16 June 1998
BUBBLEGUM CRISIS
EPISODE GUIDE
Bubblegum Crisis: Knight Sabers 2032 / Episode guide [subtitled version]; eight episodes, varying lengths [:25~:50 min]; OAV series [made for direct release to video w/high-quality animation]
© 1988 Artmic/Youmex ; translation © 1990-91 AnimEigo
Episode 1 [no title] / 45 min
2032 A.D. This episode introduces us to the main players in the BGC saga: The Knight Sabers; the A.D. Police; Genom, and their Boomers. It starts off with Priss and her band, the Replicants, performing the rock song "Konya wa Harikaan!" ["There's a Hurricane Tonight"] at a local club. She and the other Sabers are soon called off to take care of a rampaging Boomer that the AD Police can't handle...frankly, they're getting the crap beat out of them...The Sabers soon discover that their most recent jobs have been commissioned by the USSD, a branch of the Japanese military.
Sylia, during a brief respite from the action, has a flashback about her father, who had been murdered by Genom while Sylia and Mackie were still children. Dr. Stingray was the man responsible for creating the Boomers in the first place a long time ago,
but was eliminated by Genom executive Brian J. Mason when he disagreed with Genom's plan to equip Boomers - originally intended to serve mankind - with weapons and combat programming in order to further their own megalomaniacal goals. Dr. Stingray had had a data tape sent to Sylia with technical information on all of his projects, as well as evidence against his
murderer, in the event of his death. For reasons never really explored in this series, the data on the tape got transferred directly into Sylia's mind when she accessed it on her home computer system. [[There has been much speculation, especially in fanfics and such, that Sylia is a SuperBoomer of some sort herself, but the creators of BGC apparently have yet to comment either
way]]. When she grew older, Sylia used the information to design the Knight Sabers' "hardsuits" from prototype designs now embedded upon her memory by the data tape.
Nene and Sylia go to the USSD's headquarters - in their hardsuits [power armour] - to check out their client themselves. They wind up taking part in a "clean-up" operation that the government didn't want to dirty their hands with regarding a renegade "engineer" and a new breed of Super-Boomer, Cynthia, who isn't even aware that she *is* a Boomer...
Episode 2: Born to Kill / 28 min
The USSD went on the news, claiming that the destruction caused by Cynthia and her captors was due to the accidental misfiring of an orbiting satellite under their control...a friend of Linna's accused Mason and his Boomer bodyguards of murdering a friend of hers...It is revealed that Cynthia was intended to be a controller for orbiting military attack satellite network, and both the Sabers and Genom are hot on the trail of the "Black Box" unit, a part of Cynthia's system which gave her this capacity.
Linna's friend, Irene, gets murdered and dropped off a bridge by one of Genom's Boomers while walking home from a day shopping with Linna...no-one ever said these guys were nice...~_~. Linna gets the others to help her destroy the Boomers, who, it seems, are the same ones who are after the Black Box system. The Sabers catch up to and destroy the Boomers, but the
Black Box goes up with them...Due to the controversy about the "bad" satellites, the head of the USSD retires.
Episode 3: Blow Up / 26 min
Genom is up to its usual business, and has sent a Combat Boomer, the BU-12B Cyberdroid, out on a test run...in other words, to go out and wreak some havoc, whilst killing as many AD Police members and causing as much destruction as possible along the way...Naturally enough, it is illegal for anyone except the military to produce or use such Boomers...Priss and
her friends Sho & his mom get evicted from their homes rather abruptly when Genom decides they want to build a new industrial park where their apartments were...Sho's mom gets killed when she runs into their building while it is being demolished in order to try and rescue some money that she had been saving up to allow them to move out to the country.
Priss tries to go after Genom on her own, but the others stop her...for a moment...so they can help her take out those nasty little BU12B's that are still running around town...Sylia and Mason have it out on the roof of the Genom building while the others deal with their own targets...Mason confirms his suspicion that his adversary is indeed the daughter of the man he murdered, Sylia, and promptly gets just what he deserves: a vibro-blade to the gut...
Episode 4: Revenge Road / 38 min
A rebuilt Griffon [a BIG, heavy car] has been tooling around the city trashing MegaTokyo's answer to the Bakusozoku, the Outrider biker-terrorist gang. The driver turns out to be J.B. Gibson, the fiancee of a girl who was put into a catatonic state and paralyzed after a run-in with the Outriders...The Sabers train for awhile in a 2-on-2 paintball arena to sharpen their
skills...Gibson has "improved" the Griffon with a number of customizations, ranging from turbochargers to heavy armour and an electro-shock defense field...after Priss ruins her latest cycle chasing him, she and Linna meet Gibson and his girlfriend in the hospital, where Priss has to get her latest injuries patched up...The episode also introduces Dr. Raven, the Sabers' resident mechanic and designer of Priss's accide- er, motoslave units [bikes]. It finally takes the combined efforts of the Knight Sabers and a blast from Leon's combination service revolver/grenade launcher [I LOVE the 21st century...] to take out the Griffon, which continued to drive on its own even after its driver and passenger had escaped it with Priss's help.
Episode 5: Moonlight Rambler / 44 min
The year is now 2033. A series of so-called "vampire murders" has been plaguing the citizens of MegaTokyo, which have been caused by a pair of female 33-S Boomers, Sylvie and Anri, who had escaped from an orbiting space station, Genaros, controlled by the SDPC...naturally enough, Genom has their fingers in that, too...While it is not their intent to feed upon humans' blood, they have no choice, as their unique systems require constant blood supply...They had escaped from the space station in order to obtain a program disk which would allow them to be free of both the need for blood and the SDPC's control. Ultimately, the only thing either of them want is freedom...Unfortunately, their escape is nearly cut short due to some "Doberman" attack Boomers...picture a white cyborg the size of a Hum-Vee that could take out a T-1000 Terminator and you have a pretty good idea...And one other little thing...Sylvie has gotten hold of the "D.D. Airborne Battlemover", a nifty little number that could probably take out a Doberman itself...Genom's involvement comes about by way of a new face in the crowd, a mysterious stranger called Largo...and yes, he knows who Sylia is too...
Leon's partner, Daley, is sent up to the station to investigate, so Leon is left to his own devices back on Earth...Meanwhile, Priss has befriended Sylvie...who has disguised herself as a fellow biker from out of town...Sylia does some investigation on her own, and discovers the origins of the D.D. unit...Sylvie finally gets the disk she needs to reprogram both her own circuitry and Anri's...there's just one small problem: the D.D. has a built-in micro-neutron bomb built into it, and it's set to go off automatically if Sylvie gets hurt...and she's being chased by a pair of Combat Boomers...
In the end, Leon fights Sylvie's D.D. unit...briefly ...before the Knight Sabers arrive to stop it for good...By the time they know that Sylvie is the pilot, the bomb's failsafe has already triggered the timer and its AI has taken over system control from Sylvie...and the only way they can stop the D.D. is to kill her...Leon is now out cold and Priss isn't left with a
whole lotta alternatives...meet Priss's latest Motoslave armour unit...
Episode 6: Red Eye's / 50 min
A group of Boomers under Largo's command has been terrorizing the town in the guise of the Knight Sabers. It turns out that one of them is really Anri, who has been duped by Largo into helping him achieve his dream of "freedom from all humans" for all Boomers...or so he says...he has revealed to her the fact that the Knight Sabers are "responsible" for Sylvie's death...Meanwhile, Leon is recuperating from his injuries sustained in his fight with the D.D. ...and, in going through his hazy recollections of the evening, discovers that Priss is one of the Sabers...Also, Priss had given Anri the data disk that Sylvie had salvaged, allowing Anri to act as a free being...Anri is now acting "undercover" as a technician at Genom so that she can feed corporate information to Largo...
Leon and Daley are assigned to the case of the now apparently terrorist Sabers...The fakes publish a "warning" to the AD Police in the local papers as a challenge to the real Sabers...meanwhile, Priss has decided to quit the organization due to the shock of the Sylvie's death...The impostors, minus Anri, attack the Tinsel City Bank...It falls to Sylia to bring Priss back into the fold...And, oh yes...Largo himself is a special type of SuperBoomer called a "Killer Doll", and has an improved version of the old Black Box satellite controller system built into his circuitry...
It is soon discovered, after Anri nearly kills Priss, that Largo is a bit more than expected...not only is he an advanced Boomer, but he is a wee bit off the deep end...he considers himself to be a god, whose purpose for existence is to control all Boomers on the planet...and he has no compunctions about wasting any humans in his way...especially the Knight Sabers...in
the end, it is Sylia who does her own bit of mental arithmetic, realizing that Largo is the-Boomer-formerly-known-as "Brian J. Mason"...
<< The one thing I don't get out of this episode is how the %*@# the Advanced motoslave [my term] shows up at the very end to pull Priss's fat out of the fryer when there are no other good guys anywhere near...at least, not until *after* Priss tears Largo's arm off...but, one inconsistency out of the entire series ain't too bad...^_^...>>
Episode 7: Double Vision / 49 min
Vision, an American pop star, comes to Japan in search of the people who killed her parents and her sister, Irene [from ep 2]. Her real name is Reika, and she has decided to accept her ancestral dynasty and join up with a Chinese mafia group called the Hou Bang ["The Tiger Corps"]; the organization's business arm is called the Chang Group, and is a competitor to Genom. She and her companion [and cousin?] Kou use a large, spider-shaped mech called the GD-42 to attack Genom buildings and any companies associated with them in both America and Japan by way of revenge for her slain sister...Meanwhile, Genom is [as usual] working on bigger and badder ways to kill people for profit, they have been cooperating with an American firm called Gulf & Bradley in order to make a Boomer that is predominantly organic, capable of much more sophisticated levels of AI and more complex reactions and tactics in battle...
Sylia's contact now brings the Sabers in on the situation by having them bodyguard Dr. McLaren, an executive at G&B who is in Japan in order to help complete the new Boomer. The Sabers go undercover at his hotel in order to guard him, despite their objections at helping anyone associated with Genom. Daley and Leon do the same; however, Reika goes undercover
herself in order to capture McLaren, and succeeds in drugging him...As a result, the Sabers and the GD-42 eventually cross paths, but join forces in order to stop the new cyber-Boomer and keep McLaren alive...at least, long enough to turn him over to the cops...
Episode 8: Scoop Chase: Lisa / 50 min
During a rooftop battle between the Knight Sabers and some Combat Boomers, a girl gets her camera smashed by Priss after she uses it to snap some shots of the battle. This young girl, Lisa Vanette, is trying to get her first big scoop as a prospective journalist by figuring out the secret identities of the Knight Sabers. She is also the AD Police chief's niece, so Nene
gets stuck with the job of babysitting her on the job for a week so Lisa can learn what it's like to be an AD Cop...
A Boomer attack is later reported at a construction site, and the culprits are of a type never seen before...Fortunately, Sylia has been working on some new hardsuits in the past few months in order to give them added firepower and mobility...and they're gonna need it...While the new suits are not yet ready, the Sabers attack the Boomers...meanwhile, a scientist named
Dr.Miriam over at Genom is using some stolen Boomers to gain data on the Sabers, and therefore assess their limitations and capabilities...Meanwhile, armed with a new camera, Lisa sets out to follow the exploits of the Sabers, and eventually gets the break she's looking for...a close-up shot of one of the Saber's faces after her visor's been shattered in battle...When Lisa develops the shot on her computer at home, it turns out to be her new friend Nene...
Later on, the Dr.Miriam uses the data he collected to produce new Boomers specifically designed to take advantage of those weaknesses...He sends them to attack the AD Police headquarters, and the Knight Sabers show up to take them on...unfortunately for the Boomers, the new suits are complete...Before Lisa can put her pictures to any use, however, Sylia has
a little chat with her, and the Sabers end up saving Lisa's life...but, nearly at the cost of Nene's and Mackie's own lives...
Eric H. Krieger (
geocities.com/tokyo/ginza) (
geocities.com/tokyo)