Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040
Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040 (バブルガムクライシス TOKYO 2040, Baburugamu Kuraishisu TOKYO 2040?) is a Japanese anime series produced by Anime International Company (AIC) and funded by ADV Films. A retelling of the 1987 original video animation Bubblegum Crisis, the series premiered on TV Tokyo on October 8, 1998 where it ran for 26 episodes until its conclusion on March 31, 1999. Toshiba EMI released the episodes on both VHS and Laserdisc across 13 volumes, each containing two episodes. The first volume was released on January 21, 1999; the final volume was released July 26, 2000.[1] The series was later released on DVD, however the Japanese versions were simply the American DVD releases encoded to play for Region 2.[2]
In 2002, A.D. Vision announced that a direct sequel was being produced entitled Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2041, but no additional announcements have followed and no further announcements made.[3] With the closing of ADV in 2009, it is very unlikely that the sequel will be made.
Synopsis
Seven years after a devastating earthquake that left Tokyo almost totally destroyed, Linna Yamazaki moves to Tokyo from the countryside where boomers are rare or non-existent and makes contact with Priss Asagiri twice, once after nearly being run over by Priss on her motorcycle and once while fighting a rogue boomer with Priss in her hardsuit. Megacorporation Genom has been producing boomers, a form of autonomous intelligent robot, to help rebuild Tokyo with manual labour where they appear as roughly humanoid, as well as menial service jobs and middle management positions where they are anthropomorphic. Occasionally these boomers go rogue and morph into a new shape while assimilating nearby machines and killing humans.
Genom funds the AD Police, an autonomous police force split off the regular police, tasked with responding to rogue boomer incidents with heavy weaponry and powered exoskeletons. They are seen as incompetent and resent the actions of the Knight Sabers, a small group of women in hardsuits who are always arrive to stop the rogue boomer, even going so far as to attempt to capture and kill the Knight Sabers. A small group of Genom employees, including high level executive Brian Mason, while unable to cause a boomer to go rogue are able to replace the core of a normal boomer with that of a boomer that is showing signs of going rogue and thus engineer rogue boomer events for the AD Police to combat. Through Priss, Linna makes contact with Sylia Stingray, founder and leader of the Knight Sabers and Nene Romanova, another Knight Saber, who works as a despatcher for the AD Police, explaining how the Knight Sabers are always aware of rogue boomer events, and becomes a Knight Saber herself.
While ostensibly digging expansive underground tunnels all over Tokyo as storage facilities for energy to be received from the Umbrella, a giant Genom space station in construction as a solar power generator, Mason is searching for the Sotai laboratory, a secret Genom facility believed lost in the great earthquake, where he hopes to find Galatea, the Sotai. Mason worked on the Genom project that created boomers and plans to awaken Galatea so that she can fulfill her function of replacing humans with boomers.
In flashbacks it is revealed that Sylia's father created boomers based on Sylia's brain and DNA, particularly the human-like protoype Galatea who is almost identical in appearance to Sylia, and that Sylia consequently has a connection with all boomers. When Galatea started function adversely she was put into status and Genom used an earthquake weapon they were developing for the Japanese military to prevent her influence from spreading outside Tokyo.
Mason succeeds in freeing Galatea. While first naive and innocent and in the form of a young Sylia, she begins to learn and mature and cause boomers to go rogue as part of her plans. She does this to the boomers in storage in the central AD Police station, when the AD Police were on strike due to Genom cutting all funding and plans for the AD Police to be reintegrated since Genoms plans were complete, eventually causing almost every boomer in Tokyo to be under her control, warping all buildings in Tokyo which had machinery present and leading to the evacuation of Tokyo, which is also isolated from the rest of the country so that there is no power available to the boomers. Galatea launches herself, now physically integrated with the Genom building which she fashions into a likeness of herself, into space to take over the Umbrella so that the boomers can be powered. The Knight Sabers apart from Sylia launch themselves into space with the aid of the Tokyo skyhook. Overpowered by Galatea, they find that by willing that their hardsuits, which are primitive boomers, be liberated from human control they manage to form a union of humans and boomers which apparently fulfills Galatea's designs in an amicable rather than adversarial fashion, even as Priss thrusts a giant dagger through the giant Galatea's breast (and presumably core).
Characters
Many of the characters are similar to those in the OVA series.
- Priss Asagiri (プリス・S・アサギリ, Purisu S. Asagiri?)
- Priss is the strongest member of the Knight Sabers, specializing in heavy assault. The vocalist of an underground rock band, she lives in the slums of the town in a trailer truck and is a distrustful loner who is rarely seen with her fellow Knight Sabers. She hates the AD Police because they broke her favorite CD when they destroyed a factory she lived in. AD Policeman Leon McNichol is attracted to her, but she initially mocks him. As the series progresses, her view changes and she falls in love with him. She also begins to become more friendly with her fellow team mates, though she always retains some distance with them and is very protective of her privacy.
- Linna Yamazaki (リンナ・ヤマザキ, Rinna Yamazaki?)
- Farm girl Linna traveled to Megatokyo to become a Knight Saber and to get away from her overbearing family. An office lady for the Hugh-Geit Corporation, she is constantly harassed by her bosses but continues to be a positive, friendly, and outgoing person who dreams of helping others. After joining the Knight Sabers, she forms a close sisterly relationship with Nene.
- Sylia Stingray (シリア・スティングレイ, Shiria Sutingurei?)
- An enigmatic billionaire, and the founder of the Knight Sabers, Sylia is the daughter of Dr. Katsuhito Stingray, the man who invented Boomers. Implants in her brain were used to create both Galatea and Mackey and her brain patterns were used in the creation of Boomers thus strongly relating her to boomers, but she sees them as an abomination as her mother did. She acts as ground support for the Knight Sabers. She is in love with Nigel Kirkland, a sullen mechanic who was an engineer on the Boomer project who helped her design and build the hard suits. Sylia owns and operates an upscale clothing boutique called Silky Doll, which also serves as a front for the Knight Sabers HQ. Sylia suffers from regular flashbacks; most stem from her extremely complicated and disturbing childhood involving her mother's death and the cruel experiments her father conducted on her. She rarely dons her hardsuit or enters combat.
- Nene Romanova (ネネ・ロマノーヴァ, Nene Romanōva?)
- An 18-year old perky and naïve hacker who is employed as an operator for the AD Police, Nene is a genius with computers and routinely hacks into military networks. She is recruited for the Knight Sabers after she hacks Sylia's computer trying to learn more about them. She primarily works on sensor ops, battlefield communications, ECM and ECCM. As the series progresses, Mackey develops a crush on her, despite the fact that she is three years older than him. The two eventually become good friends, although their relationship remains platonic.
- Leon McNichol (レオン・マクニコル, Reon Makunikoru?)
- Leon is a frustrated but dedicated cop, with a tendency to rush in without thinking. Having worked his way up from the normal police, Leon sees himself as the protector of the local citizens and initially dislikes the vigilante nature of the Knight Sabers. He meets and becomes a big brother figure for Nene and falls in love with Priss. He is unaware of her being a Knight Saber until later in the series, but when he learns the truth he keeps it to himself. At the end of the series, Priss returns his feelings.
- Daley Wong (デイリー・ウォン, Dirī Won?)
- Daley is Leon's partner, and a highly skilled investigator who actively questions the contradictory nature of the AD department's relationship with the Knight Sabers. Towards the end of the series, he disappears without explanation, although it is likely that he chose to evacuate the city after he helps ensure that the boomer menace cannot spread any further.
- Nigel Kirkland (ナイジェル・カークランド, Naijeru Kākurando?)
- A former engineer, Nigel worked on the Boomer Project with Sylia's father and Brian J. Mason, then later helped Sylia design and build the hard suits. Now a mechanic, he helps maintain the hard suits. He is romantically involved with Sylia, but because of his quiet, sullen nature he is called the "man of a thousand grunts" by other characters and his true feelings for Sylia are unknown. Mackey becomes his protege and one of the few people Nigel seems to consider a friend. At the beginning of the series, Priss appears to be infatuated with him, though he does not react to her flirtations. However, he later creates a "Motoslave" (motorcycle that can transform into an exoskeleton for Priss's hardsuit) specifically for her that, using Nigel's voice, says it wishes to protect Priss. She is also the only team member he shows any concern about when she is injured and appears to be bothered by her ignoring him.
- Mackey Stingray (マッキー・スティングレイ, Makkī Sutingurei?)
- Mackey is initially introduced as Sylia's younger brother, and is depicted as being a naïve, inquisitive and awkward young man who loves machinery and computers. He eventually forms a relationship with Nene. As the series progresses, it is revealed that he is actually a Boomer, an early development very similar to Galatea and thus closely related to Sylia, and that although a boomer he is very close to human.
- Brian J. Mason (ブライアン・メイスン, Buraian Meisun?)
- A ruthless corporate shark who works against the wishes of Rosencreutz, Mason believes the human race should go away and that Boomers should become the new dominant species and uses Genom's spaceborne solar generator and earthborne energy storage project to search for the underground laboratory that housed the Sotai project (Galatea). He once worked on that boomer project with Sylia's father and Nigel Kirkland. Because of his traumatizing past, he is a bitter man. He adopted Galatea in hopes of using her. To fulfill his wish, in a manner he does not want, she changes him into Boomer-Human hybrid, then fuses him into a wall to be hung up high above Megatokyo so that he can observe Galatea's plans for Tokyo and the world.
- Quincy Rosenkroitz (クインシー・ローゼンクロイツ, Kuinshī Rōzenkuroitsu?)
- The GENOM Chief Executive Officer, Quincy wishes for humans and Boomers to live together peacefully. Though suspicious of Mason's activities, he believes he can control and maintain Mason. With his body badly decayed, he uses tubes and wires to keep him alive, afraid of using more advanced implants. Mason's boomer secretary later kills him by disconnecting a vital cord in his life-support system. He shares his surname with Christian Rosenkreuz, legendary founder of the Rosicrucians.
- Kusui
- Kusui is a double-agent inside GENOM who passed information to Sylia in exchange for money, but was also aiding Mason in his search for Galatea. He is willing to sell his services to the highest bidder and states that he has no ethics. On Mason's orders, he tells Sylia about the search for Galatea so that she could find it for Mason. Shortly afterwards, Mason has him murdered.
- Galatea (ガラテア, Garatea?)
- Galatea, also called Sotai, who shares her name with the wife of the king of Cyprus, is a secret Boomer Project started by Sylia's father, Dr Stingray. She becomes the main antagonist of the series. It is revealed in flashback that she was grown from an implant inserted into a young Sylia's brain against Sylia's mother's wishes, that Dr Stingray asked her to go into stasis when she started to function strangely and that she killed Dr Stingray while still complying and that Genon caused the great earthquake in order to seal her in and prevent her contaminating boomers for her own design. When she is initially seen, she has an appearance like that of a prepubescent Sylia. She is released from stasis by Mason and rapidly matures from her childlike appearance to an adult almost identical to Sylia. After her plans are revealed her hair turns black and her eyes change to red. Late in the series, her mind begins maturing and she begins questioning the meaning and purpose of her existence. At the end of the series, Priss helps her find her path, and Galatea, in turn, saves Priss's life.
List of Hardsuits
Hardsuits are powered battle armour developed by Sylia Stingray and Nigel Kirkland. Initially they are suits of armour that the four Knight Sabers step into while wearing body stockings as close contact with skin and "plumbing" connections are required. Sylia states that the reason there are no male knight sabers is because it was easier to find women who shared a similar shape to her than to redesign hardsuits for a different anatomy. After the suits are lost the replacement suits are instead applied to the naked women as a viscous liquid silver-coloured 'biometal' that morphs into the coloured hardsuit. The hardsuits and the motoslave are revealed late in the series to be a form of boomer, that the very first set of suits (not seen in the series) were all lost due to their wearers not being well suited for their use and that Sylia had to find people like her whose consciousness could meld with the boomers' nascent consciousness (itself based on Sylia's consciousness due to her father's development process) in order to optimise their function. This requirement is revealed when the Knight Sabers receive psychic messages from Galatea and at times the four women are sometimes able to communicate telepathically. Sylia notes that the highly limited power supply of the hardsuits was to prevent them going rogue.
- Priss's Hardsuit is specifically designed for the alley-style, hit and run fighting tactics she prefers. Her red-accented dark blue suit's main weapon is a set of "knuckle bombs". These are essentially shaped-charge explosive devices on the knuckles of her gauntlets, with which she beats against a Boomer until she can tear inside where its "core" (its heart) resides and destroy it from the inside out. Until Linna's arrival, Priss was the primary combatant of the team and it is her suit that is used in Linna's first test simulation.
- Linna's hardsuit is a green color accented with orange trim, and is extremely maneuverable. As the newest suit of the group, it has some of the most advanced features, including a pair of long, ribbon-like cutters with nanometer-thick mono-molecular edges that can slice through almost anything. This newness is a double-edged sword however, for it fails on its first mission with almost tragic consequences for its owner. Linna's suit also has heavily armored gauntlets, but she does not carry the knuckle bombs that Priss's suit has.
- Designed more for field support and data acquisition than for combat, Nene's hardsuit is an unusual reddish-pink and purple. Her weaponry includes a railgun that can shoot high sectional density armor-piercing metal spikes into her opponents, armored gauntlets, and an incredibly powerful computer system and scanner array that lets her handle almost any field intelligence operations required of her. Nene tries to prove herself as a fighter several times but over-estimates her physical prowess and endangers herself and others. Eventually her suit is upgraded with several automatic functions that greatly increase her ability as a fighter.
- Sylia's Hardsuit is not often seen in the series, as Sylia does not engage in actual combat as often as the other Knight Sabers. However, when Sylia does get down and dirty, she does it with a vengeance. Her hardsuit is equipped with a retractable Katara (कटार) style sword blade that she uses to inflict fatal damage to any boomer who makes the mistake of getting too close to her, and her combat style is even more savage and brutal than Priss's. Her suit is primarily a silver/white color with teal and pink accents. It also sports active stealth systems, and she is known to carry remotely detonated explosive charges.
Media
The series uses two pieces of theme music. "Y'know", written and performed by Akira Sudou, the vocal performer for Priss, is used for the opening theme, whilst "Waiting for YOU" (also by Akira Sudou) is used for the ending theme.
Episode listing
Each episode was named after an album or song by a rock/punk band. Many songs were also the title tracks of their respective albums and thus shared the same name as the album. The songs were never played in the episodes themselves. Two pieces of theme music are used for the series. "y'know", performed and written by Akira Sudou, is used as the opening theme for all twenty-six episodes, while Akira Sudou's "Waiting for YOU" is used as the ending theme.
The twenty-six episode anime series is directed by Hiroki Hayashi and features character designs by Hidenori Matsubara and Masaki Yamada. It premiered in Japan on October 7, 1998 and aired weekly until December 23, 1998. The remaining thirteen episodes premiered on January 13, 1999, with twelve new episodes airing weekly until the series concluded on March 31, 1999. The original video animations (OVAs), were released directly to VHS and laserdisk. The series was licensed for English-language broadcast and distribution in English by AD Vision[1] and premiered their English dubbed version of the series on May 19, 2001.
As of November 3, 2010, the series has been re-licensed by Funimation Entertainment.[4]
| Episode # |
Title |
Original airdate |
English airdate |
| 01 |
"Can't Buy a Thrill" |
1998-10-07 |
2001-05-19 |
| 02 |
"Fragile" |
1998-10-14 |
|
| 03 |
"Keep Me Hanging On" |
1998-10-21 |
|
| 04 |
"Machine Head" |
1998-10-28 |
|
| 05 |
"Rough and Ready" |
1998-11-04 |
|
| 06 |
"Get It On" |
1998-11-11 |
|
| 07 |
"Look at Yourself" |
1998-11-18 |
|
| 08 |
"Fire Ball" |
1998-11-25 |
|
| 09 |
"My Nation Underground" |
1998-12-02 |
|
| 10 |
"Woke up with a Monster" |
1998-12-09 |
|
| 11 |
"Sheer Heart Attack" |
1998-12-16 |
|
| 12 |
"Made In Japan" |
1998-12-23 |
|
| 13 |
"Atom Heart Mother" |
1999-01-13 |
|
| 14 |
"Shock Treatment" |
1999-01-20 |
|
| 15 |
"Minute by Minute" |
1999-01-27 |
|
| 16 |
"I Surrender" |
1999-02-03 |
|
| 17 |
"Moving Waves" |
1999-02-10 |
|
| 18 |
"We Built This City" |
1999-02-17 |
|
| 19 |
"Are You Experienced?" |
1999-02-24 |
|
| 20 |
"One of These Nights" |
1999-03-03 |
|
| 21 |
"Close to the Edge" |
1999-03-10 |
|
| 22 |
"Physical Graffiti" |
1999-03-17 |
|
| 23 |
"Hydra" |
1999-03-24 |
|
| 24 |
"Light My Fire" |
1999-03-31 |
|
| 25 |
"Walking on the Moon" |
NA |
|
| 26 |
"Still Alive and Well" |
NA |
|
Episode title references
- Can't Buy a Thrill (album by Steely Dan)
- Fragile (album by Yes and the name of a song by Sting, an album by the South African band Seether, and an album by Dead or Alive)
- Keep Me Hanging On (song by The Supremes from the album The Supremes Sing Motown; covered by Vanilla Fudge and Kim Wilde, among others)
- Machine Head (album by Deep Purple, also the name of a thrash metal band and a song by the band Bush)
- Rough and Ready (album by Jeff Beck)
- Get It On (song by T.Rex; covered by Power Station, various bands have also released songs with the same title)
- Look at Yourself (album by Uriah Heep, also the title track of the same album)
- Fire Ball (album by Deep Purple, also the title track of the same album)
- My Nation Underground (album by Julian Cope)
- Woke up with a Monster (album by Cheap Trick, also the title track of the same album)
- Sheer Heart Attack (album by Queen, also the name of a song from the Queen album News of the World)
- Made In Japan (album by Deep Purple)
- Atom Heart Mother (album by Pink Floyd; also the title track of the same album, a six-part suite)
- Shock Treatment (song by The Ramones from the album It's Alive)
- Minute by Minute (album by The Doobie Brothers, also the title track of the same album)
- I Surrender (song by Cheap Trick from the album Heaven Tonight)
- Moving Waves (album by Focus, also the title track of the same album)
- We Built This City (song by Jefferson Starship from the album Knee Deep in the Hoopla)
- Are You Experienced? (album by Jimi Hendrix, also the title trackof the same album)
- One of These Nights (album by The Eagles, also the title track of the same album)
- Close to the Edge (album by Yes, also the title track of the same album)
- Physical Graffiti (album by Led Zeppelin)
- Hydra (album by Toto, also the title track of the same album and the name of a southern rock band)
- Light My Fire (song by The Doors from the album The Doors)
- Walking on the Moon (song by The Police, from the album Reggatta de Blanc)
- Still Alive and Well (album by Johnny Winter)
References
External links