The 90s don't make OVAs look like this anymore, every frame is a painting, every camera movement a deliberate choice, and the whole thing moves like kabuki on screen. Yoshiwara's half-light becomes a character itself, a space where a shogun's secret daughter and a thief collide in a world that refuses to let them exist together. The voice acting is rough and the budget shows, but the aesthetic precision doesn't care, it's making something beautiful out of restraint.

In the Kyouhou era of the early 18th century, when merchant culture is thriving in Edo, Usugumo is a popular courtesan of Yoshiwara, admired for both her beauty and her character. She is secretly the daughter of the shogun Yoshimune and a Christian prostitute, yet the political struggles of the day keep her apart from her father. Everything shifts when she meets Kikunosuke, a blond-haired thief. Together with him, a doctor named Aoto Touichirou who practices Western medicine still unfamiliar in Japan, and her pet cat Kotetsu, Usugumo forms a band of thieves called the Kikugumi. Meanwhile, someone from a mysterious group surfaces with Usugumo as the target. A single-episode OVA from 1993, the story blends period drama with fantasy.