(Dubs and UK DVD's (MVM) also available)

Cert

Dolby Digital
Regions: 1
Region 2 DVD's also available from MVM

Bubblegum Crisis

This series started in the mid-eighties and is now one of the biggest cult classic anime series ever (certainly outside Japan anyway!) Not bad for a series that nearly fell apart in financial crisis itself. Based around the adventures of the Knight Sabers (yes, I know it is spelt different, but at this late stage I doubt anyone would want to quibble!), four girls who, in their spare time, do battle with the evil Genom Corporation and its cyborg monsters, the Boomers.

• 1: Tinsel City
  Actually, the title of this episode was added later, originally having no title as such. We are introduced to the Knight Sabers as they are employed to recover a small girl and a programmer by the USSD. When Priss finds them, it soon becomes apparent that neither is quite what they seem.

• 2: Born To Kill
  The second of the 2032 story arc, when a young woman smacks a corporate Genom boomer on the cheek, it is quite obvious that something is up. That person is Irene, a student in Linna's aerobics class, and she has reason to hate Genom. Linna befriends her, but then someone starts to stalk her...

• 3: Blow Up
  The last 2032 title and Sylia has reason to believe that the entire Knight Sabers operation is in danger of being uncovered by the very person behind all the bad things that have happened recently. Meanwhile, Genom are doing a spot of ground clearance in an area of old Tokyo still inhabited by Priss and friends...

• 4: Revenge Road
  Gibson and girlfriend went out for a drive in their vintage Griffon. When a group of bikers leaves the girl a gibbering wreck, Gibson started taking more than just drives in the Griffon. Priss is first alerted when she becomes a victim (well, some would say that she asked for it!) and finds that Gibson and the Sabers have something in common.

• 5: Moonlight Rambler
  No anime is complete without a vampire! Mind you, this has a purely scientific basis when two "sexoroids", an early and unusual type of boomer, escape from an orbiting space station along with a new secret weapon that could destroy Tokyo. Meanwhile Priss has made a new friend, and the ADP suddenly has a lot of blood drained bodies to investigate...

• 6: Red Eyes
  Largo makes his move on Genom, and seemingly doesn't care who gets in his way. Meanwhile Priss is leaving the Sabers after Sylvie's episode, but then takes her hardsuit for a last battle when she finds that Largo is using Anri as a spy inside Genom, among other things.

• 7: Double Vision
  Irene's sister (see episode 2) is a singer. She is also a member of a family that looks after its own. And she is upset. Understandable really, but when a Hou Bang assault mecha kills the chairman of Gulf & Bradley, then shows up trying to get into a Genom facility, you have to wonder exactly how far she is prepared to go to avenge her family's wrongs. Naturally, Linna is concerned...

• 8: Scoop Chase (for Lisa)
  A week in the life of Nene Romanova, AD Policewoman and Knight Saber. Or more specifically her time spent with one Lisa Vanette, a niece of the police chief and aspiring reporter who wants to uncover the Knight Sabers, or at least get compensation for the camera that Priss trashed! Meanwhile, in Genom subsidiary Ebisu, their top r&d bod, Miriam, is looking to do away with Genom, the AD Police and the Knight Sabers! Lisa may get a scoop, but not the one she was after!

The animation quality varies from start to end, the early animation being sometimes a little basic, but becomes very polished by the end. The big selling points with the series, however, were the charas themselves and the music, to date seldom bested and never at once. From the blinding axe solos of songs such as Mad Machine to full on anthems such as Asu E Touchdown (my personal favourite) to quiet classics such as Wasurenaide, the whole series rocks big time and sets a standard that other anime could only follow (up until BGC, rock music was never used in such a manner in any anime).

Originally released in the West by AnimEigo (Anime Projects in the UK) as a subbed anime, most fans tend to give the dub (which only came out comparatively recently) a very wide berth, partly because it loses the flavour of the original through some dubious casting, partly because the music has been completely re-recorded in English rather than just dubbed or left alone, and the English versions have little of the original style or drive of the originals.

The original DVD set, released in 1998, has been heavily criticised by fans for bad quality packaging and for dubious quality sub mastering. I'm currently wading through the set, which is three disks long, and I have to admit that I have seen worse for layout and handling, though I have to agree that the large box with three CD style jewel cases after the style of the screen saver box just does not cut it. (Having typed that, I now find that disk one has a bad subtitle link in Born To Kill which kills the subs once the opening song subs finish. I do hope AnimEigo is going to do better than this in future!) It makes it extremely difficult to keep alongside other releases unless you ditch the main box, then of course the jewel cases are still wrong considering the general box format adopted by most other companies. I think that AnimEigo could have stood to do a bit more groundwork before releasing it. Having said that, it was later re-released by AnimEigo from new masters, and eventually issued on DVD in the UK by newcomers MVM.

The DVD also contains four songs taken from the Hurricane volumes, though the whole content of the two Hurricane videos was later released by AnimEigo on a single DVD.

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