Assault Girls (2009)

Assault Girls is the kind of sci-fi fever dream you watch less for story mechanics and more for the sheer audacity of its imagination: a stark, windswept digital wasteland where stylishly armed avatars stalk something enormous and unknowable. Mamoru Oshii treats action like visual poetry, lingering on stunning compositions, tactile costume work, and gun designs so lovingly detailed they feel like characters in their own right. The vibe is cool, eerie, and contemplative—part video-game trance, part art-house meditation—punctuated by bursts of firepower and a persistent sense of scale and dread. If you want a conventional, plot-driven ride, it may feel remote, but if you’re open to an atmospheric, design-forward experience with big sci-fi ideas humming beneath the surface, it’s a hypnotic watch.

Assault Girls is clearly aiming for a stylish, game-world mood piece: a handful of avatars wandering a desolate VR desert, gearing up to take down absurdly oversized “sandwhales” for points. The problem is it plays more like a sparse art installation than a story, with glacial pacing, minimal plot, and dialogue that often feels stilted or oddly detached. If you’re expecting coherent world-building, character motivation, or satisfying action payoffs, you’ll likely find it confusing and, frankly, dull. That said, if you have patience for surreal imagery and you’re curious about Mamoru Oshii’s experimental, low-emotion approach to sci-fi, there are a few striking visual ideas to chew on.