It’s zero hour and Tokyo is now fully under Galatea’s
control. With the fate of not just their
loved ones, but all mankind hanging in the balance, Priss, Linna, Nene and
Syllia dawn their hardsuits for one last battle. What starts in the streets of Tokyo will head
to the stars themselves and Galatea has all cards in hand. Not only does she have an army of Boomers,
she also can take over the Knight Sabers themselves. It’s an all or nothing final gambit and Priss
might be the only one who can end this nightmare for good.
This is a hard finale to grade. On the one hand, this will feed into my
overall final thoughts on the series as a whole, as it usually does. But on the other, I don’t want it to
cause…well…the finale kind of sucks. It
starts off well enough but the last two or three episodes are when everything
kind of goes off the rails, more than it already has, and kind of struggles to
sound important while also trying to deliver an action packed ending. It gets shuffled, has some good moments, but
in the end I was left scratching my head and sighing…this could have ended
better.
When I said a couple weeks back that the girls would be
fighting skyscrapers from now on…I would rather they’dve fought something more
their size and speed but just a bit stronger.
Nope. Galatea needs to continue
to be the ultimate cybernetic pain in the ass by merging with the central tower
and become a giant modest enough to keep it’s cyber boobs covered. From here on out, Galatea decides to use
existential monologues as her final weapon of choice and maybe one or two Boomers
(and occasionally Metroids apparently).
Oh and she moves into space…cause we needed to end up there
eventually. I’d rather Priss have a
final duel with her in Tokyo while Galatea was her sexy grown up version,
looking a bit like Madame Hydra from Agents of SHEILD rather than Syllia. This got too big, too fast and yet feels so
underwhelming.
Oh and Syllia?
After the Sabers fail to take out Galatea on Earth, she is so beaten
down that she doesn’t even go with Priss, Linna and Nene to finish her off. I can understand her being distraught over
Mackey’s sacrifice. But Nene was more
shaken than she was and Nene still went off to save the world while Syllia just
finally steps away. Normally I wouldn’t
complain about this, I’ve never believed Syllia should have been out in the
field anyway cause she’s so mentally scarred.
But this close to the finish line?
I think she needed to be there for once.
Instead, Priss, Linna and Nene battle the literal mountain and
eventually, clones of themselves. I liked
this, as brief as it was. I think that
Galatea should have pulled this card a ways back and had the Sabers fight
duplicates of themselves. It could have
opened up new doors to their personal struggles and given them some good,
recurring foes. Sadly, the one and only
appearance of the doppleganger Knight Sabers is wasted here, but again is still
kind of effective.
The final battle itself ranged from bizzare, to over the
top to…well just plain creepy. For
whatever reason, the animators decided to highlight the fact the girls are all
butt naked underneath these new Hard Suits and we frequently saw them in all
their nude glory from within several times (especially at the end with Linna,
Nene and Priss all alive on a beach, or the desert in Priss’ case, with no
underwear). When the Galatea station
began to overtake their suits, latching onto them with evil wires, we kind of
crossed into Hentai territory a bit…again, is this supposed to be that kind of
show? They certainly had plenty of this
in earlier episodes but her it got a bit too much. Oh and you can tell this show loves The End
of Evangelion. Cause from a giant nude
Cyber Lady to the image of wings on Priss’ now destroyed Hard Suit on the
Earths surface, plus Priss’ Hard Suit turning into a berserker dog Boomer, the
Easter Eggs were everywhere and im not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing.
In the end, Galatea was about as memorable or interesting
as the rest of the villains…not very.
When it all came down to it, she just wanted to take over the world for
Boomers with a very warped philosophy. It
became tiresome and I was begging for Priss to put her out of my misery. As ridiculous as the premise became,
thankfully Priss did just that. And you
know what, im glad. I know I said Syllia
should have been here but I’m glad it was Priss who managed to get the killing
blow in. Priss has gone from a loner who
only cared about saving people for money to becoming a full blown heroine in
her own right. She wasn’t going to let
the past keep her from doing what she needed to do, which Syllia probably would
have done. And honestly, cudos to Linna
and Nene both. Nene got the girls the
info they needed to survive the battle and make it back to Earth and Linna was
the never ending sense of hope to both girls.
Bless you Leon for scoring with Priss…but Priss and Linna will always be
the main (non existent) romance of this show to me.
Alright, ive egged the finale on enough for its
shortcomings. Was there anything
good? Plenty. The scenes where the Sabers and their allies
had a campfire with survivors from Tokyo was well done. It gave us a chance to have the girls enjoy
one last good time before things got bad again.
It sucks Linna never got anyone special in her life (again, a shame they
never paired her with Priss). Priss and
Leon got some cute moments too, riding on her bike together and sharing a
couple of well earned kisses. I really
liked Priss’ reasons for not liking the AD Police (they destroyed her favorite
album during a Boomer attack she was in the middle of). It shows more of the growth Priss has had
over the shows run. But the real
heartbreaker is Nene and Mackey. Nene
has grown the second most after Priss, going from overbearing and annoying
sidekick to “step sister” and confident hacker back up. This is in plenty part thanks to Mackey, who
himself has also evolved thanks to Nene.
It made sense he would speak to her one more time before sacrificing his
memories to help the Sabers onward.
Short of “I love you Nene”, this was all the evidence you needed to see
that Nene was the most important person in Mackey’s life, and they were both
better for having each other around.
It's just a shame we don’t get to see much of a
resolution to any of these good times and character arcs. Priss, Linna and Nene are stuck (Naked) in
various parts of the planet. Leon’s in a
bar. And Mackey somehow gets his
memories back following Galatea’s destruction.
That last parts fine I guess but it would’ve been better if we’d seen
him reunite with Nene one more time.
Same with Priss seeing Leon again and making good on the promise for
more romance. They seem to leave the
series on a note of optimistic uncertainty, almost Terminator 2-ish, when
really…it just feels like it’s kind of stopping. Given how overblown the finale was, I cant
say I don’t agree with that cause at some points…I did just want it to end,
which I haven’t said AT ALL about this show until this point.
So, that was Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040. How was it as a whole? Well seeing as how ive never seen the
original 80’s OVA’s (Crisis and Crash), I cant compare how this reimagining is
the to the original. On its own, it’s
pretty great. The animation is pretty
consistent with nary a drop in quality (though the occasional CG element does
appear to mess things up a bit). The
music is top notch cyberpunk rock, a sound I would definitely associate with
this kind of setting. The action was
always welcome and always excellent. The
cast, for the most part, really carried this show more than the action or the
mecha. Priss, Linna, Nene, Mackey and
Leon all had stellar scenes, together and on their own. Priss and Nene had the most character growth
but Priss never stopped being a bad ass.
Nene, however, evolved from pain in the ass to reliable teammember, so
she gets an MVP award this season. The
weakest parts of the show were the villains and Syllia. The villains never impressed, even when their
threat became important. And
Syllia…ugh. Her stubbornness at handling
this whole Boomer crusade ended up making things worse and it doesn’t help her
case that everytime Mackey liking machines or her fathers legacy came up, she
broke something and went ballistic. And
she never got passed that, even when she let the girls in. Syllia was stagnant and infuriating…my least
favorite character of the series.
In the end though, the negatives are outweighed by the
positives. Good character dynamics kept
this show going strong until it stumbled across the finish line. If you can forgive that, then this is a title
I’d definitely recommend. What’s not to
love? Sexy women in sexy battle
armor. A soundtrack that compliments
their nighttime activates. Equal parts
scary, action packed and sometimes very funny.
It’s cyberpunk at its (almost) finest.
Not quite as good as Ghost in the Shell.
However, if you’re a sentai kind of fan and looking for some Akira style
action…the Knight Sabers are your ladies.
7.5/10
Next week, with the summer heat cranking up, we return to
some familiar faces for some fun summer comedy…with gun totting teddy
bear/mouse hybrids. Sousuke Sagara and
Kaname Chidori are back in Full Metal Panic Fumofuu. See ya then everyone.
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