Bubblegum Crisis

Maybe this is just me getting all nostalgic again, but who cares. I remember watching Bubblegum Crisis back in high school with the only other friend I had that was into anime in high school, Roy. Roy lived about a mile away from me, and when you add getting my first car to Roy joining an anime club, we
really hit the anime hard for a little while. I remember the first anime I watched was Record of Lodoss War, but this one, Dirty Pair, Project A-Ko and Robotech weren't long behind. I also watched a few others, but I can't really remember many of their titles, and anyway it was before any subs or dubs, so it was either learn Japanese, or read along in a translation guide. It was a pain, but still cool.

Then about two years ago, I started collecting some anime again, on DVD this time, and when I was at my local Gamestop looking through the DVD's for some good used movies, I ran across this three DVD set sitting there for $18. I figured, what the heck, and ended up getting them for under $12 after a discount.

Anime style has changed a bit over the last 20 years, and Bubblegum Crisis is definitely old school. The only other anime I can think of that has a similar nostalgia feeling is Dirty Pair. Both series were dominated by female heroes, which is of course more for the fan service than for any feminism, but hey if you want to look at this as a triumph for women, I'm good with that.

As far as I remember, the main characters were Priss and Nene were my favorite, and I guess Sylia and Linna were good too, but I liked Nene the best. She was maybe one of the first examples of the moé clutsy girl type. Maybe it's the pink hair, but I think it's a good characterization of a couple of girls I have known in the past.

The episodes are 45+ minutes each, so longer than the normal anime episode and in fact long enough to almost seem feature length. The cyberpunk genre was really taking a foothold in the late 80's when virtual reality was going to be the next great thing. Bubblegum crisis definitely fits into the cyberpunk genre, and since the emergence of the internet, the genre has suffered, so you have to go back a while to get something good to watch.

The story is good, though in my opinion there was never enough background or aftermath. It almost feels like you are watching episode 3-10 of a 13 episode miniseries. I understand that there were some problems with the production studio, so there may have been more episodes planned, but I'm not sure. One way or another, it's worth the watch, at least if you've aren't a total anime newb.