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While most anime is an adaptation of an existing manga property, there is a rare title that comes around that is completely original. Aniplex unveiled one such title earlier in the week when they showed off the trailer for Virgin Punk. We’ve only had our first look at the futuristic and violent story and it has already become one of our most anticipated anime of 2025.

The first trailer for the upcoming anime shows a young woman emerging from what looks like a coma and stumbling into a futuristic world. There is plenty of action mixed in, though plot details are understandably scarce at the moment. Who this woman is, why she is stumbling out of a hospital room, and how she's able to break a man's arm so brutally are probably going to be a key part of the story.

What is clear is the beautiful animation from studio SHAFT (the Monogatari series and March Comes In Like a Lion), who have created a world that feels reminiscent of Cowboy Bebop in a more cyberpunk setting, which is the greatest sequence of words to ever be in the same sentence. There is a sense of style in every scene of the trailer and the promise of a mystery to unfold about the main character’s past and strange power. What more do you need?

Well, a release date would probably help, but we’re going to have to wait a while for that. So far, all that Aniplex and SHAFT have confirmed is that Virgin Punk is coming in the summer of 2025, so we’ll have to wait nearly a whole year to find out what is happening in this trailer. Still, there is enough cool stuff in this first trailer to get our attention. 

Each week, Popverse's resident anime expert Trent Cannon runs down the latest and, dare we say "greatest," in anime and manga in Popverse Jump. Some recent columns have included... 

• Why the finales of My Hero Academia, Jujutsu Kaisen, and One Piece feel like the end of an era in manga
• Why is One Piece more popular now that the anime is 25 years old? We asked around and found out
• Dan Da Dan is weird, profoundly inappropriate, and the perfect anime this season
• Why One Piece's Monkey D. Luffy is the perfect anime hero for the dark times ahead
• 40 years after its debut, Dragon Ball is a pop culture force like few others
• Dan Da Dan's most emotionally devastating sequence proves that sometimes words aren't necessary
• Gnosia, the "Among Us meets Everything Everywhere All at Once" visual novel is getting an anime adaptation that needs to be as weird as possible
• Assassination Classroom is a Shonen anime well worth revisiting, ten years on
• Sony is making big moves to own the anime industry by buying Kadokawa, publisher of Oshi no Ko, Sword Art Online, and Konosuba