Bubble Gum Crisis 2040

BubbleGum Crisis 2040 is an entry in the A.D/BubbleGum Crisis series by AIC. 

This is a reboot of the original 80s ova of Bubblegum Crisis written by Chiaki J Konoha, the Serial Experiments Lain and Digimon Tamers writer. 

The story takes place in Japan in the year 2024. It focuses on a vigilante group called the Knight Sabers taking down powerful mechs known as “Boomers”. Boomers are robots that do the dirty work beneath humans and they sometimes are increasingly going berserk and causing massive damage. The Knight Sabers are a secretive group that hunt down the rogue robots and destroy them. ith the rise of incidents involving malfunctioning robots, there is a growing anti-robot sentiment. 

Stylistically you can notice a lot of Blade Runner and Terminator influence. The anime has a good amount of comedy and lighthearted moments that really did not fit the overall tone of the story but was a welcome distraction. The animation was pretty decent and the art was good. The noir styled visuals and coloring was really excellent too. The music was enjoyable, considering the era it came from the late 90s where grunge and nu metal was at its height of popularity. 

The action in the story is pretty predictable since much of the time, the Knight Sabers defeat the robots handily. The members of the Knight Sabers were hit or miss. Characters like Nigel, Priscilla, Mackey and supporting character Daley Wong were pretty compelling and knew how to handle themselves in perilious situations. Other characters like Scyla, Leon, Nene and Linna were just impulsive and ditzy. Scyla in particular was unstable and cracked under pressure. You wonder why she is the leader of the Knight Sabers as she lacks the strong character needed. Otherwise, there was an interesting amount of backstory into character motivations that explains their actions. It was part of the changing times during the period it was written in where characters had to have a level of edginess to them or else it wouldn’t be all that compelling. 

There was moments of unecessary melodrama and bitter infighting here and there that was unnecessary for the plot and it slowed the momentum. Overall, it was a decent anime. 

It gets 4 out of 5 stars. 

There was also supposed to be a follow up series called “2041” but it never really materialized but AIC still holds the rights to the series. Considering how there is a growing demand for more cyberpunk themed anime following the success of Edgerunners.