Bubblegum Crisis

The year is 2032, seven years after the Second Great Kanto Earthquake decimated Tokyo. Now, the city is reborn as MegaTokyo, built from the labors of mechanical beasts known as "Boomers." Originally created to benefit humanity, the mysterious corporation known as Genom now produces Boomers with incredible destructive power as a new type of advanced weaponry, capable of disguising themselves as humans.

The AD Police is a new special unit to counter the ever-increasing Boomer-related crimes. Overwhelmed by the sheer amount of crimes and disparity in strength, the AD Police poses little opposition to the Boomers. A mysterious vigilante force known as the Knight Sabers, wearing powersuits more advanced than the military, is the citizens' only hope for protection. Led by Sylia Stingray, Priscilla "Priss" Asagiri, Nene Romanova, and Linna Yamazaki, these beautiful girls take out any Boomer that steps out of line.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Asagiri, Priscilla Main

Oomori, Kinuko Japanese

Romanova, Nene Main

Hiramatsu, Akiko Japanese

Stingray, Sylia Main

Sakakibara, Yoshiko Japanese

Yamazaki, Linna Main

Tomizawa, Michie Japanese

McNichol, Leon Main

Furukawa, Toshio Japanese

Largo Supporting

Sogabe, Kazuyuki Japanese

Chang, Reika Supporting

Hashimoto, Maiko Japanese

Sylvie Supporting

Takamori, Yoshino Japanese

Mason, Brian J. Supporting

Ikeda, Shuuichi Japanese

Stingray, Mackey Supporting

Sasaki, Nozomu Japanese

Oobari, Masami Director, Storyboard, Mechanical Design, Key Animation, Animation Director

Akiyama, Katsuhito Director, Script

Takayama, Fumihiko Director, Storyboard

Gouda, Hiroaki Director, Storyboard, Animation Director

Reviews

Aug 8, 2007

YourMessageHere

Recommended

Given that this is Bubblegum Crisis\' 20th anniversary year, I\'m going to start with some historic background. In 1987, amid the boomtimes in the west, the rise of Japanese industrial and corporate power appeared to be potentially endless and the west seemed unable to match it. Japan, and much of the first world was getting rich quick and advancing technologically in leaps and bounds; but at the same time, other countries were still stuck in a past age, unable to keep up. For the first time socioeconomic concepts like the multinational corporation and the global market became realities, and the division between ... the first and third world had never seemed wider. While some revelled in the abundance, others feared it.

Science fiction, ever the barometer of public fear, reflected this in books and film. Alien, in 1979, brought the world a vision of space travel in the future that for once was filthy and corrupt and run by giant corporations with no morals. The seminal Blade Runner stunned 1982 with the visually amazing concept of a huge, grimy neon tech-sprawl future LA of totally mixed ethnicity and robots that behave more like humans than humans do. And William Gibson’s famed 1984 novel Neuromancer gave the world a fevered, lavish nightmare of clashing technology and humanity embroiled in a tale of global tech businesses up to no good, in the process giving this burgeoning genre a name: cyberpunk.

Where one media succeeds, others will follow. Cyberpunk anime was as inevitable then as live action western versions of anime have become now. Bubblegum Crisis was the leading edge of that cyberpunk anime, taking the elements that worked for the rest and expertly marrying it with many of the elements that make anime unique. Today, Bubblegum Crisis is one of those \'classic\' titles that anime fans need to know about, a Terminator or Star Wars of the anime canon. Even though its popularity in Japan was only a fraction of the reception it enjoyed overseas, it’s my contention that without Bubblegum Crisis there’d have been no Akira film.

But is it any good? On one hand, detractors can say that this is a messy blending of many things that have already been done; a Blade Runner city with a flavour of Neuromancer-come-Alien-come-Aliens dystopian griminess and high-tech evil and full of Terminators and Robocops, filtered through that anime staple, mecha. This is largely true, but doesn’t matter. Outside anime, nothing so ambitious could ever work; but within the totally created universe that’s only possible in animation or CGI, and only really practical in animation, it not only works but excels.

Originally planned as a series of 13 OVA episodes, it eventually ran to only 8 episodes, and some key plot points were altered because of this. Another 3 episodes were released later in an OVA series called Bubblegum Crash, using elements of the 5 unmade episodes that never made it originally. Each is largely self contained, but both multi-episode arcs of storyline and a loose overall plotline are also present. Being an OVA, the time period and hence staff is not as fixed as can be seen with a TV series, the net effect of which being that pretty much every episode is different from each of the others, with different emphases and different priorities. On top of this, half way through, some key decisions were reversed about the planned death in episode 5 of a character who, in hindsight, clearly stands out as the main protagonist. Plus, the eventual premature demise of the series stemmed from the two owners of the franchise, Artmic and Youmex, taking each other to court. DVD releases nowadays seem so snarled in legalities that the horrendous dubtitling is almost forgivable. So, it’s a total mess, basically.

But like I say, this doesn’t really matter. What Bubblegum Crisis does so well, well enough that it relegates these things to positions of secondary importance, is cool. BGC may not have a very sure idea of what it wants to be and do, in a general sense, but it does it with irrepressable style; everything about BGC is very cool. Kenichi Sonoda, who went on to be the man behind Gunsmith Cats, designed the characters impeccably, including their incredible sleek hardsuit armour, which look like what Lamborghinis and Ferraris would look like if they were shaped like women. Various other mechanical designs, by Aramaki Shinji, later to be mechanical designer for Evangelion and director of Appleseed 2004, largely borrows from much of early \'80s sci-fi, and frankly looks fantastic. There’s a very brash, colourful, in-your-face ‘80s vibe also driving the general design ethos, which might sound ghastly but is in fact perfect for crumbling, self-digesting neon dystopias. Much of the visuals are, as mentioned, lifted from Blade Runner and run through a series of anime design quirks. Animation is by no means stunning generally, but gets the job done, and when you factor in the fact that this is from 1987, it really has some very nice touches.

No review of Bubblegum Crisis is remotely complete without mention of the music. BGC is famous for its music almost as much as it is famous for popularising women kicking arse. Synth-rock songs that are as artificial and processed as the nutrasweet in diet coke, tunes painstakingly designed to be catchy and memorable, are the order of the day; it is hard to express how much raw fun it is. It\'s also archetypally \'80s, overblown and brash - and outside of BGC, I generally hate \'80s stuff. The songs especially manage to encapsulate that B-movie feeling; like the irrelevant pop songs at the end of a film that was cheesy but still really entertaining, they are driving, infectious ballads with amazing powers of mood-lightening. Many have noted the similarity between the opening of the first episode and the start of the 1984 film Streets of Fire; but the integration of the music into the story in BGC is much smoother. And, while I love the music, it\'s immediately obvious it\'s the kind of thing that\'s likely to provoke strong responses that won\'t be positive for everyone - a gamble any series that relies so heavily on music must make. Even if you\'re not keen on the sound, though, there\'s no mistaking the skill, high production values and copious amounts of effort behind it.


By having the rock singer character as one of its toughest protagonists is a move that trumps Streets of Fire\'s equivalent role in every way. BGC\'s other characters are far from original by modern standards, but it\'s worth remembering that they set many of those standards themselves. These are archetypes, not stereotypes; those that set the trend, not those who follow them. No-one looks down on Dirty Harry, just because he spawned a thousand maveric cop characters.

It can\'t be denied that there are some fairly major things wrong with BGC. For one, it\'s almost totally episodic, with no real overarching plot and little other than the strong, well rounded characters to link one episode to another. For another, the characters may be strong and extremely charismatic, but they don\'t really change much or develop like they should. For a third, it suffers from the lack of an ending; the last story just stops like any other, and you reach for the last disc...and it\'s just music videos (also real fun). These problems are at least addressed in the 1999 remake, Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040, but at the expense of design, music and general coolness. What the remake did not fix, however, is the basic implausibility of the whole thing. Bloodsucking robots, transforming motorbikes and mecha-tentacle beasts strain one\'s suspension of disbelief unpleasantly at times.

Nonetheless, Bubblegum Crisis, or, to give it its full title, \'Bubblegum Crisis MegaTokyo 2032: the story of Knight Sabers\' (yes, BGC was in fact the origin of the now-common phrase MegaTokyo - another example of its wide influence), remains immensely enjoyable popcorn anime, and remains fascinating for anyone interested in the history of anime. After 20 years, that\'s pretty damn impressive.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

What did you think of this review?

Nice 0

Love it 0

Funny 0

Confusing 0

Informative 0

Well-written 0

Creative 0

More reviews by YourMessageHere (15)

Show all

Read more

Show less

Open

Gift

Report

Jan 27, 2009

Beatnik

Recommended

Containing what might be one of the best opening 7 minutes of an anime ever, this OVA opens with a montage of the future, a dark sprawling Mega-Tokyo.

Immediately Ghost in the Shell comes to mind, some scenes look almost identical, the Oshii vibe so thick, the possible influence on the man (and even Shirow himself) is made more and more questionable throughout the OVA with many stylistic choices bringing the GitS franchise to mind.

After the introduction of the various comings and goings of the city, a concert suddenly begins, introducing a blonde wigged character Priss, and is intercut with the appearance of a boomer wrecking ... havoc. The direction and editing, and hell even the music are all excellent and ensure the OVA gets off to a cracking start. 80's cyberpunk at its best!

The story follows four plucky young women with nothing better to do in their spare time than to don cyber-outfits and blow crap up, preferably those pesky rogue boomers who keep appearing all over the city. The combined IQ of these four women finally figures out that Genom corporation, which apparently "accounts for 68% of the world's cars", might have something to do with these incidents and so Bubblegum Crisis delivers 8 episodes of pure unadulterated fun in a way only 80's anime can.

Mega-Tokyo, 2032. This is the future, but seen from the eyes of the 80's. Each decade's vision of the future is idiosyncratic, and so each decade produces strange and brilliant works of genius or garbage, with Bubblegum Crisis firmly in the strange and brilliant camp, albeit lacking both genius and garbage, though still retaining quality production and vision. Plenty of great directorial choices, POV shots, pans, zooms, it's all dynamic and makes up for the dated, yet still decent, animation.

No matter the humour or clunky dialogue or 80's sprinkled aesthetics in hair styles and clothing, this is cyberpunk at its peak. Everything associated with the genre is present, the connective nature of society, the paranoia of having satellites hovering above your head with the capability of blowing you up, biotech suits, corporate power run amok. In a sense Bubblegum Crisis is more cyberpunk than a lot of cyberpunk anime out there which sometimes jettison a lot of the genre's traits and settle for dystopic hijinks with the occasional robot AI thrown in. Bubblegum Crisis revels in the genre and doesn’t leave anything out.

The anime came out at what might be seen as cyberpunk's peak of influence and exposure in the mainstream, and as such is worth a watch for its historical significance, in terms of impacting the genre of cyberpunk in anime and also being a window to the time. It's so classy it even has time to throw a shout out to The Third Man!

It's flawed, but packed with so much creative ideas and flair, you can't help but bop along to the 80's tunes. Each episode starts with a cinematic musical montage of 80's soft rock/pop and narrative-advancing imagery. This isn't on-par with cyberpunk like GitS, you have to accept the humour and gaping plot-holes as part of the charm, or you'll just not be involved and will tune out. The AD Police are written as what a 12 year old imagines the NYPD are like, complete with the gruff black police captain arguing with the rookie cop.

There's lots of subtle visual flair in this OVA, the directors knew what they were doing. (Except for episode 5 and 6. That director probably went to the school of Koichi Mashimo, though he wasn't helped by the screenwriter for those episodes either) Too often in post-millennium anime there are tons of 'arty' shots that are meaningless and the camera either flies around the place like a steadicam-operator on crack, or pans laboriously across the screen as if directed by an old age pensioner, but back in the 80's/90's they knew how to pace episodes just fine while choosing narrative-coherent viewpoints to the action. I guess I'm harping on about that old cliché of modern day anime being too shallow with emphasis on looks rather than content, but considering that this anime is packed with very clichéd jokes that were old even back when this was released, the argument is kind of moot.

If you want to go extra deep you could propose that Bubblegum Crisis is yet another exploration of the relationship between man and machine and clearly veers on the side of external mechanics and views bio-implementation, or to be simple about it: cyborgs, as a threat to the world. Even though boomers are technically robots, though the distinction is rarely made clear especially when they all have such charming personalities, their humanoid form isn't a random creative decision. Boomers, anyone associated to them, and augmentation in general are clearly bad for your health and the only way to make the world a better place is to jump into exoskeleton mecha-suits and be a master of cybernetics, not a slave to them. It's possibly an archaic almost Luddite philosophy, especially in the 21st century where bio and nano-technology is getting more and more traction. Yep, I just analysed an anime with 'bubblegum' in the title.

But you get the gist, Bubblegum Crisis is consistently entertaining and has very good direction to boot, and its shortcomings can be seen as part of the package; a conscious decision and not a by-product. You're meant to laugh at the ridiculousness of the entire premise, especially the glorious last episode's tribute to the character of Nene, and you're meant to lap up the universe presented because you're a cyberpunk fan. The damn anime's called Bubblegum Crisis!

If you're not grinning while watching this, you're in a crisis of your own and I suggest you chew some gum to get over it.

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

What did you think of this review?

Nice 0

Love it 0

Funny 0

Confusing 0

Informative 0

Well-written 0

Creative 0

More reviews by Beatnik (95)

Show all

Read more

Show less

Open

Gift

Report

Sep 15, 2023

ThatAnimeSnobRE

Mixed Feelings

This anime used to be huge back when it first aired by encompassing all the best elements of 80s cyberpunk. It was almost a flagship title at a time when anime were still fairly niche in America and everyone was watching tame sitcom cartoons. It was in a way the Neon Genesis or Ghost in the Shell of the 1980s, or the Psycho Pass of the 2010s. Historical importance aside, nowadays it is closer to a skeleton of a good story, since it had lots of good ideas but didn’t do much with them.

In terms of production values it holds up pretty well. Made at ... a time when everything was hand-drawn with multiple layers of shading, it doesn’t become instantly aged as the CGI monstrocities of today. The world is also your standard sci-fi dystopia, the claustrophobic high-tech megacity almost all sci-fi stories depict so it’s easy to dig it if you are used to that sort of setting. The heroines have the “80’s anime look” (huge eyes, Barbie-like hairstyles), which can seem weird compared to the far more down to earth sceneries. The battles don’t have much choreography and body movements tend to be choppy. Animation is average at best. Also there is a rather high amount of fan service, as 80% of the cast is pretty girls undressing or moving around in underwear several times per episode/OVA.

Voice acting is decent but not great. The music themes have some powerful pieces and in fact this series has the honor of being the first title to use voice actors both for voicing characters and singing the songs (Priss).

The plot is rather typical. There is crime, corruption and crazed androids running around in a futuristic city. Laugh all you want at their name being Boomers that can’t adjust in a high-tech society. The normal police have their hands full, until a group of vigilante super chicks, called the Knight Sabers, storm in and save the day. Their identities are hidden, their motives are unknown. So far, the story is like watching Batman. But under the surface, every girl has its reasons for being in the team and there are several secrets behind the origin of the berserked robots. I make it sound much more interesting than it actually is, since both the plots and the revelations are fairly basic stuff. The animation studio had budget issues and couldn’t finish all the episodes it intended, thus it kept the plot almost episodic and open-ended. A later version did a better job at wrapping things up, but even then the finale was more silly than sad, with the girls being butt-naked as they fall down from space and resolving the conflict like it’s a naughty fairy-tale.

Nowadays, there is nothing fresh or exciting about it. It’s more of a nostalgic rule of cool type of title you watch for getting that 80s vibe that is completely absent today. The story is half-serious, the plot is loose or slow, the ending is open or silly. The main idea of the series is used in better ways elsewhere. Fan service wasn’t that great. Action scenes weren’t that great. I can’t recommend it as a must-watch classic.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

What did you think of this review?

Nice 0

Love it 0

Funny 0

Confusing 0

Informative 0

Well-written 0

Creative 0

More reviews by ThatAnimeSnobRE (188)

Show all

Read more

Show less

Open

Gift

Report

3-9 episodes

by spuq

50 Entries · 73 Restacks

Old is Gold (Pre-90's Classic Anime)

by Ash_li

50 Entries · 229 Restacks

Stand-Alone OVAs

by madiandi

35 Entries · 100 Restacks

North American Anime & Manga Releases for September

Here are the North American anime & manga releases for September Week 1: September 4 - 10 Anime Releases Bungou Stray Dogs 2nd Season (incl. Hitori Ayumu) Comple...read more

Sep 3, 2018 2:56 PM by Sakana-san | Discuss (27 comments)

	Scott Pilgrim Takes Off EP 7 Spoilers FXET_507 - Nov 9	1 replies	by AkiraMiyazaki17 »» Nov 18, 9:20 AM
	Poll: Bubblegum Crisis Episode 8 Discussion ( 1 2 ) Beatnik - Jan 27, 2009	51 replies	by Bubbleyumcrisis »» Oct 9, 11:03 AM
	Poll: Bubblegum Crisis Episode 3 Discussion Beatnik - Jan 26, 2009	33 replies	by satyrelfheim »» Aug 15, 3:12 PM
	Poll: Bubblegum Crisis Episode 2 Discussion Ston3_FreeN7 - Nov 26, 2009	20 replies	by satyrelfheim »» Jul 12, 10:06 AM
	Poll: Bubblegum Crisis Episode 1 Discussion Beatnik - Jan 25, 2009	42 replies	by satyrelfheim »» Jul 7, 9:44 AM

Blast From The Past: New Megazone 23 Anime To Be Crowdfunded Soon

Mecha anime shows are awesome but it's a shame that so few are released nowadays. Fortunately, AIC is bringing back one of their classics for older and newer fans. Is a reboot of Megazone 23 exciting enough to secure a successful crowdfunding campaign?

by MisterD98

17,483 views

The Top 10 Mature Manga

Manga comes in all flavors and for all age groups. We're about to uncover some of the best mature manga which is just right for those in their late teens. Get ready to enter the world of seinen manga!

by MisterD98

462,910 views

RecommendationCollectionActionMangakaTokyo GhoulOne Punch Man