Bubblegum Crisis

Director
Katsuhito Akiyama
Country of origin
Japan
Format
Series
Year
1985

Bubblegum Crisis Collectors Box Set

By Joseph (Joe) Wood
15th Nov 04

The Bubblegum Crisis collection box set contains four DVD's, the first three contain the episodes and the fourth has a number of songs from the series sung in Japanese with English subtitles presented with clips form the show, and one or two live performances form the Japanese vocal cast. The reason for the inclusion of this music video is because music plays an important part in Bubblegum Crisis, most of the episodes have different musical introductions and endings as do the majority of the action sequences.

The story for Bubblegum Crisis should already be known to most from either, Bubblegum Crash, Crisis Tokyo 2040 or the A.D.Police spin-off prequel all made after this first series. Set in 2032, Megatokyo is slowly rebuilding itself after a devastating earthquake; this is due to the wide use of robots known as 'Boomers' which are made by GENOM a corporation with somewhat questionable business ethics. Every now and then 'Boomers' go haywire, with the A.D.Police a division set up to deal with 'Boomer' crime become more and more useless at stopping them due to budget cuts. A group of all female mercenaries known as the Knight Sabers dressed in powerful battle suits, step in to stop the renegade 'Boomers' and GENOM's evil schemes. They also take on a number of other work to help finance them.

The animation does look rather dated, but if you can watch Fist of the North Star easily, then this should present no problem either. There is an English language dub for all the episodes however this also translates the songs which are very poorly done in English when compared to the Japanese. The English dub is also out of synch with the mouth flaps by about a second or two, which makes it hard to watch when we've been spoilt by high quality dubs from ADV and the like. The English voice acting is withstand able but is very similar to the subtitled version (wither this is due to a lack of making to scripts is hard to tell though). There are English and French subtitles for those from the continent or who want to polish up.

There are eight episodes over the tree discs however running times vary from about twenty-five minutes to forty-five minutes. The series storyline is left some what unfinished and continues in Bubblegum Crash (currently available from Manga Entertainment's 'The Collection' range lacking a Japanese subtitled version); due to the original company splitting during production and one half taking the rights after the other episodes had been released. Discs one and three contain a number of extras such as an art gallery, but disc ones extras can only be accessed by a DVD-ROM drive.

The set is retailed at around £40 which makes it not as good value as the recently released Fist of the North Star box set (from Manga). Also you may whish to miss out if you weren't a fan of the Crisis Tokyo 2040 series, although the plots between the two do differ. Die hard bubblegum fans will most likely have to have this in their collection as will those who want a decent old classic.

-- Joseph (Joe) Wood 15th Nov 04

Bubblegum Crisis Images