My brain is racing right now. Having just finished watching this OVA, I could feel something intrinsically "deep" about this work. Almost as if Umetsu-sensei was pointing his finger directly at me. Of course, those who have watched or will watch it certainly have some knowledge about Umetsu Yasuomi-sensei's track record as a director so far. His sense of aesthetics and his taste for oldschool physical violence, not far removed from old Hong Kong and Hollywood cinema, are pretty (in)famous among those anime fans who like to dig a bit deeper. And that is particularly the case nowadays as the twisted love for his original creations tends to be shared around on social media such as Instagram.
Virgin Punk does not disappoint Indeed: the story is very much in line with what Umetsu has done in the past. In fact, the plot for the (eventual) sequels is basically written in the blood of that first offering, and isn't without reminding me of A Kite. It's hard to not make the connection when Virgin Punk is also a story about a woman "killed" by a grown-up pervert and forced to become his killer doll, and it's very obvious that the plot is about Ubu killing her way to reach her freedom. Which she will most likely find in the end provided that Umetsu doesn't decide to pull the rug under our feet again.
Those similarities felt way too obvious for me NOT to read into them. Clockwork Girl(s?) is almost like a signed confession from Umetsu-sensei, and Elegance something of an avatar for the director in the story. He loves his girls drawn beautifully and depicted like dolls. He loves drawing them in near/full-body nudity, deprived of intimacy. He loves his fully-detailed old-school ultra-violence and gore. His action sequences are drawn with all of their feeling of weight, with flawlessly drawn bodily movements, and the impact of whatever ammo/object/body against other surfaces can almost be felt through the screen. Ubu being a grown-up woman whose brain is the only thing "human" left and was forcefully encased in an artificial representation of her younger self is basically a declaration in and of itself: Umetsu wants to take you back to the past. To a time when such bloody, hard-hitting, gritty stories were more common. When blood and severed heads were more prevalent and commercialized. And, in a way, the director is pointing the finger at YOU. Yes, you, me, the watcher. The one that ordered that Blu-Ray disc or downloaded that video file, you did so while knowing what you were getting into. We followed our thirst for such rare "delicacies", where the director indulges plentily in his unashamedly confessed "sins", and we're finding beauty, or at least pleasure, in his depravation.
Will you indulge in them too?
13 out of 15 users liked this review