Bubblegum Crash!:
Soldier Blue
Soldier Blue is the manga/drama written by Toshimichi Suzuki, BGC's creator, in order to explain the link between Bubblegum Crisis and Bubblegum Crash!. It may as well be stated bluntly here and now that this was not a very successful attempt to make BGC! seem more like canon than it would. While this story was written before BGC! came out, it was meant to tie in the two series in a way that nothing else did. Some of the unanswered questions from BGC are touched on in this story, but even more questions are brought up.
Two relationships are more or less resolved, at least to a point. Priss Asagiri and Leon McNichol meet with one another and Priss explains that she is ready to let go of her dead lover and move on with her life, in which she wants to include Leon. That scene may be the best written of the scenes from the story. The other relationship that is (presumably) resolved is that between Nene Romanova and Mackie Stingray. Their meeting is brief and all that is stated is that Nene is sad about Mackie going to Germany, but can accept it. Other than that, neither relationship is taken the another degree. This is made more annoying by the fact that Nene and Mackie, and Priss and Leon hardly acknowledge one another at all during Bubblegum Crash!. The scenes between the two respective couples seem to have been written for sentimental value.
Most of the story focuses on Sylia Stingray (no, really, it does; yes, I was surprised, too). It starts off strange with Sylia receiving a bouquet of lotus flowers, of all things, and then sniffing the flowers and going into a daze. She hooks up to a computer and enters her own mind only to meet Reishi (if you go by phonetic spelling; it was supposed to be Lacey, though). Reishi is apparently Sylia's darker side, a split personality of sorts that occurred when Sylia and Largo communicated during Red Eyes... presumably. That part is never cleared up, but Reishi speaks with Largo's voice at one point so it can only be assumed that this was the case. Sylia and Reishi proceed to battle one another and Sylia kills Reishi. Then Reishi returns after causing Sylia to have nightmares that make less sense than Reishi herself does. Finally at the end of the drama/manga, Sylia feels Largo's presence and refers to him as "that man she had forgetten," as she realizes that Largo is coming back to exact his revenge.
While Soldier Blue is occassionally senseless in the extreme and seldom seems right, the value of a link between Sylia and Largo cannot be ignored. Reishi is an unexplained explanation for what binds Sylia to Largo. From what I personally gather (from a really bad translation...), Largo and Sylia's minds became one and created Reishi, who has Sylia's form and Largo's mind. Reishi makes it clear at one time that she finds Sylia attractive in a way similar to how Largo does so in Meltdown. The major difference is that Reishi is not confined to a large testtube, and in fact lives inside Sylia's mind where she can do significantly more damage than Largo could do.
The problems with Soldier Blue, outside of the obvious, are that Toshimichi Suzuki and Tony Takezaki, the forces behind it, were preoccupied with offering explanations for BGC incidents to a point where they forgot to give foundation to how and why things took place. How did Reishi come to be? What becomes of Priss' relationship with Leon? Do Mackie and Nene ever become a couple? And what about Linna? Not a single section focuses on Linna, though she appears in most of them. Her parts are relatively small, however. Then the fact that Sylia is hideously out of character a few times is a little bothersome, too. Soldier Blue clears up that Sylia knew a mother once, but nothing about that mother or her death is revealed. She may as well have been another hallucination on Sylia's part.
Soldier Blue could have been the finest installment in BGC because it covers so much ground. Sadly, that ground is covered poorly. The truth is that Toshimichi Suzuki, though very talented, was not meant to write narratives or scripts without imagery because his wording is either too vague or too detailed. Either way, most people will get lost at about the time that it is stated that because Reishi lives in Sylia's mind, it was Sylia who sent herself the bouquet of lotus flowers, which happens at the very beginning of the story... Strange, but intriguing in its own way.