Bubblegum Crash! Episodes
[Illegal Army] [Geo Climbers] [Meltdown]
One of the greatest things about this series is that it should have been better that its predecessor but in fact turned out considerably worse.
Episodes one and two had more problems than I care to name. Sylia disappeared to... where? The Knight Sabers, all somewhat different from their prior selves, are falling apart. Priss is now getting her pro debut as a singer, Linna is an income-obsessed stock broker, and Nene is committing illegal activities left and right. Then Sylia reappears with four new Hardsuits that look bulky and work in ways that defy all reality.
Most BGC fans will point out those things and the following: Priss' original seiyuu, Kinuko Oomori, left and was replaced by the less talented Ryouko Tachikawa. The art was not as good as it had been in the first series and characters' personalities were significantly altered. The music was of a lesser quality, too. These are all things that could be overlooked were it not for all the other glaring errors in Bubblegum Crash!.
Bubblegum Crash! technically starts with Soldier Blue, Suzuki's drugged-out drama that is mostly centered around Sylia Stingray battling with Reishi, her "dark side." This serves as an introduction for the BGC! series, and possibly an introduction superior to the series itself. At least SB put forth some effort to look into Sylia's mind, quite literally, without turning Largo into a Green Peace throwback. The other characters became stereotypes for this series. Sylia fluctuated between being uncharacteristically kind (she winked at someone) to being a stone-cold witch who got brainwashed by her ex-boyfriend. Bring in a psychotic Priss, now more indescructable than ever, an ultra-shallow Linna, and a childish Nene who seems a little obsessed with Sylia to the point where it's possible to question the poor girl's sexual orientation without sounding out of line, and we have the Knight Sabers. We also have the flat and dull Doctor Yuri, the naive and moronic Doctor Haynes, the horrifyingly uninteresting ADAMA, and... Largo. Again.
My biggest problem with this series is that the first two episodes were a waste of time. Had episode three been turned into a single movie with a big budget, combining portions of the first two episodes with this one, this series would have far exceeded the first one in quality. Actually, it would no longer be a series: It would be a movie. And an incredible one. However, what the viewer gets is two purely mindless episode mixed with a third that makes Largo's environmentalist tendencies more than rival those of Al Gore. The third episode had its own little problem. Largo fused with Sylia. Fine; we all know that something about Sylia is... fusable. Then he goes and fuses with Priss, Linna, and Nene. Here is where it gets confusing. Nobody can honestly think those three are Boomers. True, he didn't move into them like he did into Sylia, but it's impossible not to question that was going through the mind of whoever wrote that scene.
My favorite part about this series is that it gives Sylia the attention that she deserves. My least favorite part is that it doesn't matter how much attention they gave her because virtually nobody respects this series. It had every reason to be better than the first in all forms. You would think that they would find a singer with a good range, better artists, great writers, and someone to redesign the Hardsuits without makind them bulky and less feminine. Instead they found Tachikawa to replace Oomori, going from an average range to a sore throat, had a Korean studio do the art because it happens to be cheaper that way (creepy side note: they had to redo parts of the cels from episode three with markers because they first turned out so poorly), the writers did not seem to agree with those who had been working with the first series, and whoever redesigned the Hardsuits (Tony Takezaki, perhaps?) did not do them justice, which is why Sonoda shuns this series.
If you want my honest opinion, buy episode three and rent the other two. I say this for the same reasons that I tell people not to bother with episodes four or eight of Bubblegum Crisis: Two of them do not live up to the hype. I think that episode three of BGC! is superior to much of what BGC churned out, but that's probably because it focuses on Sylia, my favorite character. Unless you're interested in what Suzuki said was the intended ending of the series, you may not want to bother with BGC! at all.
Be forewarned: GENOM is absent from the whole series, the Boomers are stupid until episode three, and the Hardsuits pull some really bizarre stunts that may make you laugh out loud.