This article is part of a web-original series
Marco Cian (Hyogo)
The summer of 2023, I did a big retrospective on Evangelion. It was a lot of fun and I’m still very proud of it. The summer of 2024, I didn’t do anything special, because I was moving back to the States to attend grad school. However, my internet buddy Arthur did his own little series that August with his Summer of Cyberpunk. It was a lot of fun to read, and it gave me the idea for this.
See, like I said, I went back to America last year to attend grad school. And because of that, because I’ve been busy this past year with classes, I haven’t had as much time to devote to Connect. It’s regrettable, but sadly not surprising. As a new JET year begins, my time with Connect will be ending.
So before I head out, I want to have one last hurrah, writing another big series of articles centered around one central idea. But this time around, instead of Evangelion, I’ll be having my own Summer of Cyberpunk, covering various cyberpunk anime. I hope you have as much fun reading it as I did writing it. Now, let’s get started with a formative work of my youth.
When I was a kid, I knew that my dad was big into cyberpunk anime. I remember he was all about Masamune Shirow, Katsuhiro Otomo, and various other anime artists of that vein. So when I first heard of Bubblegum Crisis, I naturally assumed that it was another one of those cyberpunk anime my father would have gotten on VHS back in the 90s, when he was collecting such things. When I perused my father’s tape collection, I couldn’t find BGC anywhere, leading me to assume it would be a perfect birthday present for the old man.
It turned out that my dad had never even heard of Bubblegum Crisis when I gave him the DVD box set of the whole series. And while he ended up liking it okay, I ended up liking it much more, to the point where it became more my DVD than his. As such, I’m curious to see how the series holds up, now that I’m older and wiser and have a better awareness of the larger cyberpunk genre.
Bubblegum Crisis
The year is 2032, seven years after the devastating Second Great Kanto Earthquake that ravaged Tokyo (w-wait a minute…). The corporation GENOM, primarily known for its production of robots (called boomers), was instrumental in the rebuilding of the city, and as such now wields a tremendous amount of power, even by zaibatsu standards. And, like any good zaibatsu, GENOM is always interested in any industry it can add to its conglomerate collection, even if said industry isn’t strictly legal.
Even as Japan enters a new bubble economy of prosperity and wealth, said prosperity and wealth isn’t shared amongst everyone, and as the rich get richer, the poor are only getting poorer, while GENOM gets in bed with the military to produce man-killing boomers. The people of Tokyo need a hero, when who should appear but the Knight Sabers? Four women wearing power suits and kicking boomer ass as they fight injustices across the city. Who are these women? And what connection do they have to GENOM? It’s a mystery that intrigues the ADvanced Police, who specialize in boomer crime.
So, before we discuss anything else, no, I don’t know why they’re called boomers. I imagine it was something that sounded really cool in Japanese, with no-one realizing how odd it would sound to English-speakers. That’s how these things normally go.
And as for the other thing, no. There doesn’t seem to be any evidence to the popular myth that Bubblegum Crisis was intended for 13 episodes before being cancelled after 8. Indeed, there doesn’t seem to be any evidence for any sort of long term plan, or even any set number of episodes the studio wanted from the production. As such, the showrunners mostly just made up stuff as they went along, creating a series that isn’t so much 8 episodes of a larger, cohesive story as it is a 3-parter, a standalone, a 2-parter, and two more standalones, all of which have wildly different tones and feels to them. Watching them all at once, you’d hardly believe that the first and last episodes were from the same show, given how grim and stiffly animated the first episodes are compared to the light-hearted and fluid final episode. The GENOM tower isn’t even looming menacingly over the city in the last episode’s landscape shots, for crying out loud.
Mind you, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Indeed, I’d go so far as to say that Episode 8 is my favorite of the bunch. The animation is the most beautiful, the action is the most exciting, and there’s a sense of humor and fun that makes everything a blast to watch. I was also amazed at how the kid sidekick character managed to live through the whole thing, when if she’d appeared in an earlier episode I know she’d have been put down like Old Space Yeller in a heartbeat.
This is kind of the whole problem with BGC. It’s just smart enough to have some really cool and neat ideas, but not smart enough to see those ideas through or consider them carefully. For instance, GENOM makes boomers for all sorts of things. But what those things are and what effect they’ve had on society is never really dwelt on. The boomers we see in the show are ultimately just muscle. Stormtroopers for our cyberpunk superheroines to mow down in cool fight scenes, just as the police helicopter pilots are the heroic Redshirts who die to show how tough the latest boomer is. (Seriously, it’s practically a running gag that helicopter pilots die once per episode, and do you know how long it takes to train those dudes!?!)
That first three-parter is trying to be a dark and gritty tech noir, but it mostly just ends up feeling like a generic Blade Runner ripoff. Meanwhile, while I enjoyed the two-parter when I first saw it as a kid, I hate it now because it has the “You’ve gone Dark Phoenix so I gots ta kill ya.” trope in it, and its attempts at being heartfelt and emotional just come off as maudlin to me.
The show is at its strongest during its standalones. And it’s strongest at those when, ironically for a cyberpunk, it has a sense of humor and levity. This is not a serious show, no matter how much it may want to be sometimes. It simply isn’t good at social commentary. It’s good at giving us cute girls in Iron Man suits fighting crime and playing rock and roll. So when it does that, it’s a fun time.
The Knight Sabers are really the heart and soul of Bubblegum Crisis. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that these standalones I love so much tend to focus on them and their personal lives. Priss Asagiri, our punk rock biker chick, Sylia Stingray, our calm and cool leader, Linna Yamazaki, who loves her men and money, and Nene Romanova, the cutest lil’ hacker you ever done seen. The bonding and bantering between each of the Knight Sabers is what distinguishes the series even as the plots all too often fall into cliche. Even the supporting boys, like Leon of the AD Police and Sylia’s little brother Mackie, are fun to watch (at least once we exit the initial three-parter, which for some reason thought Mackie incestually lusting after Sylia was oh-so-funny, but I’m getting off-topic).
But now you’re probably thinking to yourself “Cheerfulness? Fun? Humor? In my cyberpunk!?” And yes, while it’s more likely than you think, cyberpunk is rather a genre known for its dourness and cynicism. But then, that leads me to the last little thing I’d like to do for this series of articles.
Is this a Cyberpunk?
For this bit, I’m gonna judge BGC on the cyberpunk criteria Arthur set out in his “Baaa, Humbug!” article. Let’s go.
Cyberpunk is about the little people – Sort of? I’d say at the very least it’s about the middle classes. Sylia Stingray is doing pretty well for herself, and her vendetta against GENOM stems from them stealing her father’s work and assassinating him, so she was at least related to a real mover and shaker. But she’s nowhere near rich or important enough to do any Bruce Wayne work on this society, only able to do Batman beat-em-upping and mercenary work. The folks our heroines help out tend to be the lower classes who are laid even lower by GENOM’s evil schemes. But I wouldn’t say the story is really about them, per se.
Cyberpunk is pessimistic – Well, uh, rather depends on what episode we’re talking about, honestly. Episodes 5 and 6? Definitely. Episode 8? No way. Again, the series just isn’t very good at being pessimistic. So even though it tries on occasion, it’s at its best when it’s at most bittersweet, or downright optimistic.
Cyberpunk isn’t about changing the world – Bing-bong! Even though Sylia has a personal vendetta against the members of GENOM responsible for her father’s death, she holds no illusions that their deaths will make GENOM disappear. Pretty much as soon as one asshole GENOM dude is killed or arrested in the series, another rises to take his place. Our heroines don’t even try to take GENOM completely down, they simply try to stop its most violent excesses.
Cyberpunk is set in today, turned up to 11 – Ho yeah! You got that right. I had the biggest grin on my face at seeing 80s discotheques, dance aerobics, VHS tapes, and floppy disks still being around in the 2030s. There’s a reason why so many City Pop playlists on Youtube take stills and shots from this series. It’s just so deliciously 80s, even if it’s set 50 years in the future.
Cyberpunk wants to look cool – Wants to? You imply that it failed? It’s about four cyberpunk superheroines fighting superpowered mankilling robots. I defy anyone to tell me that ain’t cool.
So, with that, I have revisited a show I loved as a kid, and found it mostly to have held up. I wonder though what I will think of something I always wanted to watch as a kid, but never got the chance to…