Thanks to Tubi, I’ve been (re)discovering some good, old anime series. Combined with the fact that I really like the aesthetic of Cyberpunk, if not the genre of Cyberpunk itself, I think the big thing I’ve realised about myself is that, even though I was born in 1991, I miss the 80s…
Photo by Mikhail Nilov on Pexels.com
Also, Disco…
Which brings us to Bubblegum Crisis.
Bubblegum Crisis: AIC and AnimEigo. image via Tubi.
Incidentally, the title is meant to convey a sense of imminent potential calamity: The bubblegum in question is about to burst.
In the year 2032 – which, unlike a lot of 80s Cyberpunk seetings, as of this writing, is still in the future – the evil mega-corporation GENOM runs basically the entire world’s economy and therefore exerts at least enough influence, or not outright direct control, on politics that they’ve essentially also taken over the world.
This is largely a result of their development and proliferation of Boomers, androids that have been developed to fill any and every role: menial labour, combat – even, um… ‘companionship.’ Unfortunately, Boomers have a nasty habit of going berserk and trying to kill everybody.
I’m not entirely clear on if that’s deliberate on GENOM’s part…
Enter, the Knight Sabers: four female mercenaries in hardsuits (think sleeker, sexier, form-fitting-er Iron Man suits) working against GENOM and specialising in putting down the runaway Boomers.
Bubblegum Crash: AIC and AnimEigo.
The leader of the Sabers is Sylia Stingray. She’s the one with the most personal grudge against GENOM, who killed her father, the scientist who originally developed the Boomer technology, when she was young.
On the one hand, “Sylia Stingray” is a completely ludicrous name. On the other hand, stopping to think about it, yeah, a 1980s Cyberpunk anime heroine absolutely would have a name like Sylia Stingray.
Sylia is the leader, but Priss is the main character. She’s probably the one who hates the Boomers the most, but she doesn’t have the same tragic backstory as Sylia to justify it.
She’s just kind of a jerk.
And she is really just sort of a jerk – the amount of hostility she shows to pretty much everyone can actually make it kinda hard to root for her. Though, on the other hand, given that her defining trait is her hatred of cops and Boomers, despite being from a 40-year-old series, in a way, she’s the perfect heroine for the zeitgeist of 2026…
She’s probably also the coolest of the four. She’s a hot, badass rock singer who drives a motorcycle.
Bubblegum Crisis: AIC and AnimEigo.
The other two Sabers, Linna and Nene have a lot less focus, to the point where they’re mostly just sort of there, with the exception of the episode where each one gets their share of focus. Though, at least in Linna’s, she does still get overshadowed by Priss.
Linna is boy-crazy, constantly broke, and the most boisterous of the four. While Nene is the most typically girly and the comic relief who gets hurt and embarassed in funny ways, she’s also useful to the Knight Sabers’ operations due to working for the police and being able to feed them information.
For the most part, the episodes are mostly standalone stories with a vague story arc of GENOM being nefarious and the Sabers working against them. Episodes 5 and 6 are the most inter-connected and actually work best as a finale to the original series.
There are two additional episodes, but because the series was originally slated to be 15 episodes but had to wrap up at 8 due to various production issues, there’s no real conclusion and the series just sort of stops. Episode 8 is a pretty entertaining story about Nene basically babysitting her boss’ niece, but does nothing to provide any real sense of closure to the series as a whole.
Which is why the follow-up series Bubblegum Crash was released a few years later. It’s also three largely standalone episodes, but the last one does actually wrap up the story pretty nicely. Despite being viewed as inferior to the original series, I do appreciate that it actually provides an ending.
That was followed in 1998 by Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040, a 26-episode anime series which is a full-on reboot. The characters are all broadly the same, but their personalities and appearances have been redone to greater or less degrees I’ve only watched a few episodes, but I do like that it has a more coherent through-plot and all of the individual Knight Sabers get fleshed out more.
Though I don’t like this version of Priss’ hair as much. Though, I guess it was almost the New Millennium by then…
Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040: AIC.
In addition to really liking the aesthetic of Cyberpunk – the leather, the neon, the visors and headsets, the cars – I also really dig the fact that Cyberpunk almost invariably have synth-heavy, 80s-styled soundtracks.
And Bubblegum Crisis is no exception.
Given that Priss is a rockstar it’s at least implied that most of the vocal songs on the soundtrack are her songs. Though the opening of the first episode – which is probably one of the best first impressions in any anime ever – is explicitly set against the backdrop of one of her concerts:
Although more recent anime series have moved away from it, the 80s and 90s were kinda the Wild West went it came to translation and localisation, so the English dub translates most, if not all, of the songs into English.
In the original Japanese, Priss’ voice actress was a professional singer and did the vocals for Priss’ songs. It apparently caused some issues with the production of the series because her record label did not like that. In English, Priss has a separate speaking and singing voice – which, now that I think about it, don’t really sound that much like the same person…
But the English versions of the songs are really good.
In general, the English cast isn’t necessarily bad – and if it is, it’s more in the sense of an amateur cast doing their best. Basically none of the voice cast had further voice acting roles and I do find the performances sincere and endearing even if they don’t really hold up to modern anime casts now that the industry has basically gone mainstream.
And, hey, without the rough but endearing 80s and 90s dubs, the industry probably wouldn’t have gone mainstream…
Calling the original Bubblegum Crisis “haphazard” is probably both incorrect and unfair, but being released as an OVA — that’s ‘original video animation’, meaning it was released directly to home media rather than airing on TV – over the course of about five years, and so releasing an average of 1 episode every 2 years, likely meant that its production was different from a standard anime series – and it faced several of the issues I mentioned before: Only getting to release about half the episodes originally planned and the dispute with Priss’ actress’ record label among them.
Bubblegum Crisis: AIC and AnimEigo.
For comparison, Bubblegum Crash was released over the span of most of one single year, which is likely why it feels more coherent.
It does feel like there’s a noticeable increase in production values at episode 4 and none of the episodes are bad, but I can’t help but feel that the series never really hits its full potential or delivers on its concept as well as such a cool concept deserves. I think my biggest frustration with the series is that, despite being entirely predicated on the heroines have access to badass super-suits, they don’t actually spend that much time using the badass super-suits and the actual fight scenes feel far too few and far between. Though, admittedly, I suspect the budget may have something to do with that.
Even for the purposes of writing this post, just finding a good shot of all four of the Sabers together in their hardsuits was actually really hard.
And Priss specifically seems to spend a lot of time getting beaten up…
Which I think might be meant to represent that it’s a bad idea to go rushing off to punch the bad guys by yourself without waiting for the rest of your team.
I also found it darkly hilarious that pretty much any minor character Priss ends up caring about dies by the end of the episode.
I clearly remember seeing the video – I suppose it would have been a VHS back then, when the world was young and the Oceans had not yet drowned fair Atlantis – of Bubblegum Crisis on the shelf at Blockbuster.
Photo by u041au0430u0442u0435u0440u0438u043du0430 u0421u0430u043du043du0430 on Pexels.com
And I also clearly remember thinking “That’s an odd name.” and also noticing the big ‘Adults Only’ sticker on it. On Tubi, it’s rated TV-14 and it’s absolutely not the most adult thing on Tubi.
It’s not even the most adult anime on Tubi.
That being said, it is pretty violent.
There’s plenty of blood, though not that much graphic detail – characters will get shot or stabbed, and there’ll be an anime-y level blood splatter, but they won’t have obvious wounds afterwards. There’s a decent amount of mature content, including storyline involving a group of runaway sex Boomers, and at least fleeting glimpses of the Knight Sabers naked in most episodes – though in the context of gearing up in their hardsuits.
It may not be strictly necessary but given the context, it’s not particularly titillating or gratuitous.
The various websites that list anime audience ratings have Bubblegum Crisis somewhere between a 70 and an 80, and I think that’s fair. There’s a lot to like, especially stylistically, but there are a lot of little frustrations.
It may not be essential anime viewing, but I think fans of Cyberpunk and/or the 80s in general are going to get a lot out of Bubblegum Crisis.
Watching the series again, part of me was thinking “Man, this would make an awesome video game” – either a frenetic, futuristic action game like Vanquish or Metal Gear Rising or, fittingly, a throwback beat-’em-up like River City Girls.
At least in Canada, Bubblegum Crisis and Bubblegum Crash are streaming on Tubi.
Tokyo 2040 is one of the Funimation shows that didn’t survive the merger with Crunchyroll, so I don’t believe it’s available to stream anywhere, but I was able to get it on DVD without much trouble a few years ago.
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