Bubblegum Crisis - Production

Production

The OVA series is eight episodes long. It was originally slated to run for 13 episodes, but due to legal problems between the two studios who jointly held the rights to the series, Artmic and Youmex, the series was discontinued. The problems may have been brought on by the series' lackluster sales in Japan. In North America, however, the series did comparatively well and remains a cult classic.

In Japan, a number of comic books were produced that featured characters and storylines based in the BGC (a common abbreviation for the series name) universe. Some were very much thematically linked to the OVA series, while others were "one-shots" or comedy features. A number of artists participated in the creation of these comics, including Kenichi Sonoda, who had produced the original Knight Saber character designs. A North American comic based in the Bubblegum Crisis Universe was published in English by Dark Horse Comics.

The series involves the adventures of the Knight Sabers, an all-women group of mercenaries who don powered armor and fight various problems, most frequently rogue boomers. Boomers are humanoid robots designed to perform a variety of tasks, from construction and firefighting to combat; a particular model of Boomer, the BU-33S "Sexaroid", is designed for sexual purposes, and also in need of human blood, as revealed in episode 5.

One of the central themes of the series, showing strong influence from Blade Runner, is the exploration of what "human" really means. As in Blade Runner, this is often accomplished through a focus on the characters of certain androids, particularly BU-33S.

Bubblegum Crisis is notable also in that it was one of the few early anime series that were brought over from Japan unedited and subtitled with English captions that still have a great deal of popularity today. While anime has become much more popular in the intervening years, in 1991 it was still mostly unknown as a storytelling medium in North America.

In 1997, a new series was created, titled Bubblegum Crisis 2040, but was not a sequel to the original OVA series. Headed by Chiaki J. Konaka, it was a standalone television series, and while it used similar themes to the original, it employed new designs for the characters and the mechanical devices. This series ran for twenty six episodes. Some discussion has taken place between the production companies for a second season, tentatively titled Bubblegum Crisis 2041.

Despite the age of the original series, a non-Japanese fandom still exists for it. The community of fans have produced large quantities of Fan fiction and Fan art based on both the OVA and television series with the current estimated count of fanfiction in English language alone well exceeding four hundred texts, though there is a preponderance of works and discussion based on the original series.

Bubblegum Crisis has many features that have proven attractive to many viewers of anime. The mecha designs, cyberpunk characters, and post-apocalyptic city of Megatokyo are well-realized and leave a lasting impression. The storylines are varied and complex, with some elements left deliberately unexplained and open to interpretation.

The music throughout the original OVA series is one of the most recognizable in anime fandom and generates a strong feeling of 1980s nostalgia. The opening song and sequence for the first OVA, as well as many of the other songs throughout the series, clearly draw inspiration from the 1984 movie Streets of Fire. Nearly all of the music is available, as there are 8 soundtrack releases (one per OVA), as well as numerous "vocal" albums which feature songs "inspired by" the series as well as many drawn directly from it. As a consequence Bubblegum Crisis, with its better than 1:1 soundtrack album to episode ratio (when one considers the "vocal" albums), may arguably have among the highest number of album-length music collections (percentage-wise) which may be attributed to any single title in contemporary anime.

A roleplaying game based on the series was published by R. Talsorian in 1997 under the Fuzion system. It contains many original sketches of the characters, mecha and settings, as well as detailed background information about them. A supplement detailing the 1997 series was planned, but could not be completed before RTG's license expired in 2002.

A digitally-remastered compilation of the original series' episodes, featuring bi-lingual tracks and production extras, was released on DVD in 2004 by AnimEigo Inc.