Bubblegum Crash: Abandon all hope, your ship crashes here

I know I said I was taking a break from Bubblegum Crisis... I lied.

Apparently, I'm a liar.

Bubblegum Crisis has a finale of sorts that is received typically with booing and hissing,  when discussing the amazing OAV series of BGC it is important to give it some humility by noting the horror of it's unpleasant and barely canon-based conclusion. Naturally, I'm speaking of the infamous Bubblegum Crash!





To put things in perspective for BGC, let's throw in another music video:


(Touchdown to Victory - Theme for BGC3 used for original animation made for Hurricane Live, music videos featuring songs and videos using the voices of the original voice actors and new animation, in this instance we see Sylia recruiting the Knight Sabers)

Sequels don't always succeed where there originals do. The same rule of thought is present in spinoffs. The same can be said for Bubblegum Crash, the final tale of the original BGC Knight Sabers. Following the lawsuit that killed Bubblegum Crisis, Kenichi Sonoda and SOME of the crew were able to snag the original Knight Sabers (sans the original Priss) and make a 3-part ending for the series.

Most regard this as the point where BGC jumped the shark, I feel otherwise. I feel BGC jumped the shark after episode 6, in fact I can't believe they kept GOING after episode 6 since that should have resolved pretty much everything. But why stop there, right? Let's milk until it dies! And so they did...
The quality of the entire series is pretty piss poor. Extremely so, actually. Even the sound effects are cheesy. there were three terrible chapters in this farce, so let's list 'em before I pass out with my head spinning with fury.

Also, you guys owe me because I'm suffering through this awful english language dub in order to feign objectivity.

1. Illegal Army

An elite commando unit is stealing weird components all over the city. Problem is, these guys are supposed to be dead. Or something. Nene investigates and apparently her investigating was such a big deal that they made a videogame about it! Woo!

So they point out several new things here: for one thing they had siscovered shitty computer generated graphics and while they must have beaten guys to death considering how clear and crisp the series appears, it doesn't make up for the fact that the art is utterly awful. Even the Max Headroom spoof conveys no joy because everything is so awful. Boomers are literally walking coffee machine mannequins and there's no confusion as to who is or is not human. One cyborg gets brainwashed to steal shit, he dies and then Largo's voice actor shows up to voice a flickering, bitchy monitor. Yay!


(Who's ADAMA? He's Johnny! Who is Johnny? You'll have to ask DeBarge...)

2. Geo Climbers

In the underground Geo-City science area a robot is made that can think and feel. An old associate of Sylia's father was part of crafting this new marvel and after his mysterioius murder, the Knight Sabers are in a race against time as they rush to save ADAMA from a strike team of combat boomers


(An AMV covering mostly action points in Crisis, THIS is what Crash is supposed to be following up?)

So thinking and feeling... two things which boomers had already learned how to fucking do, but apparently THIS one is different because he looks suspiciously like Johnny Five from Short Circuit in a jump suit. So Priss, who learned to love and understand Boomers years ago now suddenly loathes boomers for some reason. This is the former protagonist that still supposedly carries the guilt of losing both Anri AND Sylvie, sex boomers on the run, when their life support included vampirism and city-nuking devices.


(Yes, that's German subtitling and no that wasn't intentional. Videos for Crash are pretty thin on the ground. Anyway, the Knight Sabers each face off with a Largo clone as Sylia faces off the original in an attempt to stop the drill tank from breaching the reactor's core. INTENSE!)

3. MELTDOWN
In a final gambit for the fate of MegaTokyo, a Boomer rebellion begins with boomers uh, fusing(?) all over the city due to a bizarre virus with the mysterious voice as its source. This is all a distraction to disguise the true target and keep the ADP occupied, Largo reveals himself as the guying pulling the strings as he drives a a massive drill-tank-thing through the barriers protecting the super-nuclear super-power super-duper-plant.

Without needing to spoil anything, it effectively ends the Knight Sabers in the most ass-backwards way since the girls were scrambling to keep their group from breaking up after saving the world they pretty much do exactly that. Leon & Priss never resolve their thing, Sylia & Mackie never deal with their boomeresque stuff, etc. So major plot points and characters outside of Mackie, Leon, Daley and the girls never show up in this farce and the whole thing thanks to the lawsuit, poor writing and an awful, AWFUL visual makeover make the credits a huge relief when they being to roll.


(Seriously, BYE BYE MY CRISIS! Hello my rehab. This sad sight made me fly to snatch my videotapes of Crash because I thought my Crisis fix would be filled..)

So... As swan songs go, this one makes me wish I hadn't stopped drinking. It is merciless in its lack of quality and half-assed presentation, so that every second of it is marginally agonizing. The visuals on the girls are the only portion of the animation that really gets a lot of detail, particularly in the desperate moments of fan service. Sigh. Like the debriefing in the sauna.

It works hard to destroy everything you may have loved about the original. Starting with Leon & Daley, their clunky dialogue attempting to establish an understanding of MegaTokyo at present. Leon was a badass before, but get used to him as a greek chorus member standing on the sidelines and letting the audience know when to applaud, gasp or boo.

Each exasperating segment of Crash is delivered in hokey, cliched fashion with inappropriately paced action, sloppy overuse of speedlines, heavy re-use of art in a 3 part series and lots of standing around during what should be high-quality moments of fast-paced action that made its predecessor so memorable. Proponents of Crash could deliver defensive arguments all day, but the thing is that they need to shut the fuck up because I notice that Cyber City was able to outdo them on every level and that's before the dub was even involved. Nothing should be more embarrassing than establishing Cyberpunk anime as a sub-genre and then getting your ass handed to you by something that doesn't even remotely last as long.

Fortunately, if you watch the credits you'll see a lot of these guys got back on the horse and went on to live productively in the anime industry making stuff that did NOT suck. Sadly, this will be around to linger in our collective anime soup forever.

AnimEigo ensures we feel every single nail going into BGC's coffin because they dubbed the songs again making the music, which takes on an almost magical girlish tone, turn into a horror show of awful, craptastic music chasing after the coattails of so-so japanese pop rock. The dub is phenomenally awful, no surprise there, and the script is sloppier than animeigo's usual travesties.


I know I sound pessimistic about BGC in spite of how high I rate it, but trust me it's not all that bad. Things got better than ever for BGC...