Because it’s fucking awesome, that’s why. Because it’s a synthesis of things that I like in this point in time. Because its open-endedness, its willingness to focus on action and put all the existential stuff in the backseat, the sense of what BGC could have been rather than what it is, make it more than the sum of its parts.
But that’s a fairly vague reason. Let’s ignore the sum and focus on the parts first.
Story: There’s admittedly not a lot of story or super-deep psychoanalytic shit going on in BGC. There are Boomers, which are like Terminators with big meaty muscles. There is a megacorporation that produces them. There are some cute anime girls who don cuter power-armor to wreck their shit. There are some Miami-Vice-meets-Robocop police dudes who dick around and get their shit kicked in by the Boomers.
Of course, the synthesis of these disparate elements could have all gone together in a very bad way (Lookin’ at you BGC 2040). But each episode - there are only eight, and three of them are barely TV-episode length - generally does its best to not require deep viewing and following the plot to enjoy the spectacle. There is a metaplot running between episodes, but it’s diluted by the fact that the creators clearly had no idea what they were doing at first, and the fact that the director’s seat kept changing after the original trilogy of videos. You have to dig into wacky fan speculation to get mileage out of the plot, and that’s fun don’t get me wrong, but it’s not as engaging overall as, say, Stand Alone Complex, which in my mind sets a high bar for thrilling conspiracies and weird cyberpunk shit mixed together. But plot is only one half of a compelling narrative, which brings us to the...
Characters: Some may say that the original four Knight Sabers are all to some degree stereotypes. I think there was another review awhile back that argued that they were more archetypes, more forerunners for the character molds that have become so essential to anime nowadays. (Supposedly a proposal for a BGC ‘Hot Springs’ episode mutated into Tenchi Muyo, the godfather of harem anime. Wacky, eh?). And indeed each main character has their own thing going on - a distinctive voice, distinctive character design, distinctive behavior. They play roles, yes, but those roles are always interesting and compelling and aren’t as shallow as they seem to be at first glance.
In particular I love the character of Sylia Stingray, the cool-beauty ‘big sister’ of the Sabers. Her voice is Yoshiko Sakakibara at her best, somehow warm and loving yet stone-cold cool at the same time, not the brutal villainess of Haman Karn nor the resignation of Shinobu Nagumo. No, Sylia Stingray is sort of what happens when you cross James Bond, a Bond Girl, and a Bond Villain all in one package. She’s beautiful, capable, knows what’s going on for the most part, is implied to be some sort of cyborg, and isn’t afraid to stab her enemies in the throat. Also she runs a lingerie shop as her secret identity. There’re very few other characters like her in anime and that’s a pity. Also Priss is fun to watch smash her way through obstacles and occasionally get her shit kicked in. All told BGC’s characters may not be vividly realized portraits of pain or emotional melodrama, but they have depth to them. It’s like how a few choice strokes can be a landscape in the human mind as much as a photorealistic painting can be. The characters of BGC work because they are a few strokes placed very well.
Art: 80’s cel-shaded awesomeness - explosions and lighting and lasers and color mixed in with urban grunge, the kind of stuff it takes a real budget to show off. Mecha range from simple yet elegant (hardsuits) to hideously baroque (the Hyperboomers from Episode 6) but for the most part they all feel like they’re inhabiting the same high-tech high-octane universe. Sure, Megatokyo goes from being a gritty Streets of Fire-y hellhole to a brighter, cleaner urban sprawl over the series. Sure, the art style changes to reflect which director is in the seat this time around. But, again, each episode mostly stands on its own as a collection of awesome set pieces, plot be dammed. They don’t make em’ like this anymore.
Sound: Okay, so the sound effects aren’t necessarily memorable. But BGC indulges itself in the style of 80’s MTV music videos, especially in the iconic opening sequence of the first episode. Hardcore 80’s J-Rock, some of it using the vocals of the Sabers themselves, pops and crackles through the beginning and end credits of every episode, each time a selection of unique songs. You can tell that part of the revenue from the OVA was trying to get people to buy the soundtrack on tape. Hell, the voice of Priss ended up being a real singer instead of a voice Actress. You haven’t lived until you’ve listened to her belt out ‘Konya Wa Hurricane’ intercut with a Combat Boomer wrecking the shit out of a whole bunch of cops. If nothing else, watch that sequence, you’ll be surprised how much it makes you want to watch the rest.
Enjoyment: This is an awfully vague category, so I’ll use it to talk about the BGC fandom - or what’s left of it. See, BGC was a big deal in the 90’s, especially during the hot times of the VHS boom. Even after Sailor Moon took the West by storm, even after Evangelion upended weeb’s conceptions of what anime was capable of, people still wrote a good deal of BGC fanfiction and posted it on their Geocities or Usenet forums. Much of it is bad, yes, but there’s so little of it compared to the vast seas of shit that dominate fanfiction today, that the good stuff floats to the top easily. And that good stuff is usually consistently good, because it was written by adults who got weirdly into the series’ metaplot and tried to wrap up its unexplored threads to varying degrees of effectiveness. Really, though, the reason BGC is so good for fandom is because it builds its world and its plot in those same broad strokes. It’s up to readers and writers to interpret, elaborate, accentuate what’s there to make more comprehensive stories, ones that aren’t just mashing two characters together to make them kiss.
(By comparison, say, Ghost in the Shell is a more complete work, yes, but it doesn’t have the same spark of manic vitality that lends itself to writing fanfic (at least I think so). No wacky mecha, no melodrama, no flawed characters, just Tom Clancyesque cyberespionage and tactical combat.)
What else is there to say? Bubblegum Crisis is a product of its time, yes, that’s why the Vaporwave gif makers of the internet have latched onto it without appreciating it, but it still holds up remarkably well today. It has the stuff hobbyist fandom used to look for in anime, and seems to have forgotten today, as our collective taste is drowned in a sea of VTubers and gacha games. It’ s lightning in a bottle, a cool concept backed up by cooler design work to make a series that, like many of the action movies of the eighties, has a sort of iconic feel to it, something that, once you put in Konya Wa Hurricane, cannot be denied.
