I mentioned how Bubblegum Crisis felt like a cancelled series that probably still had some episodes left unaired. Bubblegum Crash arrived only a few short months after BGCs cancellation and truth be told, I don’t know the full story as to why this is, or why it has a new title. This new OVA does the job it sets out to do, tie up all the loose ends and resolve all the unresolved character arcs left over from the unfinished Crisis project. Guess what though? It not only makes the same mistakes as BGC, it makes whole new ones as well.
Bubblegum Crash picks up a year after the last episode of Bubblegum Crisis and immedietley you have to ask: what happened to make the Knight Sabers suddenly decide they weren’t needed anymore? Even the AD Police admit that most crimes in Mega Tokyo are Boomer related, so shouldn’t that be reason for them to stick around? Well, much like the origins of the Knight Sabers themselves, their dissolution is shrouded in mystery. Instead we find Priss blinded by potential fame and Linna working as a stock broker because she desires nothing but money (I think Kanye West and Jamie Foxx wrote a song about her once). Sylia is MIA and Nene is the only person trying to stay active in the fight against Rogue Boomers. There’s a reason Nene became my favorite character towards the end of Crisis. She showed more gusto and fighting spirit than any of her more combat capable teammate. At the beginning of Crash, she’s not ready to move on because the job isn’t done. Priss and Linna just yawn her off and focus on their more lucrative financial futures…which I get for Linna but to see Priss reduced to this low is pretty infuriating.
But eventually, the girls do get back into the sexy Hard Suits…to take on random ex soldiers turned robbers who aren’t so random…ok. From then on, Bubblegum Crash acts as a loosely connected trilogy of final episodes for Bubblegum Crisis. There are small, connected plot points that carry from Episode 1-3, all leading to a big, climactic showdown that was missing from Crisis. The only problem: if you didn’t care about anything going on in Bubblegum Crisis or the characters, you’re hardly gonna care about anything going on with them in the finale. Much of Crash feels like they recycled plots from three similar episodes of Crisis and expected everyone to not notice: Rogue soldiers with Boomer tech, a next gen Boomer with a human conciense and yet another final battle with Largo…er Mason…Sylia’s stalker…WHATEVER!!!! Point is, most of this is unoriginal stuff and feels like they were just cherry picked for a sea of failed ideas just to give Bubblegum Crisis an actual ending.
While the first episode offers poor explanations and setups and the final episode has epic threats that are dealt with in literally minutes, Episode 2 does have one actually decent plot about it: Priss being forced to protect a new breed of Boomer named Adama (that’s a Battlestar Galactica reference if you didn’t catch it). Priss has always had major beef with Boomers and while her reasons are textbook (they killed her friends, probably her parents too, how Batman), Adama is a different kind of Boomer, one with what one might consider a soul. Their banter during the episode long chase sequence is kind of funny and calls back to Priss in Episode 1 of Crisis, when she came to care for a young girl who turned out to be a Boomer in the wrong place at the wrong time while Linna complained about not getting paid for her return. Besides this plot line and Nene being the heroine the Knight Sabers truly deserve, Bubblegum Crash ultimately offers nothing new and is utterly pointless. Even the last minute revelations about Sylia and Mason don’t amount to much because A. we figured some of them out forever ago, B. they come too late to make any difference to the plot and C. I don’t care, never have and am not starting 10mins before the OVA ends.
Truth be told, I’m not sure how to grade Bubblegum Crash. Technically it’s a sequel to Bubblegum Crisis and a poorly done one at that. It doesn’t improve anything from Crisis, the characters are even worse than before and all three episodes are very been there, done that. Even the animation and music cant hold a candle to the bulk of Bubblegum Crisis. On the other hand, this is the finale that Bubblegum Crisis never got for reasons of who knows and really, who cares. So, should I give Crash the same score as Crisis or should I grade it separately? Hmm…you know what…I just want this over with so I can go and watch the incredibly superior Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040 again…even with it’s terrible ending, it’s a far cry better than the OVAs that inspired it. Remember Anime: hot girls in mecha suits can only impress me but so much. You’ve gotta make them actual characters and ones that I care about…a good and meaningful story would help too. Bubblegum Crisis and Bubblegum Crash are NOT the way to do this.
2.5/10 (honestly if I were grading this alongside Bubblegum Crisis the overall score would be a 3.5 now). Bubblegum Crash is a forced ending that just feels like an excuse to give the fans closure…and it isn’t even capable of doing that.
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