バブルガムクライシス / Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2032

The heroes from the 80's and forever!

Following our  latest self-inflicted trend, we continue to look back at some of the most memorable Anime ever created. No matter whether they had a long or short run, if they're archetypal, they're here. That simple.

Today's entry involves one of those unique cases where conveying ideas that were already established, become greater than the original places where they took place. The 80's were a neon-fueled decade accompanied by the rise and fall of some of the greatest pop music acts worldwide. I was born in 1981, I spent nine years there. Nine years where I was lucky enough to find my way into the world of Anime. Today, 36 years later I can state, Bubblegum Crisis: Tokyo 2032 is the most 80's Anime you will ever see.

Bubblegum Crisis (Japanese: バブルガムクライシス Hepburn: Baburugamu Kuraishisu) is a 1987 to 1991 cyberpunk original video animation (OVA) series produced by Youmex and animated by AIC and Artmic. The series was planned to run for 13 episodes, but was cut short to just 8. The series premiered on February the 25th, 1987 and ended on January the 30th, 1991. Six months later (August the 30th, 1991) the series would have its first official US release. So it took nearly four years for it to be enjoyed by a growing wave of Western Anime fans like yours truly. 

In North America, AnimEigo first released Bubblegum Crisis to VHS and Laserdisc in 1991 in Japanese with English subtitles. The series is notable in that it was one of the few early anime series that were brought over from Japan unedited and subtitled in English. While anime has become much more popular in the years since, in 1991, it was still mostly unknown as a storytelling medium in North America. Bubblegum Crisis was aired in the US when it first aired on PBS affiliate Superstation KTEH in the 1990s, and STARZ!'s Action Channel in 2000.

Girl power.

Girl armored power!

The series started with Toshimichi Suzuki (writer of the series) intention to remake the 1982 film Techno Police 21C. However, he met Junji Fujita (one of the series producer) and the two discussed ideas, and decided to collaborate on what later became Bubblegum Crisis. Kenichi Sonoda acted as character designer, and designed the four female leads. Masami Ōbari created the mechanical designs. Obari would also go on to direct episode 5 and 6.

The OVA series is eight episodes long but was originally slated to run for 13 episodes. Due to legal problems between Artmic and Youmex, who jointly held the rights to the series, the series was discontinued prematurely.

Another unique features BGC has, is the fact it has a different soundtrack for every OVA, meaning there are 8 albums full of music from the series. The majority of songs were sung by Kinuko Oomori, Yuiko Tsubokura, Maiko Hashimoto, and The Knight Sabers.

 Here is every opening theme song: 

#1: "Konya wa Hurricane (今夜はハリケーン)" by Kinuko Oomori (ep 1)

 
#2: "Mad Machine" by Kinuko Oomori (ep 2)

 
#4: "CRISIS ~ Ikari wo Komete Hashire" by Yuiko Tsubokura (ep 4)

 
#5: "Mysterious Night (ミステリアスナイト)" by the Knight Sabers (ep 5)

#7: "Say Yes!" by Maiko Hashimoto (ep 7)

 
#8: "Bye Bye My Crisis" by the Knight Sabers (ep 8)

And the respective ending theme songs:

#1: "Mr. Dandy" by Bluew (ep 1)

 
#2: "Kizudarake no Wild (傷だらけのWild)" by Kinuko Oomori (ep 2)

 
#3: "Wasurenaide (忘れないで)" by Oomori Kinuko (ep 03)

 
#4: "Twilight " by Tsubokura Yuiko (ep 4)

 
#5: "Omoide ni Dakarete (思い出に抱かれて)" by Tsubokura Yuiko (ep 5)

 
#6: "Rock Me" by Yuiko Tsubokura (ep 6)

 
#7: "Never the End" by Maiko Hashimoto (ep 7)

 
#8: "Chase the Dream" by Kinuko Oomori (ep 8)

 

Neon colors, pop idols and fast bikes.

And graphic violence!

BGC opens with 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. (Many have noted the similarity between the opening of the first episode and the start of the 1984 film Streets of Fire)

 
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 Masamune Shirow himself) is made more and more questionable throughout the OVA with many stylistic choices bringing the GitS franchise to mind. Moreover, some people consider BGC the archetype used for Akira.

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 holds accounts for 68% of the world's cars & robots, 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.

Priss, you're a pop star!

While some are dancing, some are hunting.

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 humor 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.

Front and center.

The looks of stardom.

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 humor 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 that old cliche; of modern day anime being too shallow with emphasis on looks rather than content, but considering that this anime is packed with very cliched jokes that were old even back when this was released, the argument is kind of moot.

There's always time for lingerie in the future.

No flat LED screen TV in Mega Tokyo.

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 (not the ones from the Left 4 Dead games) 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. Here's where I'd say BGC was clearly inspired by some Hollywood blockbusters from the decade: Blade Runner, Streets of Fire & The Terminator. Each film, gives its own view on the future of mankind, and BGC is the blended result of the combination of all three.

If I were to choose the best part of BGC, I'd pick the characters, because they were a new breed of tough woman leading the fight in mechanized combat suits. That was barely common to have only woman as leads in the action genre. Though with only 8 out of the 13 episodes completed they did what they could with depth, but its what the characters represented that was most special.
They covered a broad spectrum of female heroines, Priss a tough, bike riding, battle hardened fighter who happens to be a singer, Linna the represented average aerobics girl of the 80s but with the ability to be able to transform that athleticism into fighting prowess, Sylia a smart wealthy elite who isn't afraid to drop the high class lady act and dirty her hands when she needs to, and lastly Nene a computer and electronics specialist willing to put herself in the battle zone.

Heroes wear no capes.

...And no underwear apparently!

What made them even more special though, was they all had their weaknesses, and the designers wanted us to know they were not perfect individuals and this added something to the characters that was largely absent in other action movies of the time.

Priss is poor and has had a rough life, its also implied that she never was well educated but she does what she can to get by and enjoy her life and improve the life of people she knows...or at least exact justice on their behalf.
Sylia is seen as the cool headed leader, but secretly she has an immense hatred for Genom Corp inside her which is strong enough to impair her judgement and cause her to lash out at others.
Linna although generally up beat is not living the life she wants, she would love a glamorous life and a great boyfriend but she is stuck in the mediocrity of being a below middle class person in Mega-tokyo, a cycle she cannot break out of. Then there's Nene, she desperately wants to be more physically imposing and it frustrates her that she isn't given much respect, she doesn't just want to be known as a computer geek at a police department and really would like people to know what she's really capable of. 

Art and character design, I think the series is excellent by 1980's standards. Personally, I think it's a masterpiece of it's era, using methods an approaches that will never been done again since they would be unfeasible today. It's a testament to what human artists are capable with just simple tools and hundreds of hours of painstaking work that they simply poured to their hearts into. If you're an artist or have ever worked with professional artists you will understand it and appreciate it for the true paramount achievement that it was. If you're not an artist, just look at it like this, BGC artwork is very much like a Lamborghini Countach, it's not the best car ever made, but it's the embodiment of 1980's cool, and for that it will never be replicated again because the technology changed, people have changed and the mindsets have changed. For that reason its look will always be unique and special.

Suit up!

Clean up!

The sound, for me the music production was the best id ever come across, in both English and Japanese the production quality was supreme, the musical ability of the producers and the vocal ability of the singers is as good as it got for any form of entertainment in the 80s, and that's saying a lot considering how great an era for music and movies the 80s is considered as being.

Though the Japanese version is better overall as expected, the English sung tracks are also very good, and you know that is rare for an Anime from the 80's where most of the dubbed into English was awfully bad. A quick good example of this, is Lynn Minmay from Macross & Lynn Minmei from Robotech...

Voice acting though is just average for both English and Japanese versions. Nowadays we have near Hollywood quality (or Japanese film industry quality) voice acting in games and anime. So BGCs voice acting is a couple notches below, it just lacks the substance that you get with newer productions that really drive home the characters intentions. The relative background silence you get during speaking is typical of the sound production of the time, that is one area I am glad is gone these days.

No rest for the Knight Sabers.

No means no!

In terms of enjoyment, if you're a person of the era there is no way you would say this is anything less than a 9 (I say 10), because you simply hadn't seen anything like this at the time, especially if you were outside of Japan. Taking nostalgia out of it and looking at it just as an Anime fan...a knowledgeable anime fan would certainly understand what was achieved here and in that case its an 8 or even 9 still. 

Overall, its a 9/10 for me, and if you grew up in the 80's and are an anime watcher you absolutely must watch Bubblegum Crisis.

Here's the original Japanese episode guide plus the first US air dates

#	Title	Japan first release dates	English first release dates
1	"Tinsel City Rhapsody" "(Runtime: 45 minutes)"	February 25, 1987	August 30, 1991
The Knight Sabers are hired to rescue a little girl from a group of kidnappers, but the girl is far more than she seems...
2	"Born to Kill" "(Runtime: 28 minutes)"	September 5, 1987	September 27, 1991
A friend of Linna's threatens to expose Genom secrets that led to the death of her fiancé, but Genom plans to silence her, first.
3	"Blow Up" "(Runtime: 26 minutes)"	December 5, 1987	October 10, 1991
The Knight Sabers attack Genom Tower to put an end to the machinations of Genom executive Brian J. Mason.
4	"Revenge Road" "(Runtime: 38 minutes)"	July 24, 1988	December 19, 1991
A racer modifies his car into a weapon of vengeance against the biker gangs of Megatokyo, but the car soon develops a mind of its own.
5	"Moonlight Rambler" "(Runtime: 43 minutes)"	December 25, 1988	January 23, 1992
A killer is draining victims of their blood, but this is no vampire. And what do a pair of escaped love-doll androids, Priss's new friend Sylvie and the D.D. super-weapon have to do with it?
6	"Red Eyes" "(Runtime: 49 minutes)"	August 30, 1989	February 27, 1992
A group of fake Knight Sabers are ruining the group's reputation, leading to a fight against a returning foe.
7	"Double Vision" "(Runtime: 49 minutes)"	March 14, 1990	March 19, 1992
A singer with a vendetta comes to Megatokyo, and brings some heavy firepower with her.
8	"Scoop Chase" "(Runtime: 52 minutes)"	January 30, 1991	April 2, 1992
An ambitious technical scientist and an aspiring reporter both plan to make their names at the expense of the Knight Sabers, and of all people, Nene is caught right in the middle.

Here's the Bubblegum Crisis trailer:

The Anime Eigo trailer for their release of BGC:

Unboxing of the deluxe 2017 blu-ray box:

a fan made "Megamix" with the music from BGC:

And last but not least, do you why the show is called "Bubblegum Crisis"? Simple, When you start blowing up a wad of bubblegum it inflates and inflates. Eventually the bubblegum is stretched so tight around the air inside it that it reaches the "crisis" point. That is, the slightest influx of air into the bubble will cause it to pop.

Bubblegum Crisis, therefore, refers to the fact that in the world the situation with Genom v Knight Sabers has reached that "crisis point" the slightest addition will cause it to explode.

Why specifically did the creators use that term? The Japanese like funky metaphorical names, apparently.