Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040 is a Japanese anime series produced by Anime International Company. A retelling of the 1987 original video animationBubblegum 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. The series was later released on DVD, however the Japanese versions were simply the American DVD releases encoded to play for Region 2.
Plot
The story takes place in Tokyo where much of the manual labor is done by robots called Boomers, which are run by a mega-corporation Genom. [|Linna Yamazaki], a new office worker, observes a Boomer that has “gone rogue”, causing destruction and attacking people. Although the AD Police are called in to stop the rogue Boomers, a renegade group called the Knight Sabers dressed in cybernetic, armored Hardsuits appear and save the day. Yamazaki joins the group which consists of: [|Priss], a rock star; [|Sylia], a boutique store owner and the group's leader; and [|Nene], a computer whiz who also works within the AD Police as a dispatch operator. Over the course of the series, the Knight Sabers go after the rogue boomers, which frustrates the AD Police officers [|Leon McNichol] and his partner [|Daley Wong]. Genom is not happy with the development. its leader [|Quincy Rosenkreutz] and advisor Brian J. Mason seek to unlock more boomer technology. Meanwhile, the girls must deal with Sylia's younger brother [|Mackey]. Leon pursues Priss with romantic intentions, but does not know of her connection to the Knight Sabers. Mason uncovers and reactivates [|Galatea], a humanoid based on Sylia's DNA who is able to control all boomers. Genom cuts AD Police's funding, resulting in a strike, however, Galatea's influence causes boomers everywhere to go rogue, trapping the Knight Sabers and the AD Police folks inside their own building. The Knight Sabers follow and defeat Galatea at a satellite orbiting Earth.
Characters
Many of the characters are similar to those in the OVA series. ;
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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 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 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.
Media
Episode list
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. The opening theme, titled "y'know", is performed by Yu Asakawa as her character, Priss S. Asagiri. The ending theme, titled "Waiting for YOU", is performed by Akira Sudou. 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 twelve episodes premiered on January 13, 1999, with new episodes airing weekly until the series concluded on March 31, 1999. Episodes 25 and 26 were unaired and instead along with the original video animations, were released directly to VHS and laserdisc. The series was licensed for English-language broadcast and distribution in English by AD Vision and premiered their English dubbed version of the series on August 24, 1999. As of November 3, 2010, the series has been re-licensed by Funimation Entertainment.
