Bubblegum Crisis-
I have no clue how I ended up watching this, but I did. This is a super old OVA series that started in the late 1980s and it chronicles a group of girls in exosuits called Knight Sabers, who combat Boomers. The show never really explains what Boomers are but they generally appear to be cyborgs provided by a corporation called Genom, although at times the Boomers seem closer to androids. The four girls are Priss, Linna, Sylia, and Nene.
The main girl is Priss who runs a band called Priss and the Replicants. Her VA is Kinuko Oomori who pretty much only did a couple of roles and stopped altogether to focus on her singing career. It's somewhat interesting, not that she gave up on the VA side but her voice itself is very atypical for anime. Her voice has a tone to it that's not quite husky but still a bit rough. She did the singing for a lot of the theme and insert songs as well. The anime at times reminded me of
Streets of Fire due to the focus on music and singers, especially the first episode with the concert. Priss
is the sassiest so of course she was my favorite of the four. Linna is kind of bland as she's the kind-hearted one of the group but she does get two of the strongest episodes that focus largely on her.
Irene didn't deserve that. SHE DIDN'T DESERVE IT. Nene is the rookie and mostly incompetent however the final episode's attention centers on her which ends up making her into a pretty decent character. Her
reaction face game is on point. Sylia is the leader and bankrolls the entire operation. She's just sort of in the background and is more the emotional rock than anything else. The main villain and her have a history, in that he murdered her father, but it's never explored beyond just being an event that happens and the two hate each other. There's also Mack who is Sylia's brother and he's the support of the group as he fixes their cycles and mechs but his main characteristic is that
he pervs on his sister. I'm about 80 percent sure it's just his sister he's interested in too.
There are 8 episodes in
Crisis and after the first three I wasn't particularly feeling the show. Each of the episodes are largely episodic but you could detect a pattern and the minor character deaths were getting old and extremely forced. One woman runs into a building that is in the active process of demolition to get cash she saved up and gets killed, leaving her son without parents. The moment anybody told their backstory, down came the axe. Episode 4 and beyond does a much better job of cutting back on that trope or making the deaths feel more integrated into the episode.
The Boomer story arc, which takes up about four episodes, is definitely the weakest part of the series. Boomers are a fairly boring enemy as they're the generic biomechanical enemy you see in most OVAs from the 1980s. Their designs are bad, they generally don't show much intellect, and most of the fights are straight forward. Episode 5 and 6 are a bit better as they have Boomers that act and look like humans but I was already sick of them by episode 2. The above image is an example of a Boomer that looks human, Sylvie, as she's a sexbot Boomer and her struggle to free herself and her friend was fairly good. It reminded me a bit of Blade Runner with the whole Replicant aspect, which I'm sure was intentional. There was also a morally grey component to their fight as Sylvie and Anri, her friend, just wanted to be free but they were also killing people in the process.
My favorite episodes were the ones that told smaller stories and focused less on some larger picture. Episode 4 was a highlight as it had a mechanic who was victimized by a motorcycle gang and he decides to take matters into his own hands. It's a minor story that happens in this cyberpunk city but because it doesn't involve some grand conspiracy, it's more personal as a result. The audience can see him slowly become more unhinged as the episode progresses and you're not sure whether it's his own psychosis or the machine driving him mad. Episode 7 was another surprising treat as it focuses on Irene's sister who has come for revenge. Funnily enough the plot of this episode happened because Priss's VA, Kinuko Oomori, threatened to back out of the entire anime and they found a replacement. There was such a huge fan backlash though that the producers scrambled and came to terms with Kinuko's agents. I liked though that there were emotional consequences to episode 2. Also,
Vision was pretty cool and worked as a good contrast to Priss.
The best episode though is the final one as it follows Nene as she has to deal with
Lisa, who is the police chief's niece and a novice reporter. This was a great episode that not only fleshed out Nene's daily life and personality but also why the Knight Sabers fight and how the public views them. Sylia and Lisa have a minor conversation on a couch at night and it gives a good insight into both their views. Not to mention I liked the
Nene bullying. The finale was fantastic too with the attack on AD Police Headquarters. Not so much due to the Boomers but because it puts Nene initially into an unusual situation and later with Lisa trying to escape. The character animation in Lisa's segments are phenomenal and the above webm was animated by Takeshi Honda, of Gainax fame.
Can you tell this was made in the 80s? The animation was surprisingly good most of the time as I expected it to be more stiff considering how detailed the mechanical models were. The sakuga general were in spurts but they were enough. I was impressed with the
background art which nailed the cyberpunk tone they were going for and some of the later episodes
reminded me of Ogura's city work in
GITS. You don't see this art style much anymore and Kenichi Sonoda's
character designs are a crucial part of that. Why doesn't he still do character design work nowadays?
His stuff is so good.
I'm sort of mixed on the series as I didn't enjoy the Boomer content, I didn't completely hate all of it either, but I loved the rest of the episodes. The second half of the series is definitely stronger than the first half. The characters are the strong point of the show which is good but it too often gets bogged down with Boomer fights that I don't particularly care about. It oozes style though from the theatrical musical openings to the cyberpunk design work. The female focus should also be mentioned as we don't see many action anime like this. I can easily see why this was popular in its era. The guy who peddled anime on me, back when I was an innocent child, gave me the VHS tapes but I don't think I ever watched them. I regret that as I would have probably liked this a lot more when I was younger but I still had a ton of fun.
