setting real texture. If you liked Ghost in the Shell's philosophical weight around body modification, or Alita: Battle Angel's "young girl thrown into violent underworld" energy, this hits a similar nerve. There are also shades of 90s OVA Kite in its unflinching tone. It's one movie, so the pacing is tight and the world doesn't overstay its welcome. A solid pick if you want cyberpunk action that actually engages with the ethics of its own premise.