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I watched Bubblegum Crisis (1987). This is sort of a review of it, I guess.

It's an OVA set in 2032 Megatokyo, a sprawling metropolis dominated by freeways and high rises. In this 80s view of the future, an international megacorporation, Genom, builds humanoid machines called "Boomers" that possess incredible strength. These were originally meant for civilian and construction purposes, but recently some military models have been going amok and causing trouble. (If any of that sounds familiar, you will be similarly acquainted with a lot of the later points the plot goes through.)

The story follows Knight Sabers, a group of girls who fight Genom and the boomers in body-shaped mecha suits. Like proper superheroes, they work not really with nor against the police and hide their identities. Between the fighting, they juggle their civilian lives, one working as a singer and another with the AD police, who are the official authority that's supposed to keep the boomers in check. It's these more relaxed parts where I think the show shines, there's interesting worldbuilding and I grew to like the characters over the 8 eps (majority of them 45min).

Then we have the action, and you can expect a bunch of it. The main method of defeating boomers is a choreographed-looking martial dance with random projectiles thrown in every now and then. There's explosions, bright flashes, firearm-resistant armor and many anime fight tropes you're probably familiar with. Usually I wouldn't care too much for the action scenes, but the hand-drawn animation looks beautiful after enduring more than a decade of 3DCG visuals, and the show ties the action together with its 80s pop music (that it also has a lot of) in a very neat way, just watch the opening scene of the first episode to see how it feels like.

Bubblegum Crisis has an overarching plot in there somewhere, but the pacing feels a bit "villain-of-the-week" at times. The show goes through the usual cyberpunk ideas that are pretty much beaten to death for a 2023 viewer (especially one from here). Death happens, some blood flows, and there's attempts at doing sad parts, but these felt base and jarring in contrast to the general vibe.

The visuals and character designs are nice if you're at all into the 80s style. You will see cute girls (also changing into jumpsuits!), manly men with strong jawlines, retrofuturistic tech, dark /cyb/ cityscapes but also space-future modernism, and pointy angle vehicles (love!). Unfortunately the power rangers-esque powersuits of the main crew look tacky and out of place to my modern sensibilities.

Verdict: recommended by me (tm), if any of this sounded appealing it will be more worth your time than many other things I suspect you might be watching.

Expect lots of funny engrish on dashboards and CRT screens.

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