Why I love Bubblegum crisis!!
Someone named Brian Angliss wrote this essay and I thought I should put this on my site as I could not agree more. Being as my e-mail is not currently working, I could not ask for permission to use it but I hope the name is enough. !^^!
Now, the question becomes why do I like Bubblegum Crisis so much? Well, you see, it's like this....
First of all, I happen to love cyberpunk in general. I have role-played cyberpunk games, read cyberpunk novels and short-stories, written some cyberpunk short-stories, and watched a large number of cyberpunk movies and anime. I really think that, in general, the cyberpunk genre is really cool. There are many other cyberpunk anime available (Armitage III, AD Police,Ghost in the Shell, Akira, and Dominion for starters), and Bubblegum Crisis is, to date, my favorite.
generally enjoy mecha-based anime. Bubblegum Crisis' motorslaves certainly qualify as mecha, and the various hardsuits that the main charaters wear come close as well. Add the AD Police's K-11 and K-12S powered suits and the various battlemovers, and the mecha are a hell of a lot of fun. So what if no self-respecting combat force will ever use a tank with articulated limbs? If I wanted hard realism, would I be watching the vast majority of anime? I didn't think so....
Boomers are also just plain cool. Ever since reading Issac Asimov's Robots series, I've found the concept of androids fascinating. Add to this the moral ambiguity inherent to the "Assemblers of Prosperity" and the conflicting opinions about Boomers presented throughout the series, and the viewer is left asking quite a few interesting, and ultimately unanswered, questions
I happen to like the idea of a powerful female characters in most any format, but the presentation of a woman hacker and a woman engineer in the series goes a step beyond the "standard" powerful, self-contained female character. Being an electrical engineer myself, I understand reasonably well that women have not yet penetrated most technical fields to any significant extent. The concept that a woman could not only be independent, but excell in a male dominated profession, as well as the fact that it is Japan where this is occuring, is nothing short of extraordinary. There are so few women technical professionals that I can't help but hope that a few women or teenagers watch this series and are inspired to become technical professionals. Real life role-models would be much better, of course, but a fictional role-model is better than none.
I enjoy the music. I feel it usually fits the mood of the various scenes each song accompanies, and it enhances the power of the series. Another reason is that I happen to like much of the music which came out of the late '80's, when Bubblegum Crisis was released. The Bubblegum music isn't the hard-techno/cyberpunk music in Armitage III, but I still enjoy it and feel that it enhances the series rather than detracts from it.
Bubblegum Crisis shows a very real possible future. I don't mean with Motorslaves, Genki Battlemovers, or anything like that, but rather the growing disparity between the haves and have-nots, the ever-increasing pace of technological change, the general feeling that people are being cut off from each other by computers and technology rather than being brought together, the Net (Bubblegum Crisis' version of an advanced, future Information Superhighway), and the collapse of various peices of the environment due to human influences and interference. A lot of what I just listed is what makes Bubblegum Crisis cyberpunk, but some of it isn't in the general definition of what is cyberpunk. In many respects, Bubblegum Crisis is a cautionary series, warning us of what a possible, terrible future we may be creating.
But probably the most important reason I like Bubblegum Crisis is the characters. The designers and animators spent so much time developing the majority of the characters, even the semi-minor ones like Lisa Vanette, Leon, and J.B. Gibson that the characters became people whom I could relate to. Sure, the characters all used fantastic technologies, occasionally did strange things for a living, or were difficult to like for one reason or another, but they all had real lives and personalities which I could relate to. I could see myself in almost any of the character's positions, and when I can do that, I generally enjoy the story, regardless of whether it's an anime, a movie, or even a novel.However, one major personal complaint with the entire Bubblegum universe is the discontinuity between Bubblegum Crisis and Bubblegum Crash. Simply put, the two series cannot exist in the same universe, regardless of what some fans say. First off, the characters in BGC are significantly more developed than in Crash. They all have lives, personalities, dreams, etc. In Crash, however, Priss, who has a potential emotional relationship with Leon developing and who has reached some understanding of the moral ambiguities regarding Boomers, is totally uninterested in Leon and is more vehement in her racism toward Boomers than she has ever been. Leon himself appears to have forgotten that Priss is actually a Knight Saber, and that he's all but in love with her, as he is at the end of BGC. Nene is actually skilled and confident, both normally and in combat, which she's never been before. Linna is mercenary and greedy beyond all of her prior limits. In short, all the characters besides Sylia have been reduced to a level only slightly above stereotypes. In adition, Genom has apparently ceased to exist in the span of a year. Without Genom, the world of BGC would have collapsed as Boomers, provided by only Genom and thier wholly-owned subsidiaries, gradually failed. And the Boomers themselves are woefully stupid and weak when compared to the Boomers in BGC. Even the dumb and weak Boomers in BGC are a hell of a lot more dangerous and intelligent than the maniquinne Boomers shown in Crash. Added all together, these factors mean that Bubblegum Crash cannot exist in the same universe nor be timeline continuous with Bubblegum Crisis, the original.
