Bubblegum Crisis 2040: Episodes

Bubblegum Crisis 2040 Episodes

These listings will be updated as new information becomes available. Also, expected airdates for later episodes may have changed due to pre-emptions, holidays, etc.

Episode 1: "Can't Buy A Thrill"
Aired 07-10-98
Details to follow.

Episode 2: "Fragile"
Aired 14-10-98
Details to follow.

Episode 3: "Keep Me Hanging On"
Aired 21-10-98
See pictures from this episode!
Teaser: Priss brings her bike to K's Garage so that Nigel can adjust the tuning. They have one of those conversations where Nigel contributes maybe two words.
Scene 1: At ADP headquarters, Leon visits Nene in the hope she can locate some video footage of the Knight Sabers on her computer. Nene teases him, calling him "Leon-chan". In return, Leon threatens to report her for eating on duty, but then has to take it back before she'll agree to help him.
Scene 2: At work, Linna has flashbacks to her training simulation. She's still disturbed by having to crush the voomer's heart at the end. Her daydreaming gets her some odd looks from Misae.
Scene 3: The video file Nene locates has been corrupted and is unwatchable. Annoyed, Leon leaves, at which Nene stops tampering with the file playback to reveal that the Knight Sabers had been caught clearly on camera all along.
Scene 4: Sylia talks with the ever-chatty Nigel as he constructs Linna's hardsuit. When he seems unresponsive, she changes into a much more revealing outfit, still to no noticeable result. Nigel is taciturnly concerned about Sylia using an experimental power source (which seems similar to those used in voomers) to power Linna's suit. The various components morph into Linna's hardsuit as the power source is inserted.
Scene 5: Linna meets with Nene after work and takes her out for a meal, hoping to get more information about the Knight Sabers. Nene tells her that Sylia is concerned about Genom. The conversation is interrupted when a customer forces a waitress voomer to lick spilt coffee off his shoes. Linna confronts the man, calling him a pervert and making him leave in humiliation. The voomer thanks Linna. Afterwards, Nene tells Linna more about the Knight Sabers. She's also annoyed that Linna, like everyone else, calls her "Nene-chan" - to Nene, the affectionate term is also a little patronising. Linna apologises and agrees to treat her as an equal. The two shake hands, and Linna makes her first true friend in the city.
Scene 6: In Genom Tower, Quincy and Mason study footage of the Knight Sabers in action. Quincy seems unconcerned about their threat potential. He's more interested in the AD Police, and suggests that since they're destroying rogue voomers that aren't acting in accordance with his plans, the Knight Sabers might ultimately be useful to Genom.
Commercial break.
Scene 7: The waitress voomer isn't working right any more - instead of serving customers, it's retreated to a storeroom, where it's busy licking the aprons clean...
Scene 8: Nene brings Linna to Silky Doll to check out her new hardsuit. Nigel passes them and leaves without even bothering to respond to Linna's introduction, and a few moments later Sylia appears, rubbing her arm as if in pain but studiously not remarking on it. Linna is uncomfortable, and Nene is left trying to work out what's been going on between the two.
Scene 9: The restaurant manager confronts the errant voomer, whose eyes have now started to glow red. There's going to be trouble...
Scene 10: Nene is impressed by Linna's hardsuit. Linna is taken aback when Sylia suggests that she get undressed... so that she can get into the hardsuit, of course.
Scene 11: Priss rides past the restaurant (rather conveniently), where a disturbance is in progress. Something is wreaking havoc inside the building!
Scene 12: Gratuitous nudity time! Linna gets changed, though she has trouble squeezing into the skin-tight softsuit...
Scene 13: Priss rushes into the wrecked restaurant. Inside, she finds that the waitress voomer is transforming into an altogether more unpleasant form with a massively extended tongue.
Scene 14: Linna puts on her hardsuit for the first time. It's a tight fit, and takes a bit of getting used to, but she's soon performing somersaults. She's clearly delighted with the machine. At that moment, Priss calls and warns Sylia about the voomer. Nene reminds Sylia that Priss doesn't have her hardsuit, but Sylia has a backup plan - she's going to send Nene and Linna to deal with it.
Scene 15: Priss hits the voomer with a length of steel pipe - this distracts it from its task of apparently trying to eat the restaurant manager, but instead turns its attention to her.
Scene 16: Nene helps Linna with her hardsuit's helmet as Sylia prepares to send the pair into battle. Linna is unnerved by how Sylia plans to get them to the site of the disturbance, halfway across the city - they're going to be fired from a cannon! One of the columns on the outside of Silky Doll contains a giant railgun with a rotating chamber at the base, containing four alcoves - one for each Knight Saber. Linna and Nene are blasted from the launch cannon, using their hardsuits' thrusters to make giant bounds from the roofs of skyscrapers en route.
Scene 17: Priss tells Sylia that the ADP have arrived, and wants to know what her plan is. She's surprised when Sylia tells her that the Knight Sabers are already on their way - apparently she doesn't have much faith in the combat skills of either Linna or Nene. Leon and Daily arrive, the former with his Earth Shaker, the latter with a huge multipurpose rifle. In the restaurant, the voomer has fully transformed into a vaguely insectoidal form, and starts towards Priss...

Episode 4: "Machine Head"
Aired 28-10-98
See pictures from this episode!
Teaser: Leon and Daily's weapons both prove ineffective against the voomer. As Sylia screeches through the streets in her truck, Nene and Linna crash through a window, Nene moving to protect Priss while Linna prepares for her first taste of combat.
Scene 1: Linna and Nene engage the voomer. Leon tells Priss to get out, then does a doubletake as he recognises her. She's not impressed with his attempts to be gallant. Linna makes good use of her ribbon cutters, hacking off several of the voomer's appendages, but as she grapples with the creature her hardsuit's power supply fails, leaving her all but paralysed. Outside Sylia has arrived and is attempting to diagnose the problem when Priss reaches the truck to get her own hardsuit. The voomer starts to crush Linna's hardsuit, and Leon and Daley add to the confusion by firing on the voomer, but hitting both of them! At that moment, Priss - now in her hardsuit - appears and uses her Knuckle Bomber to blow a huge piece out of the voomer's torso, forcing it to drop Linna. Priss uses another attack to punch right through the voomer's chest and crush its heart. With the voomer dead, Leon demands that the Knight Sabers surrender, a request that Nene laughs off. Other ADP forces choose that moment to start firing smoke grenades into the building, letting the Knight Sabers make an easy getaway.
Scene 2: Safely away from the scene of the battle inside the truck, Sylia runs a diagnostic on Linna's suit while Nene tries to reassure her it wasn't her fault. Priss isn't impressed by the newcomer, and in her usual tactful way says so, not even bothering to respond to Linna's thanks for saving her.
Scene 3: At her trailer in a ruined, deserted part of the city, Priss is taking it easy when Linna unexpectedly arrives. Apart from offering Linna a sandwich, Priss more or less ignores her, leaving Linna to wonder why Priss chooses to live so far from other people. She's not impressed by Priss' sandwich, either. When Priss is disdainful of Linna's abilities, Linna proves to her that she's got some determination - by forcing herself to eat the whole of the horrible sandwich.
Commercial break.
Scene 4: Sylia and Meishio talk about Sylia's father, which provokes a sudden burst of anger in her that she hurriedly tries to cover up. After Meishio leaves, Sylia is struck by a painful headache, which she combats with a mixture of whiskey and pills. A phone message from Nene about the voomer causes another fit of rage, making her break her glass on the table - while she's still holding it.
Scene 5: Leon is thinking about his encounter with Priss. Daily teases him about it, making Leon blush. He can't get Priss out of his mind.
Scene 6: While Priss plays a gig at Hot Legs, Linna works out at the gym. Leon is lurking at the back of the crowd, watching Priss.
Scene 7: Linna gets home, exhausted. As she lies on her bed, we see her collection of photos, several of which show her days as a champion athlete at school.
Scene 8: At the Miura factory, a repair technician finishes work on a voomer and tells it to get back to its job. After the technician leaves, the voomer sees three figures hiding in the shadows - one of them hits the voomer with an electrified dart, stunning it. He then replaces its power source with an odd new one, marked with the Genom logo. [NB: it actually says 'Geom'.]
Scene 9: The band members are packing up, and comment that Priss has just walked right past them, lost in thought. Outside, Priss finds Leon waiting by her bike. She gives him her opinion of the ADP ("Baka!") before riding off in response to Sylia's voomer alert. A few moments later, Leon gets a similar call from Daily. Leon sighs - can't he get a moment's peace?

Episode 5: "Rough And Ready"
Aired 04-11-98
See pictures from this episode!
Teaser: The voomer worked over by Genom stooges in the previous episode is now going berzerk at the factory, killing staff and setting the place ablaze. [NB: the factory is now called 'Miula' instead or 'Miura'.]
Scene 1: Sylia, Nene and Linna wait for Priss to arrive - it's going to be another busy night.
Scene 2: The ADP have arrived at the factory in force. The squad commander despatches a flying drone inside to hunt for the voomer.
Scene 3: The Knight Sabers get ready to depart. Priss still doesn't seem to have warmed to Linna, despite the latter's best efforts. Priss, Linna and Nene are fired from the launch cannon and sent skywards over the city.
Scene 4: Genom's alterations to the voomer apparently included a camera, as Mason and Quincy watch its rampage from within Quincy's inner sanctum. Mason explains what he's done to the voomer, and also notes that its actions will hopefully draw out the Knight Sabers.
Scene 5: The ADP drone encounters the voomer, but is quickly destroyed - or should that be absorbed? The squad commander orders his men into the building to hunt the voomer down. The Knight Sabers watch from a nearby building, Linna starts to get a little annoyed with Priss' attitude towards her. The ADP detects them and tries to get a lock, but Nene has planted a device that jams their surveillance equipment.
Scene 6: It doesn't jam Genom's equipment, however. Quincy and Mason watch events unfold with interest as a video feed shows them the encounter from the voomer's perspective.
Flashback 1: Quincy thinks back to the 2033 earthquake that split Toyko in two... and the voomer-led reconstruction effort that brought Genom to power.
Scene 7: Outside Quincy's chamber, Mason has a passionate meeting with his assistant, a female voomer. From the look of things, he prefers voomers to humans.
Commercial break.
Scene 8: Sylia takes the truck, on auto-drive, to the battlezone. As she drives, she thinks back to...
Flashback 2: ...the aftermath of the quake. A saddened Meishio gives young Sylia the news about the destruction of Bioscape labs... and the death of her father.
Scene 9: Leon and Daily arrive at the factory, Leon offering the squad commander some constructive criticism on his tactics, which Daily seems to think will be ignored. He's right. Just then, explosions rip through the factory. Inside, the voomer has turned into a cross between a spider and a lizard and is absorbing parts of the factory's machinery, adding them to its body. It is unaffected by the ADP's bullets and scythes through their ranks with almost no effort. Above, Nene has come up with a plan to stop the voomer's growth by using the factory's power systems. As she works, the voomer continues its carnage - Leon angrily wonders why the Knight Sabers haven't intervened. The voomer is about to kill a last trooper when new forces arrive - a pair of ADP K-11 mobile suits, which have enough firepower to damage the voomer. Unfortunately, they don't have enough to kill it in its current form, and before Nene can complete her work, one of the K-11s is badly damaged. When Nene finally does turn on the power, though, the result is devastating - the power overload burns off all the extra machinery the voomer has absorbed, forcing it to return to its earlier state so that the Knight Sabers can confront it. Nene blasts it with her railgun, but strikes a victory pose too soon - the railgun spikes haven't penetrated its skin, and fall harmlessly to the ground!
Flashback 3: Before the earthquake; young Sylia is at the Bioscape labs, watching her father's early voomer experiments from an observation gallery with her mother. Sylia is excited that her father will be spending more time with her soon, but her mother sounds weary as she talks about him.
Scene 10: Nene's shriek brings Sylia back to the present as the voomer attacks - only to have its arm sliced to pieces by Linna, who puts herself between her friend and the cybermonster. The watching Quincy seems impressed, but doesn't believe that the hardsuits will withstand the voomer's full powers. Linna flings herself into an attack.
Flashback 4: Dr Stingray is sitting in his huge lab, alone. In the observation gallery are young Sylia, her mother and an unidentified man (Mason?). Sylia's mother is extremely upset, arguing with the man. It seems Sylia's mother is trying to take her away from her father.
Flashback 5: At the funeral of Sylia's mother (apparently she committed suicide), Dr Stingray attempts to comfort the young girl, promising her that when his voomer work is completed, 'papa' will be able to spend more time with her - if she'll help him with his work first...
Scene 11: Linna takes a pounding, and her hardsuit's power supply is running out again. Nene uses her railguns so that Priss can get in a blow with the Knuckle Bomber. Linna jumps onto the monster's back, but before she can strike it opens up a grotesque eye/mouth orifice, startling her. Sylia, luckily, breaks out of her reverie to yell encouragement, and Linna punches through the orifice and crushes the voomer's heart. The monster is dead, but as the Knight Sabers try to leave, ADP heavy units open fire on them, to Leon's disgust. Linna's hardsuit thrusters fail, and she falls from the sky...

Episode 6: "Get It On"
Aired 11-11-98
See pictures from this episode!
Teaser: Linna hit the ground with such force that she went right through the concrete floor, ending up in a basement. Above, Priss and Nene are confronted by ADP forces, who have been given orders to regard them as terrorists.
Scene 1: In the basement, Linna - whose hardsuit is almost out of power - is hunted by a K-11. With its powerful minigun and thermographic vision, it can both see and shoot through walls. Unable to move at any speed, Linna seems doomed - until Priss takes out the K-11. Nene picks up Linna and they try to fly to freedom, but are shot down by an APC outside, one of Nene's hardsuit legs taking damage. Furious, Priss takes on the APC by herself, picking it up and throwing it on its back before knocking down another two K-11s. Another K-11 fights back by shooting her in the back with such force that it partly embeds her in a concrete wall, damaging her suit's systems. As more troops close in, Leon argues with the squad commander, but is told that he's only following orders by engaging the Knight Sabers. The vigilantes seem trapped... until Sylia arrives in her own hardsuit, the first time it's been seen in combat, to judge from Daily's surprise. This doesn't mean Sylia doesn't know how to fight - the ADP forces are bloodlessly but ruthlessly despatched, and Sylia activates a cloaking device in her suit that lets the Knight Sabers escape in the confusion.
Scene 2: A spaceplane is on its way through the upper atmosphere, heading for Narita airport. Aboard the plane is Mackie, Sylia's younger brother.
Scene 3: Priss meets with Nigel at K's Garage for another more-or-less one-sided conversation, this time about Sylia.
Scene 4: Linna has a new boss at Hugh Geit, but despite being married he displays the same proclivities as Kain Smith. Don't they have sexual harrassment laws in Megalo City? Microsoft also still appears to be in business (see scene 13), as Linna is working in Excel.
Scene 5: Mackie makes his way to the Stingray Building, where he meets his sister for the first time in some while. She seems very pleased to see him.
Scene 6: Sylia meets with Nigel in the basement, where he's repairing Nene's hardsuit. Her good mood quickly evaporates when he criticises her for exposing the suits (and their occupants) to too much danger, prompting her to yell back that if she didn't, voomers would be running riot.
Scene 7: Mackie talks with Meishio, wanting to know what Sylia's been doing. He doesn't seem disposed to telling the whole truth. Mackie then takes out a photo of himself and Sylia - if this was the last time they were together, then they haven't met for several years. Oddly, in the picture, Sylia is a lot smaller than her supposedly younger brother...
Commercial break.
Scene 8: Mason holds a video conference with Quincy. (Unusually, Quincy is actually speaking, rather than 'talking' via a neural link as normal.) Mason gets more and more agitated during the call, as Quincy seemingly doesn't think the 'project' is moving as fast as it could be. After Quincy disconnects, Mason tells his voomer assistant to laugh, which she does non-stop as he issues orders to an underling. After telling her to stop laughing, Mason kneels down with his head in the voomer's lap for comfort. He's clearly a guy with problems.
Scene 9: While waiting around for Sylia to finish in the shop, Mackie appears to have a vision of Sylia's aquarium and various hardsuit mechanisms. Security at Silky Doll apparently isn't very tight, as he soon after wanders into Nigel's workshop, where Nene's hardsuit is still under repair. Nigel is as uncommunicative as usual, and Sylia soon finds him and leads him out.
Scene 10: Sylia and Mackie have dinner together. Sylia becomes more and more agitated by Mackie's chatter, suddenly yelling at him before immediately apologising.
Scene 11: Priss and Sekiria play a set at Hot Legs, while Linna works out some more.
Scene 12: Mackie sneaks back down to Nigel's workshop, bringing some food and drink with him. Nigel begrudgingly lets Mackie stay and watch him work - as long as he stays out of the way.
Scene 13: Linna calls Nene at home, asking about the state of the hardsuits. We find that Nene is not only an expert hacker, but also collects vintage computers - she's got a 1998 PowerMac by her desk, as well as a PC of similar age and what looks like an Iomega Jaz drive. Sadly, the scene also reveals that Microsoft won the OS wars, since Nene's computer is running what is very obviously a Windows product.
Scene 14: It's next morning, and Mackie has been up all night watching Nigel work. Nigel finally caves in and lets Mackie help him out on the hardsuits. He sends Mackie off for some tools, but Mackie inadvertantly wanders into the Knight Sabers' changing room, where Priss, Linna and Nene are in varying states of undress. Nene, the least dressed of the trio, is especially displeased. The three women corner Mackie in Nigel's workshop, where Nigel tells them he's Sylia's little brother. Mackie almost manages to talk his way out of trouble with Nene, until his big mouth lets slip that he saw maybe just a bit too much...